About the Book
-
Author:
- William Least Heat-Moon
- Genre:
- Memoir / Biography
- Voices:
- Cis Boy
- Native / Indigenous
- Straight
Cover Story: The Road Goes Ever Onward
Drinking Buddy: Four Calendar Cafe
MPAA Rating: PG (language, alcohol, crude humor)
Talky Talk: Highway Hypnosis
Bonus Factor: Road Trip
Bromance Status: We’ll Always Have Paris…Mississippi
Cover Story: The Road Goes Ever Onward
Like a lot of popular books, this one has had various covers, but they all go for the same lonely road motif, with adventure waiting just around the bend.
The Deal:
In 1978, after losing his teaching job and separating from his wife, William Least Heat-Moon decided to go on a trip around the United States. He bought a van which he named ‘Ghost Dancing,’ and set off to explore America. His one rule: avoid the interstate. He would only take the old two-lane highways (shown in blue in the old road maps) and explore the vanishing towns off the beaten path. Visiting such places as Nameless, Dime Box, Frenchman, and Cape Porpoise, the author interviews small (and large) town Americans and records their stories. Spanning 38 states (and a bit of Ontario), we’re treated to a slice of America that was already vanishing forty years ago.
Drinking Buddy: Four Calendar Cafe
On the trip, Least Heat-Moon frequented taverns, saloons, cafes, and diners, knowing these are the places where one can best absorb local color. He states that the more calendars one can find on the wall of a local eatery, the better the food. He’s one of those guys that could talk to a wall and get it to talk back. This book would not have been possible if it had been written by someone shy, overly polite, or aware that someone would rather be left alone. As a Native American, he was almost always a racial outsider, even when visiting the Hopi reservations of Arizona. And yet he fills over 400 pages with stories of strangers he convinced to share their life stories.
MPAA Rating: PG (language, alcohol, crude humor)
If the author had any road trip hook ups, he didn’t mention it. There was an amusing scene when he realized that the bar he was visiting was actually a legal-in-Nevada brothel, and the ladies began accusing him of being impotent when he tried to leave without a date. Least Heat-Moon was traveling to tell the stories of other Americans. At the same time, he didn’t turn himself into a faceless narrator; we learn his history, his fears, and his failings. Which of us haven’t overestimated our hazardous driving skills, smarted off once too often in a bar, or came off as a pompous, intellectual wanna be? He’s just a guy from Missouri, exploring the parts of America you don’t always see on the map. This is a guy who’d literally travel across a state to visit a town with an interesting name, but die sooner than eat at a McDonald’s. I can dig it.
Talky Talk: Highway Hypnosis
The book truly shines when he gets an interesting local character talking about their life (the book includes photos of the most fascinating people he encounters). Everyone has a story to tell, and Least Heat-Moon is there to take it all down. Sometimes, however, there’s nothing on that long stretch of Montana or Utah highway, and the author has to fill in the miles with history and language lessons, which got slightly tedious at points (not another lesson in Latin etymology). Still, we learn a lot about his Native background and tidbits of US history you might not have known (did you know a Japanese submarine bombarded Oregon during World War II?). The author is one of the few guys I’d take a road trip with, though even I might balk at ‘Buzzbuttom, North Dakota, is only 400 miles out of the way! C’mon.’
Bonus Factor: Road Trip
So the author avoided anything that smacked of a tourist trap. Aside from Selma, Alabama, and Greenwich, New Jersey, he didn’t spend time in any large city. Instead, he visited a monastery in Georgia, went out on a fishing trawler in Maine, discussed the racial problems in Alabama, talked to a medical student on an Indian reservation in Arizona, got stuck in a snowstorm in the Utah mountains, visited the untouched wilderness of New Jersey (!), and took a small plane trip in Idaho. He talked to hitchhikers, mad prophets, monks, the homeless, the wealthy, men, women, Black, white, Asian, Native, etc.
I have to warn you, this book can really ramp up your wanderlust. Like Travels with Charley or On the Road, you might start to get a dangerous taste for the road. This author’s journey began in Columbia, Missouri, where I was living at the time, and a few years later I was shooting pool in Havana, working on a military base in Tel Aviv, and drinking in the Hamburg red light district. Be warned.
Bromance Status: We’ll Always Have Paris…Mississippi
I once met the author, who informed me that Nameless, Tennessee, is now a ghost town, and that calendars are no longer a good barometer of diner food. The GPS has mapped the entire country and the internet has replaced local characters as a source for historical information. Still, the towns are out there, as are the lonely roads, if you take the time to find them.
FTC Full Disclosure: I bought this at a flea market. Got no money or cans of chopped liver for writing this.
I was looking for the name of the monstrous roadside figure found in the south where William Least Heat Moon parked to sleep.
I fished out my book, but I couldn’t immediately find what you’re asking. Do you remember the state or the region (Southwest or Southeast) where this happened or any other circumstances? Thanks.