Comments on: 11 Literary American Road Trips; 10 Adventure Novels; and Theroux

By: pen4hire

pen4hire — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:59:15 +0000

Davis: That particular road was on the way to the west side of Hell’s Canyon. Sounds like you indeed were in some of the same territory we were in. What fascinating little towns in Western Oregon!

By: Davis

Davis — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:29:34 +0000

I just noticed the caption to your photograph: “a lonely road in Oregon”. I think I have been there. Or one of so many places along the road that looked like that. One spring I left Ashland to drive across the country to Cape Cod and saw places like that in the beautiful desolation of Eastern Oregon. I stopped at antique and secondhand shops and bought arrowheads chipped from volcanic glass and found by ranchers. At a shop in a converted gas station I was offered a leather fetish, beaded and in the shape of a turtle, which I recognized as almost certainly containing the umbilical of a 19th Century Indian, which in the old days would have been buried with him. There was no indication that it had been buried and must have been left with his belongings after the old life collapsed and someone found it and didn’t understand what it was and sold it as just another “old thing”. I could not in good conscience buy it, and did not even want to handle it.

What a wonderful adventure it was — and still is — to drive across America.
Davis would like you to read..Travel writing, bloggery & poetic prose (dofollow)

By: Davis

Davis — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:43:14 +0000

The Great American Road Trip began before the Interstate, but not much before, as intercity roads were pretty bad. The Army did a survey of highways in the late ’30s with an eye to moving men and materiel for defense purposes and found them pretty awful. That, and exposure to the Autobahn, were behind Eisenhower’s promotion of the Interstate System.

Americans had affordable cars and cheap gasoline. You could drive thousands of miles and still be among people who spoke English. Where people were law-abiding and the food and water were safe. Things were different enough to be interesting and familiar enough to be reassuring. I suspect that the availability of fraternal lodges — the ability to call on brother Elks and fellow Masons in strange towns — may also have figured.

And the road trip meant freedom. What’s not to like about it?

If anything, the Interstate may have made the road trip less desirable. Made it entirely too easy to make driving just a matter of getting from here to there, ignoring all that America at the end of the off-ramp, and traveling from one NPR station to the next.
Davis would like you to read..The Adventures of Tintin

By: Kerry Dexter

Kerry Dexter — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:28:00 +0000

soundtracks for the states has got me thinking… should be an interesting project.
and while New Orleans is on your mind, check out the music of keyboard player and singer Marcia Ball, if you’ve not yet.
.-= Kerry Dexter´s last blog ..Bluebird Cafe: a story and a request =-.

By: pen4hire

pen4hire — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:44:02 +0000

Kerry: Thanks for the soundtrack! I’m about to launch a 50-state project, and will be calling on you for soundtracks for lots of states. Needless to say, I have a bunch already for Louisiana–both cajun country and N’awlins jazz.

By: Kerry Dexter

Kerry Dexter — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:59:09 +0000

my American road trip, both of places I’ve been and places I’d like to go, would be quite different. more borders, I think — and Taos rather than Santa Fe. Billings, Durango, Austin, Tallahassee, Bloomington, Charlottesville, Portland — I’d have to have a few of those too. I’d also suggest Kathy Mattea’s album Coal for a West Virginia soundtrack.
.-= Kerry Dexter´s last blog ..photographing music, again =-.

By: pen4hire

pen4hire — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:21:22 +0000

Don’t miss Blue Highways and Travels with Charlie, also. Hope you get to do the drive of your dreams some time.

By: Meredith Resnick

Meredith Resnick — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:18:25 +0000

My husband and I have taken many road trips, but something I've always dreamed of doing was driving across the country. This looks like an absolutely wonderful (perhaps essential?) read. Thanks for posting this. .-= Meredith Resnick´s last blog ..Alphabet Soup with Barbara Bietz =-.