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When we lived in Tennessee, a friend told us about when he found some of his birth family and made the trip to Texas. When they got to Texarkana his wife saw the sign that says "El Paso 900 miles". He said she looked at him and said "I thought El Paso was in Texas?".
Not long after we moved to Texarkana I went to visit my sister in Chicago. When I got back I had a message on my answering machine to come for a job interview in ElPaso. I remember thinking, "At least I'm not going to Chicago." Then I got out a map and discovered that ElPaso is further from Texarkana than Chicago is.
My dad must have told my brother and myself this story over a hundred times in our childhood. He was a born and raised East texan.
One of his friends from high school ended up taking some form of a sales job with a company based out of chicago. One year they sent him to some place in the south of Texas to do a job. While he was there he received a phone call from the main office in Chicago telling him that when he was done with that particular job he needed to go to a place in the Panhandle. The salesman replied, send someone from the Chicago office. The Chicago office of course said but you're closer you're in Texas. He said, look at a damn map and measure it and tell me who's closer!
Just how freaking huge the USA is just happens to be one of those facts lost on people not from the USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5ChJKK_1z0
Everyone should travel from the Atlantic to Pacific coasts at least once by surface transport. Car, bus or Amtrak.
Mike Royco talked about taking a train once from Chicago to California. There were some West German tourists on board one of the asked “how much longer does this go on“ he asked what did he mean. The tourist said: “Der cornfields“. Royco told him “another 900 miles.” The tourist said “Mein Gott!”