Recently I told you about one of our meandering old national highways — U.S. Route 11, which winds from just below Montreal in Canada all the way down to New Orleans, near the Gulf of Mexico. And it got me thinking about THE National Road. The original one. It was our first interstate highway of […]
On the Road Again
Posted September 24th, 2010 at 6:39 pm (UTC-4)
Perhaps you’ve read Jack Kerouac’s coming-of-age novel On the Road or seen one of the classic movies about road trips across America: “Easy Rider,” “Thelma and Louise,” “Sideways,” or the comedies “National Lampoon’s Family Vacation” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” These stories offer a glimpse of the variety, vastness, and grandeur of the American landscape. […]
National Road, American Treasure
Posted April 24th, 2009 at 6:40 pm (UTC-4)
Carol and I just got back from a fascinating drive along an interstate highway, parts of which are barely wider than a pickup truck! It’s a highway, all right, just not a new one. And it was an interstate – in fact, the very first federal highway, begun in 1811, about 140 years before land […]
Sad Times in Slavic Village
Posted April 17th, 2009 at 1:46 pm (UTC-4)
If you’ve been with me from the start of Ted Landphair’s America, you’ll remember that I began with some memories of a pleasant childhood in the first suburb to the west of bustling Cleveland, Ohio. When I was a lad of 8 in 1950, the big city next door was at its apogee – pushing […]
Texians
Posted October 24th, 2008 at 6:03 pm (UTC-4)
President Bush has frequently vacationed at his Prairie Chapel Ranch near Crawford. Like former President Ronald Reagan at his Western White House, Bush relaxes by clearing brush. On the January day that he becomes our former president, or soon thereafter, George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, will leave Washington for their ranch near tiny […]
Old 11
Posted October 10th, 2008 at 3:14 pm (UTC-4)
Eighteen years ago during a short stint in management here at the Voice of America, I sent a superb reporter named Bill Torrey on a journey that I longed to make myself. As it turns out, my photographer-wife Carol M. Highsmith and I would later retrace a good deal of his route, to our deep […]
