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A 2,000-mile family road trip reveals everyday scenes that bind diverse Americans — barbecue joints, gas station lottery lines, shared small hopes — hinting at common humanity beneath polarized politics.

But along the route from Detroit to Phoenix, the same journey exposes a harsher thread: homelessness and economic insecurity visible in red and blue regions alike.

The trip raises a stark question about a wealthy nation that accepts widespread street suffering, one where indifference to unhoused neighbors is becoming a defining, corrosive national bond.

Of all the sentences, passages and lyrics I heard, read or sang on my family’s 2,000-mile trek across much of America — from the Midwest to the Southwest — those three words stayed with me most.

The waitress at the Church Street Cafe in Old Town Albuquerque told me to say them before I left, otherwise Sara Ruiz — the resident ghost, a member of the family that owned the building for three centuries — might follow us home. Now, if Sara was going to chip in for gas, that might not have been a bad thing. Everywhere we stopped to fill up was roughly $70 a pop. However, we didn’t want to take any chances, so we did as we were told.

We were the guests. It was Sara’s home.

I don’t know what you’d encounter in Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s new YouTube show “Great American Road Trip,” but on my drive, what I kept seeing — over and over — were the things that hold us together. Like eating a good meal.

In Arkansas, I had ribs so tender the meat........

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