The Lost Continent

I needed some light reading to get me through a time stretch when I wouldn’t have much time to read.  Back in August when I was in Seattle with my family my brother mentioned he read some books by Bill Bryson when he couldn’t figure out anything else to read.  He said they were funny.  Bryson has written many books, some about travels, others about the English language, and at least one about science.  The book both my brother and my mom recommended by Bryson is about his hike up the Appalachian Trail entitled A Walk through the Woods or something like that.  That book is available at the Covina Library.  However, at the time I needed a longer borrowing period and the Cal State L.A. Library would allow me to borrow until the end of March with the option to renew it to mid-June assuming no one else put a hold on it.  The catch is that Cal State L.A. does not have as many popular books as Covina Library.  Most of their shelf space is used for academic books and journals.  They do not have A Walk through the Woods.  However, they do have The Lost Continent by Bryson about his driving trip around the contiguous U.S. (CONUS) in 1987.  The book had generally good reviews so I decided to check it out.

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America has on its cover a drawing of a road sign that’s in the shape of a cow that has the words “YOU ARE LEAVING IOWA. COME AGAIN!”  Bryson’s trip begins in Des Moines, Iowa where he’s originally from.  He begins the book with a brief and hilarious recount of his childhood with his late father driving only cruddy cars and his mother asking always asking if she can make someone a sandwich.  Bryson spent his childhood and youth in Des Moines but has lived most of his adult life in England.  He was around my current age when he made this trip in ’87 in his mother’s aging Chevrolet Chevette.  His plans for the trip seem to be to always take the route on his maps labeled as “the scenic route” and to find the perfect American small town.

Bryson’s journey takes him through many small towns along with some college towns, big cities, historical sites, and national parks.  He has a plan of where he wants to go but he usually hasn’t yet arranged where he’s going to stay or eat.  Sometimes his plans don’t work out due to weather or to him getting lost.  Occasionally he gives a bit of historical background of a place.  He always has amusing comments about places that are sometimes very funny and other times seem like a dis.  Not everything is all nice and rosy on a road trip through America.  He gets tired of some towns consisting of fast food restaurants and shopping malls.  Driving through Georgia, he laments at the depressing, big, concrete “f*** you school of architecture” of big American Hotel Chains.  He writes, “Every few blocks you come up against some discordant slab—the De Soto Hilton, the Ramada Inn, the Best Western Riverfront, all as appealing as spittle on a johnnycake.” (Bryson p. 81)  Other than Charleston, he doesn’t have much nice to say about South Carolina.  He writes, “At the North Carolina border, the dull landscape ended abruptly.” (P. 86)  He enjoys places such as Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis Presley; and the coast of Massachusetts near Fort Adams state park where, between 1890 and 1905, America’s richest families “tried to outdo each other building magnificent homes.” (Bryson p. 150)

Bryson visits some interesting places and many were new to me.  Though it has a steep admission price ($15 in 1987), the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI has a wide assortment of historic and vintage stuff including a village of homes of famous people such as Thomas Edison and Henry Firestone.  In rural Pennsylvania he goes to a barnlike family-style Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant.  He and his party have to take a number and wait in a large waiting area for a long time to be called.  After they are called they are seated at a big trestle table with nine strangers.  They are then served a barrage of food: “thick slabs of ham, mountains of fried chicken, buckets of mashed potatoes, . . .”  Sounds great.  I’ll have to remember these restaurants if I ever go to rural Pennsylvania.  It reminds me a little bit of Boccali’s, this Italian restaurant near Ojai.  In the spring and fall they have these parties for which we’ve purchased tickets.  We sat at long tables outdoors and they serve pizza, pasta, delicious smoked tri tip, and fresh vegetables buffet style.  They also had live entertainment from the owner himself or his daughter’s band.  The place is also a farm and they have their tomato harvest festival in the fall.

Another interesting thing Bryson finds is that they sell Cornish pasties (pronounced pass-tees) all over the upper northwest peninsula of Michigan.  They were brought by Cornishmen from England who worked in the mines there in the nineteenth century.  They’re basically pastries stuffed with meat.  Bryson pulls over and buys one but finds that they taste so bland compared to all the American junk food he’s been eating on the trip.  My wife had a pasty while she was in Newport, Isle of Wight, UK many years ago and she enjoyed it.  Speaking of food, Bryson later acknowledges that “everyone in America goes out for Sunday breakfast.” (p. 287)  My wife and I are usually an exception to that rule, but we do see many people waiting outside the Millie’s in Covina when we drive by there on Sunday mornings.  Bryson also travels to the geographic center of the United States just outside Lebanon, Kansas.  He writes, “If America were invaded, I would be the last person standing.  As I returned to my car I felt an uneasy sense of guilt for leaving the place undefended.” (p. 212)

The parts of the book I really enjoyed were Bryson’s reminisces about the road trips he took as a child with his family in his dad’s cruddy cars.  The billboards were cornier and more fun such as the ones for Burma Shave.  They would get lost because his dad didn’t like to ask for directions.  

Even though Bryson took the trip over 20 years ago, the book does not seem dated.  Most of the big chains he mentions such as Pizza Hut, Ramada Inns, and J.C. Penny are still big chains today.  Of course, he doesn’t have a cell phone or use the internet.  Perhaps he could have planned his trip better with the internet, or perhaps not.  The only part of the book that seems very dated is when he’s in Las Vegas.  He writes, “The names on the hotels and casinos were eerily familiar: Caesar’s Palace, the Dunes, the Sands, the Desert Inn.  What most surprised me—what surprises most people—is how many vacant lots there were.  Here are there were quarter-mile squares of silent desert, little pockets of dark calm just waiting to be developed.” (p. 245) Well, that was 1987 before the Mirage, Treasure Island, Excalibur, Luxor, and all the others to follow.  Apart from Caesar’s Palace the hotels he mentions have been either torn down, renamed, or greatly overshadowed.  I’m surprised he doesn’t mention others I thought were that old such as the Stratosphere, Circus Circus, Stardust, and Harrah’s.  Well, those vacant lots, at least the ones on Las Vegas Boulevard (A.K.A. the Strip) are not longer “waiting to be developed”.

In total, Bryson visits 38 states.   He doesn’t go to L.A. because he believes it’s too congested and polluted.  He drives West on I-15 but veers north to Sequoia National Park.  He also doesn’t visit the other two states of CONUS where I’ve lived: Washington and Oregon.  It seems like he devotes more pages to areas east of Des Moines: the Deep South, the East Coast, and parts of the Midwest.  That’s fine with me because I’m not as familiar with those parts of the country.  He never finds the perfect small town, though he comes close.  By the end I felt like I had made the journey with him and like I knew the country a bit better.