Maybe You're Just a Destination

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Drive-By Truckers have a lot of songs about driving, which makes sense for a band with such a Southern sense of place and so many hours spent on the road. They sing about driving across dry-county lines, driving on mean highways, driving around doing stupid shit as a teenager, and of course, driving toward a girl who’s “just a destination.”

Many of us wasted our youth in cars, killing time until we could get out of wherever we were.

“Zip City” is probably the Drive-By Truckers song I’ve listened to more than any other. Judging by the crowd response when DBT revs up the angsty opening chords, its fandom reaches wide. To borrow a phrase from one of my other favorite bands, The Hold Steady, “Zip City” is a singalong song — despite having no chorus, just verses, and a casual commitment to rhyme. The song just builds and barrels toward its destination like the narrator’s fuel-inefficient car. 

For this week’s newsletter, on the occasion of my 47th birthday, I’m reflecting on why I love “Zip City,” and I asked some fellow DBT fans to share what the song evokes for them. Keep reading to join me on the journey.

As Patterson Hood sings on “The Driver” — probably the DBT song most literally about driving — he spent a lot of his youth “fucking round and wasting gas,” a pastime I’m very familiar with. When you’re raised in a place without much going on, you spend a lot of time driving — or standing around in parking lots deciding where to drive next.

In high school, we’d pinball from diner to diner, from park to parking lot, maybe Pensacola Beach or the train tracks on the bay if we felt ambitious. And shit, we had choices. My mom grew up in rural Mississippi, where they hung out at the drive-in restaurant when they weren’t driving around. When the restaurant became a laundromat, they just kept hanging out in the parking lot.

When you’re raised in a place without much going on, you spend a lot of time driving — or standing around in parking lots deciding where to drive next.

This experience isn’t exclusively Southern; I have friends from upstate New York who sat in their car smoking cigarettes and watching a traffic light change. I suspect that’s one reason “Zip City” endures as a fan favorite: because many of us wasted our youth in cars, killing time until we could get out of wherever we were.

In the commentary for Southern Rock Opera, Patterson says this is his favorite song on the record and “at least 90% true.” In one of DBT’s essential “daddy” songs, Mike Cooley writes from the POV of a 17-year-old boy who —  like many teenagers throughout history — is both horny and a smart-ass. The first verse sounds downright pouty:

“Your Daddy was mad as hell
He was mad at me and you
As he tied that chain to the front of my car and pulled me out of that ditch that we slid into
Don't know what his problem is
Why he keeps dragging you away
Don't know why I put up with this shit
When you don't put out and Zip City's so far away.”

As a grownup, I can laugh at the absurdity: this kid drove his car (and his girlfriend) into a ditch, but he’s pissed off at her dad for being mad about it. According to our (probably very unreliable) narrator, the dad is a hypocritical man of god, her sister is slutty, and her brother is closeted.

Then comes the part of the song that I find most poignant and relatable:

“Maybe it's the 26-mile drive from Zip City to Colbert Heights
Keeps my mind clean
Gets me through the night
Maybe you're just a destination, a place for me to go
to keep me from having to deal with my 17-year-old mind all alone
Keep your drawers on, girl, it ain't worth the fight
By the time you drop them I'll be gone
And you'll be right where they fall the rest of your life”

I never dated a deacon’s daughter, but between ages 16 and 19, I had two long-term boyfriends, and they both lived way across town and did not have driver’s licenses. Although I wouldn’t have described them as mere “destinations” at the time, I probably knew deep down that neither of them had any plans to move out of Pensacola, ever. But being in love is a great distraction from the discomfort of being a teenager. 

When I asked my mom (and fellow DBT fan) what “Zip City” evokes for her, she said, “High school choices and how some people have more choices than others. Also the male was thinking with his head, not his dick, which is unusual. Running her down is a classic teenage strategy for boosting up his own sorry ass. He dislikes himself for not having a ‘better’ girlfriend.”

Being in love is a great distraction from the discomfort of being a teenager. 

Earlier this month, I interviewed fellow Heathen Glenn Raucher for a future edition of Fan Mail, and here’s what he had to say about the song: “On the surface, it is one of the cruelest songs you will ever hear. But then there’s that line ‘to keep me from having to deal with my 17-year-old mind all alone.’ He’s giving the game away. Somewhere in his immature mind, he understands exactly what’s happening here.”

He needs her more than she needs him, and he can’t help but cut her down for that, too — and that’s when “Zip City” hits the home stretch. When Cooley sings this song live, he usually shifts into an anguished, guttural vocal as he delivers the next few lines: 

“You say you're tired of me taking you for granted
Waitin' up till the last minute to call you up and see what you want to do
Well you're only 15, girl, you ain't got no secretary
And ‘for granted’ is a mighty big word for a country girl like you”

For the last word on "Zip City," I’ll pass the mic to DBT fan Ashley Berry, who will be featured in my next piece of Fan Mail. Because, well, she fucking nails it:

“I said to a friend once that ‘Zip City’ is about my hometown in Alabama, and he told me, ‘It’s about everybody’s hometown,’ and that is so true. If you grew up in the South, you can totally relate to this song, the evangelism, the culture, and everything else. Cooley knows how to write them, and his lyrics are very descriptive of most people’s coming of age experience, especially in the South.”

How did you avoid yourself and waste time as a teen in your shitty town? Share in the comments!

If you’re interested in being featured in a future edition of Fan Mail, or if you have a song request for a future essay, drop me a line at nancy@mundane-mayhem.com.

I have an exciting few weeks coming up. My copy of The Definitive Decoration Day should arrive any moment now, and to support the album, Drive-By Truckers will reunite with Jason Isbell for a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Dec. 2. Then, from Dec. 3-6, I’ll be celebrating 10 years of Massive Nights with The Hold Steady at Brooklyn Bowl — one of my favorite events of the year.

See you at the rock show,
Nancy