The tempo of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and I are in perfect understanding. To me, its rhythm is a romantic waltz.
— Seymour Glass in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.
On journeys through the States we start,
(Ay through the world, urged by these songs,
Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)
We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.
…
We dwell a while in every city and town,
We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the
Mississippi, and the Southern States,
We confer on equal terms with each of the States,
We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,
We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulgate the
Body and soul. Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,
And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,
And may be just as much as the seasons.
— Walt Whitman, ‘On Journeys Through The States We Start.’
The American Guide Series is the closest thing we have to a non-fiction Leaves of Grass. It’s so close we ought to celebrate it as such, in fact. 87 books were published under its auspices (The Federal Writers Project and the WPA), and it gave a very good sense of the country in the late 30’s/early 40’s.
Like Whitman, the Guide chronicles with generosity the characters and content of each state —
The average Georgian votes the Democratic ticket, attends the Baptist or Methodist church, goes home to midday dinner, relies greatly on high cotton prices, and is so good a family man that he flings wide his doors to even the most distant of his wife’s cousins’ cousins.
…
The Morman habitat has always been a vortex of legend and lie. Even today, as the State settles down to gray hairs, there lingers something wonderful and outrageous about Utah, a flavor of the mysterious and strange. Many still journey to Utah to see a Mormon.
…
The [Minnesotan] farmer of thirty years ago who went to town perhaps once a month may now go several times a week, and his family often goes with him — to shop, to attend church, the movies, parents’ and teachers’ meetings, farm bureau lectures, or even garden clubs. When he can afford it, his children go to the city to the State university; at home they make their ‘dates’ for roadhouse and barn dances over the telephone, and, thanks to the radio, are fully as familiar with the latest swing music as their city contemporaries.
…
The rural Kentuckian, whether clad in faded overalls or imported woolens, is an individualist. The rustic lolling at the street corners of towns and villages may give every evidence of being lost or out of place; but try to get the better of him in a trade and often he will prove master of the situation. He may be ragged, dirty, and ignorant, but he is still endowed with something of the unawed self-reliance and resourceful wit of the pioneer.
…
What is the North Dakota they [its residents] know? A State of unbounded plains and hills and Badlands – elbowroom. Superb sunsets. High winds and tumbleweed. Farms and plows and sweeping fields. Gophers flashing across the road. Little towns crowded on Saturday night, and busy cities shipping out the products of North Dakota and supplying the needs of the producers. Sudden blinding, isolating blizzards, and soft, fragrant spring days with tiny sprouts of grain peering greenly through the topsoil. Pasque flowers and cactus, flame lily, and fields of yellow mustard. The sad, slow wail of a coyote on the still prairie. People – Norwegians, Germans, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Icelanders, but all Americans. Square dances in barn lofts, and college ‘proms’ with corsages and grand marches. Teachers building fires with numbed hands in stoves of icy one-room schools. Men in unaccustomed ‘best clothes’ sitting in majestic legislative halls of a skyscraper statehouse. Political fires, sometimes smoldering, sometimes flaring, always burning.
Whitman’s pleasure of naming is in these guides, too. In California, we rake in the names of Swordferns, woodwardia, fetid adders-tongue, Oregon grape, and others with wonder. In Minnesota, there are slippery elms, dutchmans-breeches, New Jersey tea, Kentucky coffee, pink-and-white ladyslippers, puccoons, birdsfoot violet, and Blazing-stars. In Nebraska, the Chinook blows across Fremont’s primrose, cleomes, larkspurs, “Rain Crows,” and Sand Cherries. These names aren’t just chosen for inclusion in the guide for practicality alone – these are roll-around-the-tongue names. In Georgia, there is symmetrical black gum, chinaberry, white spirea, and blue larkspur. In Washington, there is Flett’s violet, Piper blue-bell, Sitka spruce, western red, Port Orford, and Alaska cedars. Michigan is home to crane’s-bill, jack pine, and white birch. Rhode Island knows pin and post oaks, chickweed, the calopogon orchid, “nodding trillums,” “handsome columbine,” and the unchecked and untamed wild carrot.
So what has changed between then and now? What has stayed the same? What can these books produce if I treat them the way a jazz musician treats a header?
Instead of hanging the narrative hat upon the accumulating traveler (like De Tocqueville, Dickens, Twain, Alastair Cooke, Flaubert, or Stephen Fry), I could make this a hunt for a home — then I’m not flipping through oddities and curiosities, but seeking a possible inheritance. A place where I can read the paper every morning, put in an honest day’s work, and/or conduct an adventure worthy of the best.
Sometimes I find it hard to shake that sense of travelogue-as-privilege. I imagine a sense of sway or thickness in the country as a whole — like standing on a boat and putting down the weight on each of your feet.
