Amanda Cargill

RoadTrippers.com
This travel story was the result of a September 2018 tour of West Texas. In Roadtrippers, I found its ideal home. A combination online magazine and travel curation app, Roadtrippers is unique in its preference for the journey over the destination. To highlight Lubbock’s gunslinging lore – it was the preferred retreat of Bonnie and Clyde, arguably history’s most recognizable partners in crime – and the creativity that its limitless horizons cultivate, I pegged the story to The Highwaymen, a Netflix limited series receiving significant press attention and running simultaneous to the article’s publication. (The series is about the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde; as such, Lubbock is prominently featured in it.) To highlight the significance of small towns in the weaving of the American fabric – a topic of personal interest that felt relevant and both underrepresented and misrepresented in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election – I incorporated stories from my family’s history and concluded the article with what might be, of all I’ve written, my favorite lines: “I wish more stories were written about small towns, about Lubbocks and Merceds and Akrons and Shaws… They’re living history, the keepers of America’s stories, and testaments to the successes and stains of its past. Small towns like Lubbock aren’t #travelgoals. They are us.”