Slow Road to San Francisco: Across the USA from Ocean to Ocean

by David Reynolds

Overview

A candid, humorous and perceptive eye on America, with a new introduction covering the Presidential election

Forty-six days, thirteen states, 3000 miles.

Documenting the author's solo coast-to-coast road-trip across America, David Reynolds's Slow Road to San Francisco is an absolute joy. An entertaining blend of observation and commentary delivered with a luminous lightness of touch.

From Ocean City, Maryland to San Francisco, Reynolds traverses the back roads and small towns of the USA, taking the pulse of Trump’s America as he goes. With remarkable candor and insight, not to mention a humorous and sometimes skeptical eye, he observes the States today. As he moseys from east to west, driving slowly, stopping frequently he meets Trump’s countrymen and women – white, black, Hispanic, Asian, native American; Christian, Muslim, atheist, Mormon, Mennonite; rich, middling, poor. They talk about everything from slavery and Indian reservations to Butch Cassidy, and Marilyn Monroe. Everyone has something to say about Donald Trump, whether they love him or hate him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781838340162
Publisher:	Muswell Press
Publication date:	05/01/2022
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

David Reynolds was one of the original founders of Bloomsbury Publishing where he was Deputy MD and Editorial Director. He is the author of Swan River (shortlisted for the Pen/Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography) and Slow Road to Brownsville, published to great reviews.

Read an Excerpt

Selected Extracts
I’ve been fascinated by America since I was a child. I had a cowboy outfit
and toy guns, which I put beside my dinner plate so I could shoot at
the baddies when the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger were on TV. My
interest grew through comics, books, music and movies until I discerned
– and developed a yearning for – those open spaces and empty roads
which speak to a form of freedom not found in England.
David Reynolds, Spring 2020
The US Highways, also known as US Routes, were planned and built in
the 1920s and early 1930s because cars had become commonplace and
because, in the Great Depression, men needed work. They formed a
grid of more than a hundred two-lane roads which crossed the country
from east to west and north to south. Beginning in the 1950s, they were
gradually superseded by multi-lane Interstate Highways, which, with
central reservations and slip roads for entering and leaving, encouraged
speed, filled up with trucks and bypassed towns. William Least Heat-
Moon, author of what is perhaps the best American road book, Blue
Highways, wrote sagely, ‘Life doesn’t happen along interstates. It’s against
the law.’
Many of the old US Highways, including Route 66, have been
decommissioned; parts of them lie buried under interstates or have been
allowed to grass over, and, even where a stretch of road survives, their
distinctive shield-shaped signs, with the highway’s number, have been
removed because short lengths of road are not US Highways. But US
Highway 50 is still a US Highway. It does what it was designed to do; it
crosses the country, is still pretty much intact and has shields beside it all
the way.
 The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad
I find the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center beside
a narrow road surrounded by green fields, woods, ponds and marshland –
just a few miles from Bucktown and Harriet’s birthplace. It is a handsome,
low, modern building, opened in 2017, funded and run jointly by the
National Park Service and the State of Maryland, and set within another
tribute to Tubman, the seventeen-acre Harriet Tubman Underground
Railroad State Park. On this sunny afternoon, the setting is idyllic, and
again hard to square with the evil of slavery. Inside the Center I learn
that, when Tubman lived nearby as a girl, as well as doing farm work
and standing for hours in freezing water trapping muskrats for their
thick winter fur, she worked with her father cutting down trees, turning
them into timber and hauling it to local wharves. That work gave her
the knowledge and contacts that later enabled her to set up escape routes
from here in eastern Maryland to, initially, the free state of Pennsylvania.
It is also hard to accept that this slave system held sway so recently.
Slavery was abolished in 1865. Tubman herself escaped to freedom in
Philadelphia in Pennsylvania in 1849. Between then and the beginning
of the Civil War in 1861, she made thirteen trips during which she led
seventy slaves from her old homeland to freedom, many of them to
Canada, where they were safer than in the free states of the United States,
from which they could be returned to slavery. She also helped another
fifty slaves to escape by advising them where to go, how to hide and so
on. She became known as ‘Moses’ and said many years later, ‘I never ran
my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.’
I gaze at a cradle made from a hollowed-out tree and imagine it lying
on an earth floor in a flimsy shack, a baby asleep, a young mother nearby
and a tired father rocking the cradle with his foot. The Center is designed
with reverence – is almost a shrine, dimly lit in places, with modern brass
sculptures, some of Tubman herself, and a movie that shows a succession
of eminent people paying tribute to her character and achievements.
Another movie re-enacts some of her great escapes, including cliff-
hanging moments when she and those she is leading came close to being
discovered. Old photographs, documents and objects are mixed in with
huge modern colour illustrations, some of which have a three-dimensional
element – a wooden gate or the prow of ship jutting from them.
The civil war between the northern and southern states, the Union
and the Confederacy, was fought on the issue of slavery. Harriet Tubman
moved south with the Union troops, working first as a nurse and a cook
and then as an armed scout and spy. A sculpture here shows her leading the
famous Raid on Combahee Ferry, an action that defeated a detachment
of the Confederate Army and freed 750 slaves, many of whom joined the
Union Army.
I spend an hour wandering around and visiting the shop, which has a
wall filled with serious books about slavery and the Civil War, alongside
Harriet Tubman finger puppets, key rings and rulers. Then I walk across
lush grass to a picnic building with tables and a sink with running water. I
look out towards a still lake in which clouds and sky are reflected; beyond
is a field bordered by trees: ‘Countryside preserved,’ as the woman who
ran the shop put it, ‘as it would have been back in the slave days.’
 A Quiet Sundae in Hillsboro
The heat continues into the evening as I drive west towards Hillsboro.
The sky is light blue. Wispy clouds lie against the sun in the south. The
road is two-lane, traffic-free, a smooth ride across the flood plain of Paint
Creek, a tributary of the Scioto, which itself flows south to the Ohio
River. To my left, wooded hills rise above fields, and up there, among
trees, I glimpse a road, perhaps a lane, winding upwards, like a thread
dropped on a carpet. Half a mile on, I turn onto that lane, and find a field
of deep green maize as far as the treeline, a white-painted farmhouse and
a Dutch barn with a hipped, flyaway roof. I drive on up through woods,
bright greens and yellows where the sun falls to my right, bottle greens in
the murk to my left. The lane flattens and straightens, maize to both sides,
a grand house, smaller houses, all painted white. A stone needle, smaller
than trees nearby, points skywards behind a stone wall: a grave or perhaps
a war memorial. I turn the car and return to 50.
Now the road is a series of switchbacks and curves. In a hollow beneath
trees, black cattle stand sleek and still, waiting perhaps for the cool of
night-time. At the crest of a hill sits a low building with a giant ice-
cream cone jutting from its gable end. I stop and find an old man behind
a sliding window serving an eclectic range of ice creams, sandwiches,
burgers and hot dogs. I order a cherry sundae and, after a few grunts
and some whistling from inside the window, receive a bowl containing
a helter-skelter of soft vanilla ice cream, soused and swimming in cherry
sauce. I sit in an outdoor shelter eating this delight with a plastic spoon.
Across from me, a man with three children, two boys and a girl, allows
them to punch one another for a couple of minutes before shouting,
‘That’s enough!’ The children go quiet and scrape up the remains of their
ice creams. All four climb into a beaten up, low-slung, matt-black car,
which chugs for a minute like a fleet of Harleys before hurtling out of
the car park.
As the noise subsides, the only other occupant of the shelter, an elderly
woman with cheeks like small apples, says, ‘You enjoyin’ that?’
‘Yes. Delicious,’ I say. ‘Creamy... and plenty of it.’
She licks her lips – she is eating an ice cream from a cone – and smiles.
‘I live down the road. Most days, I can’t resist an ice cream.’
Soon she stands up and says goodbye. And, being English, I expect her
to walk to her home down the road. But, instead, she gets into a maroon
Datsun and drives east on Route 50.
It turns out that the Buckeye Dairy Bar, where I ate the cherry sundae, is
on the eastern edge of Hillsboro, where I hope to spend the night. I follow
50 through the town, up and down several hills – which, surely, give the
place its name. There are two motels. I choose one on the side of a hill,
where the cheerful Asian proprietor tells me that, because it is Sunday,
Hillsboro’s bars and restaurants are closed.
I eat almonds and Walmart rosemary crackers in my room. Later I
drive around in the dark. A gas station advertises liquor. Inside, the liquor
department is closed, locked. A sympathetic cashier shrugs: she can’t sell
it on Sundays; the owner forbids it. Downtown, street lights reflect from
shop windows – and there is a sprinkling of rain. On a straggling cross
street, I come to Burger King where a woman sits at a window, ready to
bring me a whopper and fries; I wouldn’t even have to get out of the car. I
am tempted and may return. I keep on to the edge of town and find a gas
station whose owner – bless him or her – treats Sunday like every other
day. I come away with a large can of IPA and a pastrami sandwich.
I wake next morning, and soon remember that Cincinnati, the first big city
since Washington DC, is just sixty miles away. Before leaving Hillsboro, I
drive back to the town centre, the two or three blocks around the junction
of Main Street (which is also US 50) and High Street that are Hillsboro’s
downtown. Last night this area was dead. Now, on Monday morning, it’s
all heat, noise, movement, people and cars, even at ten o’clock. Policemen
are loitering outside Momma’s West Main Street Café, and their car is
parked in front. I go into the café anyway, because it looks good and it’s
clearly popular. It’s a big space, about half full, plenty of tables; a waitress
shows me to one – and I ask about the police, half-hoping a juicy crime
has been committed.
 ‘Oh, they come here most days. Have a coffee, maybe a Danish.’
She brings coffee straight away – and I order my favourite American
breakfast: eggs, bacon and hash browns.
‘How do you like your eggs?’ she asks.
‘Over easy... or is it easy over? I can never remember.’
‘Over easy.’ She smiles and writes on her pad. ‘Are you from Australia?’
I smile. I have to. ‘No. England.’
‘Really! Cool! How do you want the bacon cooked?’
‘Oh-oo. Crispy, please.’
‘Would you like mushrooms with that?’
‘Sure.’
‘Tomato?’
‘Er... yeah.’
‘And do you want toast with that, and jelly?’
‘Er... yes. That’d be nice.’
She walks off. I take a leaflet about Mound City from my bag and
spread it on the table in front of me.
And a voice says, ‘Waiters, waitresses always ask how you want it
cooked.’ A man sitting at a table against the wall, diagonally across the
aisle from mine, is looking at me. ‘Grilled, I always say.’ He laughs.
I laugh.
‘I heard you’re from England. You just travelling through?’
I explain that I’m driving slowly along Route 50 – I point towards the
street – to California.
He nods and asks questions. ‘Good road,’ he says. ‘Beautiful, some of
that scenery. I ain’t been all the way, but when you get to the Rockies,
that’ll be somethin’.’
The waitress brings my eggs and bacon. I munch a forkful and glance
at the friendly man. He’s not young – early seventies perhaps – neat and
fit, close-cropped hair, a sharp jawline, and dapper in a black T-shirt and
black jeans, all clean and ironed. He looks a bit like President Eisenhower.
He’s buttering some toast. Will we talk again? I prepare another forkful.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘the only reason Route 66 is popular is because of
the song.’
I nod. My mouth is full.
‘It isn’t that great a road – and a lot of it is gone. Not there.’
I swallow quickly. ‘You’re right. I’ve read about that – and I saw it on
a TV series.’
’50 is a better road. I like 50.’
He asks about my rental car. I tell him – and he approves of Chevrolet.
He himself has an old black Hyundai – he turns and points towards the
street – which is very reliable, and a 1992 four-door pick-up with which
he’s also very happy.
‘That’s old,’ I say.
‘Yes, but the new ones aren’t so good. Fancy, but not reliable.’ He
shakes his head almost imperceptibly. ‘I’ve got a forty-two-inch mower
attachment, which I can’t use because my wife grows flowers and things
everywhere.’ He says this in a matter-of-fact way, without resentment.
Over an hour or so, I find out a lot about this man. He is eighty-two
years old. He comes from Hillsboro, but spent much of his life working as
an engineer in Tennessee. ‘No degree,’ he says with a grin, ‘but if you do
engineering, you’re an engineer.’ He has two sons, a granddaughter and
a four-year-old grandson. Both sons are mechanics, one of them a genius
who works for Texaco on new projects and collects vintage small tractors
called Cub Cadets, of which he has fourteen.
When I finish eating, I move to another table – against the wall, facing
his – so I can hear him better. Then I learn that Lloyd – I asked his name,
Lloyd Satterfield – had poor hearing as a child; he sat next to the teacher
in school so as to hear her. ‘When I was six, a doctor put stuff over both
my ears and told me to swallow. Was like an explosion in my head. It
blew my Eustachian tubes open.’
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘That must have been quite a moment.’
He nods, ‘Yep.’ Then sips some coffee and says, ‘I like classical music,
orchestral, some country – and big bands: Tommy Dorsey. I don’t like
Elvis. I went to his house. That man had no taste. Red shag carpet. Yellow
walls.’
While we both have our coffee mugs refilled, he tells me about a local
sheriff who, a few years ago, was thrilled to be asked to appear as an extra
 in a movie that was being filmed around Hillsboro. Lloyd smiles just a
little as he goes on. ‘The man had always wanted to be in a movie. To
celebrate, he got very drunk, crashed his car and died.’
‘Oh, no!’ I say.
‘Yep!’ He raises his hands. ‘So he didn’t achieve his lifetime’s dream.’
We both swallow some coffee. Then Lloyd goes on, ‘Another sheriff
went out to a call about a shooting in a remote wood. And he took his
wife with him, which he never did usually.’ He pauses. ‘Well, when they
got there, she was shot dead and he was wounded.’
‘No! Oh my God!’
‘Yep. And local people think that sheriff set it up with hired killers
to get rid of his wife – and that his wounding was a mistake, or maybe
deliberate to avoid suspicion.’ He shakes his head. ‘It was strange. He never
took his wife with him on police work.’
‘You think he set it up?’
He shrugs and pulls a face – and says nothing.
‘Did he get away with it?’
‘Yeah! He moved away someplace.’ He shakes his head again.
And soon he leaves with a firm handshake. ‘You have a great trip. I’m
sure you will.’
On the edge of Hillsboro a sign points to Hillsboro Ind. Park. I follow it,
thinking it will lead to somewhere associated with Indians, only to find
Hillsboro Industrial Park.
At the Polo Sports Lounge
Inside Motel 6, the receptionist seems gloomy. And when she sees my
driving licence, showing the Union Jack and my address in London, she
becomes grumpy as well, shrugging her shoulders and declaring, ‘An
Englishman ripped me off six hundred dollars.’ She stares at me as if I
might be him.
‘That’s terrible,’ I say. ‘But I would never do that. Not all Englishmen
would do that. That’s really bad.’ She is still staring at me – and holding
my driving licence in the air as if it were damning evidence. ‘I’m really
sorry that an Englishman did that.’ Still she’s staring. ‘If I knew who it
was, I’d try to get your money back.’
‘Well,’ she lowers her hand and shakes her head. ‘It was very upsetting.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
I think she has accepted that it wasn’t me. Perhaps she has asked herself
why, if it were me, I have turned up looking for a room. She is looking
down at the motel’s register.
‘What happened?’ I say.
She writes in the register and deals with my credit card. ‘Room 251,
upstairs.’ She hands me a key, scratches her neck and looks me in the
eye. ‘Well... I got to know him online. We became very friendly and,
after two years, he said he wanted to send me some gifts: some items of
jewellery, a purse, other things.’ She glances out of the window towards
the remains of the sunset. Remembering is clearly painful. ‘Nothing came.
Then I was contacted by US mail and asked to pay a hundred dollars
to get the gifts; I thought it was a revenue charge – customs duty, you
know? This happened again, and then again, until I had paid six hundred
dollars, but I never received the gifts.’ She looks back at me, shakes her
head and looks down. ‘So I gave up. I’d been fooled.’
‘Well, the worst thing is that you were misled... deceived, I mean.’
She must have become fond of this English blackguard.
‘Yep,’ she says. She looks up at me for a second, and then down again.
For her it was a romance; maybe she had hopes of a new life away from
Motel 6. ‘There’s no elevator. The stairs are over there.’
 ‘I’m sorry you went through that.’ I turn away and wheel my suitcase
towards the stairs.
Later, when I ask if she can recommend a restaurant or bar where I might
get something to eat, she is still a little edgy. But she fills me in on the
Hutchinsons: we are in South Hutchinson, which, her expression betrays,
isn’t as classy as plain Hutchinson, which is up the road and across the
river.
‘Which river is that?’
‘Arkansas.’
‘Oh, right. That’s a big river.’
‘Yep. Goes to Wichita that way’ – she points behind to her right – ‘and
Dodge that way’ – she points towards the car park. And she mentions two
or three restaurants in Hutchinson.
I like the sound of the Polo Sports Lounge – partly because it stays
open late; it’s already half-past eight.
She tells me how to get there. ‘Once you’re across the river, Hutchinson
is on a grid. You need Thirtieth Avenue and Main.’
There’s a space at the small, square bar. I ask the man sitting next to it if
it’s taken.
‘It is – by you,’ he says loudly. I thank him and sit down. His name
is John, and on my other side, my right, is a man called Dave, who
introduces himself.
They are both middle-aged and white. John has short-cropped hair.
Dave has well-cut grey hair and a strong, handsome face.
They ask what an Englishman is doing in Hutchinson and I give the
usual answer: driving across the country, Route 50 to San Francisco.
I look at the menu and ask about the fish: ‘Mahi mahi. What is that?’
‘It’s good,’ says Dave. ‘It was probably caught in the ocean around
Hawaii. But what’s really good tonight is the pasta special with seafood.
I’ve got that on order.’
A dark-haired man, who has evidently been standing behind us, leans
in and says to me, ‘Tonight my pasta special is especially special.’ He
smiles – and I assume he is the chef.
I order a small IPA and the pasta special. The dark-haired man
introduces himself as Jason, and then speaks to Dave. From this I learn
that Dave’s brother has died, just this week, and that he is the second of his
brothers to have died. ‘Just me and my sister left,’ he tells Jason.
When Jason leaves, I tell Dave that I’m sorry about his brother. ‘It must
be hard,’ I say.
‘It’s hard.’ He raises his hands and shrugs. ‘He was sick. We knew that.
The funeral wasn’t good. And I didn’t much like the obit. I didn’t get
a chance to give my opinion. My brother’s children organised it. Here
people are buried three days after they die, almost as a rule. So there isn’t
much time to get things right.’
Dave was in the military for twenty-four years, and is now fifty-four.
‘I specialised in dealing with prisoners of war pretty much my whole
career.’ He worked in France, Germany and Italy, but not the UK, and
for much of his career he trained military prison warders.
I ask if he was in Iraq.
‘Yep. I arrived soon after Abu Ghraib. Was horrible.’ He isn’t looking
at me, but I can see his eyes have narrowed into a squint, and his left fist
– the one I can see – is almost imperceptibly clenching and unclenching.
‘Should never have happened.’ He sips from a glass of red wine. ‘There
were a lot of things we learned from that. One was’ – he jabs his finger
down towards the bar – ‘realise how easily what you do can turn up on
the internet.’ He turns towards me. ‘Of course, people should never treat
prisoners like that. But if they’re tempted to do something...’ – he pauses
– ‘inappropriate, they should remember it’ll show up sometime.’
Somehow we get to talking about politics. ‘I voted for Obama, against
McCain, because I didn’t like Sarah Palin. I liked McCain, but he made a
mistake in choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate.’
‘So are you a progressive Republican? Is that right?’
‘Yes.’ He smiles. ‘Now. Whaddya think of this? I came up with
this pun about McCain versus Trump: “The lion of the Senate will be
remembered long after the lyin’ of the White House is long gone.”’ He
laughs. ‘Whaddya think?’
 I smile. ‘It’s good. Yeah.’
‘It’s not good. You’re too polite.’ He laughs again. ‘It’s just funny, if it’s
anything. Things like that come into my head. I don’t know why.’
‘So you’re not keen on Trump?’
‘No. I’m not.’ He speaks quietly and moves his eyes from side to side
– which seems to mean you have to be careful what you say. ‘It’s the first
time in history we’ve had a president like this, who isn’t a politician, who
makes so many crazy decisions.’
‘Do you think Trump will be impeached?’
‘Quite possibly, if the Democrats get enough seats in Congress.’
‘So then you would have Pence. How would that be?’
A plate of pasta, thick with squid, shrimp and clams, is put down in
front of Dave, along with cutlery wrapped in a napkin. He pulls out a
fork and prongs a pair of shrimps. ‘Pence is an ass-licker; he’s right there
behind Trump. He would be more conventional as a president, but he has
very right-wing religious views. It’d be different – perhaps better.’
My food arrives. Dave says, ‘Isn’t there a guy called Johnson who’s
causing trouble in your country?’
‘You mean a fattish guy with ridiculous blond hair?’
‘Yeah! That’s him.’
We order more drinks and keep talking. Dave recommends that I
go to Greensburg, a town further west and about twenty miles south
of 50. ‘It was flattened by a Tornado F5 in 2007. It’s now been rebuilt
on ecological lines. It’s incredible what they’ve done there – well worth
going to see.’
‘OK. Sounds interesting. What does F5 mean?’
‘It’s the highest rating – the most destructive tornadoes. With winds
over 200 miles an hour. Almost every building in Greensburg was blown
down, or away. People were killed – ten or eleven, I think.’ He sips his
wine. ‘Go have a look. That town is now something new, something
hopeful – if you know what I mean.’
The John who was there when I arrived has gone. Another John, a
skinny, bearded man, has turned up and is talking to Dave from across
the bar about a local matter, of which I know nothing. I stop listening
and stare blankly at a screen showing American football – until I hear
bearded John’s voice raised and a little angry. He is saying that statues of
Confederate heroes, like General Robert E. Lee, should be left where they
are because they are part of history; moves to have them taken down are
liberal, PC nonsense.
Dave points out that most of these monuments were put up in the
1920s – decades after the Civil War whose military heroes they are
supposed to celebrate; Dave says that they were put there to reinforce
white supremacy and the laws that enforced segregation.
I can see that John isn’t really listening. However, he calms down and
they talk about segregation here, in Hutchinson, and whether there were
Ku Klux Klan marches in the city in the 1950s and early 1960s – when
segregation was being threatened by the civil rights movement.
I’m startled at this mention of the Ku Klux Klan, and then amazed
to hear them speculate about whether the KKK were in full costume, if
they marched here. ‘I thought that KKK stuff only happened in the Deep
South,’ I say, ‘in places like Alabama and Mississippi.’
‘The KKK were in lots of places, usually in secret,’ says John. Both of
them say there was a lot of racism in Kansas in those years – and likely
a chapter of the KKK, but they don’t know for sure. ‘The Stars and Bars
might have been waved around a bit,’ Dave says, and explains that the
Stars and Bars is the Confederate flag.
Bearded John leaves. Dave and I have another drink, and somehow
begin to talk about writers and books. Dave likes Steinbeck, especially
The Grapes of Wrath. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘that book was disapproved of
when it first came out because it was so raw, and the language was raw
too. At school – would you believe? – we read Dickens, Chaucer and
Shakespeare.’
‘Chaucer! Wasn’t that a bit heavy – all that Old English?’
‘Yes. It was.’ He grins. ‘But we had to do it.’ He swallows some wine.
‘I like Tom Clancy. He wrote great Cold War stuff. And’ – now he looks
a little sheepish – ‘I’m a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson, especially his
book about the Nixon campaign – you know? Fear and Loathing on the
Campaign Trail ’72.’
 ‘I’ve not read that one. But I like his writing. He was a great original.’
Dave is nodding. ‘He invented a new way of writing.’ I swallow some
beer. ‘I always felt sympathy for him as a man, a human; I think he was
tortured, disappointed, by the world – and he got it all out in the writing.’
Dave is still nodding, and then says I should see Where the Buffalo
Roam, the movie that stars Bill Murray as Hunter S. Thompson.
It’s past midnight, but there are still plenty of people here. Someone
– Jason perhaps – produces a bottle of red wine called 19 Crimes. Amid
much hilarity, it’s explained to me that this is an Australian Cabernet
Sauvignon and is named after the number of crimes for which convicts
were transported down under. A little is poured into a glass for me to
taste – and it tastes good.
I say that it is time for me to leave, but I’m presented with another
glass of IPA by dark-haired Jason, who I now realise is the proprietor of
this excellent bar. He has been smiling at me in an approving way from
his seat on the opposite side of the bar for some time now.
When I finally manage to leave, Dave says goodbye several times and
repeats, once again, that I must visit Greensburg. Jason shakes my hand,
pulls a glass from a shelf and hands it to me. ‘For you. A souvenir.’
I thank him and look at it and turn it round. ‘Oh!’ I say. ‘This glass has
the name of the bar on it!’
‘Well, I wasn’t gonna give you just a glass!’
Jason comes out into the car park and points in the direction I should
go. ‘Stay on Main. Across the bridge. And straight on. You’ll be fine.’

Table of Contents

1 On the Beach 1

2 Slavery and Bravery 7

3 Muskrats and Linguine 12

4 The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad 17

5 Tailgating on the Delmarva 21

6 Trump, Putin and Bote 25

7 Hugging George Washington 30

8 Martin Luther King and the Founding Fathers 35

9 Pointless in Annapolis 40

10 Where's Melania? 46

11 Ice-Cream Music 52

12 In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia 58

13 On the Trail of the Patsy Kline 63

14 Lugubrious in Keyser 70

15 Fear and Tranquillity in the Alleghenies 74

16 Women Swimming in the Rust Belt 78

17 Stonewall Jackson's Arm 84

18 Baseball Futures 91

19 Lost Among Lawnmowers 96

20 Sacagawea and York 101

21 Aaron Burr and the Hendersons 106

22 Saloon Cars in Shade 113

23 Aaron's Conjecture 120

24 Mound City 124

25 A Quiet Sundae in Hillsboro 128

26 Rock Bottom in Cincinnati 134

27 Saved by V. I. Warshawski 143

28 Sadness, Anger and Guilt 148

29 Hoity-Toity in Burger King 152

30 Back to Begin 158

31 French Lick 163

32 Four Boys and a War Hero 168

33 Tecumseh and Other Indians 175

34 Love Stories 181

35 Dr Jazz in Lebanon 189

36 Contentment in St Louis 193

37 Gateway to the West 200

38 Poet with the Kirbys 206

39 Another Gift 212

40 Small Matters 216

41 Chief High Bow Thunderburk 221

42 Among Mennonites 229

43 Wagon Train 234

44 Kansas City Jazz 240

45 Tittering Rednecks 245

46 At the Polo Sports Lounge 251

47 Back to the Santa Fe Trail 258

48 Greensburg 1: The Tornado 262

49 Greensburg 2: The Mayor and the Judge 267

50 Greensburg 3: The Democrat 272

51 An Old Acquaintance 278

52 McCain, Bascue and Ferlinghetti 283

53 The Clutter Murders and Truman Capote 289

54 Bent's Old Fort 293

55 Bikers 298

56 Close to the Edge 303

57 Cannabis in Colorado 308

58 A Fish in the Arkansas 312

59 Golden Eagles 317

60 Call a Marine 321

61 Global Warming at the Strayhorn 326

62 Grey-Green River 333

63 Mormons in Walmart 337

64 Love and Indecorum 341

65 More Giggling in Utah 346

66 'The Loneliest Road in America' 351

67 Two Bikers, A Veteran and His Wife 355

68 Trump After Breakfast 361

69 Soft Shoulder 365

70 Self-Harm and the Lizard 370

71 The Misfits 374

72 Banjo at the Bucket of Blood 378

73 Gondolas on Lake Tahoe 382

74 Luponic Distortion in Sacramento 388

75 'You Think Too Much' 394

76 On the Beach 2 400

77 Another Day 406

Discography 413

Acknowledgements 415

Editorial Reviews

‘What a book! What a joy of a book, plunging you straight away into the very body, bosom and blood of America.. it makes me cry with pleasure, enfolding me, as it does, with the sheer magic of being able to be back on the road in America'. The Oldie Magazine

'More than just a road-trip, this is a beautifully observed portrait of the most powerful nation on earth ... David Reynolds is an astute observer and a careful listener, who writes like a dream’ Mick Brown

'Seldom have I read a travel book that so perfectly captures the essence of somewhere I have never been-a 46 day jaunt passing through 13 States and covering some 3000 miles. Never a dull moment with lots of gentle humour. David Allan, Country Music People

‘Reynolds is the perfect man for the route’ Observer ‘A writer of calm, quiet brilliance’ Daily Express

‘What a book! What a joy of a book, plunging you straight away into the very body, bosom and blood of America' The Oldie

"Seldom have I read a travel book that so perfectly captures the essence of somewhere I have never been-a 46 day jaunt passing through 13 States and covering some 3000 miles. Never a dull moment with lots of gentle humour." Country Music People

More than just a road-trip, this is a beautifully observed portrait of the most powerful nation on earth ... David Reynolds is an astute observer and a careful listener, who writes like a dream’ Mick Brown

From the Publisher