Buried
in
Books

My book-shelves are over-flowing and I've been skipping from title to title to magazine to newspaper. I put my son in my lap and read him "Hand Hand Fingers Thumb," "Dr. Seuss' ABC" and "Goodnight Gorilla" almost every day.

And what do I write about? Well, how about this: I will be playing guitar with the Palace Family Steak House Orchestra on Saturday, July 15 at Thee Parkside in San Francisco.

And this: A lot of books about cross-country trips have been popping up lately. Today, on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," there was an interview with a musician who hitch-hikes across country and wrote a book about it. When asked about the danger, he said he thinks it's actually safer now than it used to be. If any serial killer is looking to prey on young people, he would probably be on the Internet. There just aren't enough young people with their thumbs out on the interstates anymore to make the predator's trip worth it. Why not? Well, 'cuz everyone's scared of hitch-hiking. "The country is much more paranoid now," he said.

I also picked through "The Old Iron Road" by David Haward Bain. It seems pretty good, but I got kind of bogged down in a long segment of family history near the beginning of the book. Much more readable (at least, so far - I haven't read very much yet) is "Cross Country" by Robert Sullivan, the guy who brought us "Rats" and "A Whale Hunt." This new one has a very long subtitle. Just look it up.

Anyway, Sullivan is a heck of a writer, and he can take this potentially played-out subject (you know, Lewis & Clark, James Dean, Route 66, blah blah)and make it worth reading about again. Right there on Page 4 is proof:

"The Real America is also sometimes known as 'back-roads America' or 'the heart of America' or 'America's heartland,' or, in shorthand, 'America.' This is the America that is calculatedly heartwarming, represented by people who are purported to symbolize America -- people who are Platonic ideals of Americas: a lobsterman from Maine, a logger from Oregon, a rancher from Texas, the last small farmer living in Missouri.

"That America still exists, to some extent ... You can see that America without too much extra effort, but it is a kind of antique-shop America. It's an America that appears in magazines alongside recipes; it's the America where presidential candidates are televised.

"But the real America is also the America that Americans generally think they are not seeing on the roads they use to cross the country ...."

I love that. Doesn't that just get to the heart of the claptrap we tell ourselves about our country?