The National Road

 

Travelling Tom

      The title of this post may look familiar to MM readers because in an earlier one I mentioned The National Road, by Philip D. Jordan (see American Trails Book Series.) That one was about the actual 'National Road' that headed west out of Cumberland, Md. This new book by Tom Zoellner is about more than that. 

   I picked it up probably because of my interest in roads and trails and also because, right now, we can't easily strike out on them. At least we can read about travelling, however, and if you are interested in doing so, I encourage you to have a look at Mr. Zoellner's book.

   This will be a quick review since my copy from the London Public Library has been recalled and I have to return it this morning. You can recall it from the person who recalled it from me, buy a hard copy, or wait for the paperback which is already available in the United States. Here is the author's website and Penguin's.  I will go quickly through the fourteen essays which can be read independently of one another. You will enjoy them all if you appreciate good prose and a bit of pondering.

  The first dispatch is "Your Land", across which Americans often wander, and the tone of the whole tome is set in these two short sentences. "Resentment builds." "National cohesiveness frays."

   If you recognize the first part of the first sentence of the next essay - "And it came to pass...," you will know that it is about Mormons, which it is: "Morman Historical Sites At Night." The author doesn't know why he visits such places and often does so on impulse, but that doesn't really matter because Mormon sites would be interesting even during the day. The first one he visits is near where the golden book was buried and another is where Joseph Smith was killed by a mob.

   "Drive" reveals a lot about Mr. Zoellner's driving and why he motors about: "There is little I love more than the spell of a motorized land journey, a languorous day, a vague forward-looking destination in mind and a full tank of gas." His first drive happened when he was a freshman and his longest one "went through twenty-nine major cities, totaling eleven thousand miles in a conversion van, tracing a grand arc around the country: starting in Tucson, through the Mojave to Las Vegas, then to L.A. and up the West Coast to Seattle, across to Montana and down to Salt Lake City, over the Rockies and through the Midwest... to Chicago, New York, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, then back to Tucson again." He has taken other such trips, often sleeps outside and doesn't particularly care what kind of vehicle he is driving.

   "Spillville is the next destination and the opening sentence may be enough to get you to buy the hardback: "In the summer of 1893, the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak took his wife and six children to the frontier town of Spillville, Iowa, for a three month stay. This was not a random choice." I will just say that things were better then in Spillville.

   The next essay is the titular one, but it is more about the "little-box" chain, Dollar General, than it is about the 'National Road'.  There are now more of them than there are McDonalds and that is not a good thing. For the reasons why, read this essay and these more recent ones: "The True Cost of Dollar Stores: Discount Chains Are Thriving. But, What Do They Do To Poor Communities," by Alec MacGillis, The New Yorker, June 29, 2020, or "How Dollar Stores Became Magnets for Crime and Killing," Alec MacGillis, ProPublica, June 29, 2020. 

   "The Whole Hoop of the World" is about the Highpointer Club which consists of those who want to climb the highest peak in all of the states. It's not as hard as it sounds. The Ebright Azimuth in Delaware is only 448 feet and one can almost drive to the top of some higher ones. The value of such an exercise for Mr. Zoellner, is explained here: To engage in this odd pursuit is to drive obscure rural roads far away from interstates, eat in small town diners, sleep in rarely visited forests and motels, and see quotidian parts of the nation where only locals and a flock of eccentric alpinists regularly venture." 

   I just did a post about "News Deserts" and the loss of local newspapers and to it, "Late City Final" should be added. The author was a local reporter for many different newspapers and he notes with irony: "For a trade dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the discovery of uncomfortable facts, the newspaper business missed one hell of a story flying right in its face."

   "The Villages" is about the author's time in New York City and "The Valley" is about "the other Hollywood", which consists of mansions where porn films are shot. "Welcome to Dirtytown" is about "venomous little towns" and corrupt municipalities, where the public purses are filled by fines collected from the motorists passing through. Within the space of a few blocks or miles one can move from one principality to another and be stopped repeatedly by the members of a completely different constabulary.

   "Searchlight" is a town in Nevada and you will enjoy this essay immensely unless you are a member of the Nevada Chamber of Commerce. Zoellner knows the state well and takes you through mining towns, as well as cat houses and casinos. As well, he provides us with this very useful strategy if you are going to play blackjack: stand even on garbage when the dealer shows a two through a six; don't split anything but aces and eights; hit on anything lower than a seven if the dealer has paint; double down on an ace even if it involves reaching into reserves; walk away after doubling or losing a previously determined kitty."

  "King Philip's Shadow" is about King Philip's War and the consequences. "Home Ground" is about Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles and in it you will find buried, this sentence: "The pandemic only exacerbated an American solitude that was already there, already growing stronger, not just in an era when social media and computerized entertainment were pulling the national garment thinner but as trust in old principles and institutions was faltering under fevered hallucinations creeping even deeper into the country's amygdala. Civil servants had become the deep state, once valued immigrants had been cast as an invasion, straight-laced information sources were fake news, experts were frauds, doctors were greedy liars, the killing of the virus itself was some kind of hoax." 

    Perhaps as sad as those sentences is the title of the last essay, "At The End There Will Be Strangers," which is about the purchase and destruction of his grandmother's house in Paradise Valley, Arizona. And, to end with some Canadian content, I will note that the strangers who bought the house are wealthy Canadians.  I have to get to the library and return this book, which I really enjoyed.