American Odyssey
J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey
DAY 9 – DODGE CITY, KANSAS: This morning, Alan cooked up a pot of steel-cut oats and Devon made peanut butter toast. Later, we drove — Karen and I in our Jimmy, Alan and the boys in his Chevrolet truck — onto the property of Diamond Springs Ranch to an isolated location where Alan unblinkered [...]
J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey
DAY 8 – COUNCIL GROVE, KANSAS: After watching the July 4 parade on sweltering Commercial Street in Emporia (fire trucks, women and girls on horseback, giant tow trucks, Ecuadoran dancers, a lawn tractor pulling children on wagons, perspiring weight-watchers carrying bottles of water, flag-waving families dressed thematically — NASCAR, for example — a group of [...]
J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey
DAY 7 – EMPORIA, KANSAS: Yesterday morning, the first thing we did after leaving the Family Budget Inn was drive across the highway to gas up. And there, occupying a space in the parking area with his array of baskets was the young man I had encountered at the ice machine the night before. His [...]
J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey
DAY 6 – BETHANY, MISSOURI: As soon as we crossed the Mississippi River into Iowa, we stopped at Iowa 80, advertised as “The World’s Biggest Truck Stop,” where we fell into conversation with a long-haul trucker named Tim, who said that yes, it was, to his knowledge, the world’s biggest truck stop. He should know: [...]
J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey
DAY 5 – PEORIA, ILLINOIS: Yesterday, we traveled across the corn belt. Saw a burned-down house in Cadiz, Indiana. Watched a crop duster swoop like a swallow near Farmer City, Illinois.
Visited Hoosier Park in Anderson, Indiana, then retired to a bar called Buffalo Wild Wings where I hope to set a scene. There were 30 [...]
J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey
DAY 3, 4 – CINCINNATI, OHIO: A long drive yesterday — over 400 miles — but CCR kept us company (”Walkin along the river road at night / Barefoot girls dancin in the moonlight / … if you get lost, come home to Green River.”), as did a friend’s bon voyage gift of Sting’s ‘Bring [...]
J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey
DAY 2 – ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA: We drove south from Syracuse a few miles, then turned west into the Onondaga Indian Reservation, and from there up and across the knuckles of the Finger Lakes: Skaneateles, Auburn, Seneca Falls, Geneva, Canandaigua. (We stopped in Skaneateles to eat our lunch of leftover ribs and cornbread from the Dinosaur [...]
