A Journey Through Literary America
by Thomas R. Hummel and Photography by Tamra L. Dempsey
Monthly archive November, 2009
Hopkin's Bookshop ~ Book Signing
Location is: St. Paul’s Cathedral 2 Cherry Street Burlington, VT http://hopkinsbookshop.com/ Read More »
The Buckeye Book Fair
Akron-Canton Airport: I knew I was not in California when I opened the driver’s side door of my rented Hyundai Accent and saw, laid across the passenger’s seat like a sword, a brand new ice scraper, with broom on one end. For use if needed. Thankfully, I never had to use it. On the way from the airport to my distant hotel, I listened to the radio’s pre-set station, a talk radio station. Clearly local. The talk radio hosts batted around notions of what would happen when their contract with Clear Channel Communications came up for renegotiation. The host was pretty sure they’d be asked to move to a bigger market than Akron/Canton to extend, so to speak, their listening empire. His female sidekick, who followed the role of modern talk radio female sidekicks and enable—which consists mostly of never saying no—wasn’t so sure about that. But she sounded willing to believe. The commercials came. And after that they played “name that bitch,” which consisted of playing a sound clip from some recent woman in the news, and then guessing who it was. This day’s clip was Anna Kournikova. Is this what passeth for talk radio in the smaller markets? [...] Read More »
Small Press Reviews
I’ll start this review by admitting that I’m not the easiest guy in the world to shop for, and I really do feel bad for all of the people in my life who have to buy me gifts whenever my birthday or Christmas rolls around. The problem, if you can call it that, is that I’m just not into things. I am, however, a book lover, but this also raises a number of issues in the gift-giving arena–the biggest of which is that nobody (including myself half the time) knows which books I own or have read, and so nobody knows which books to give me. And, yes, there are always gift cards to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but these gifts, heartfelt and sincere though they may be, smack slightly of defeat. They say, “I wanted to get you something, but I didn’t know what, so I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.” I say all of this because I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who’s hard to buy for. And I further suspect that all of these people who are, like me, hard to buy for have people who love them and who want [...] Read More »
Binghamton New York to Boston
Hudson to Binghamton was a long stretch of empty highway, often squeezed down to one lane in each direction (though TARP was not officially credited) with some of the tiredest looking traffic cones I have ever seen. The view from the highway was of trees, more of a mix of firs than I had seen, the occasional Quonset hut, of exits for towns like Panama and Cuba and Coopers Plains (which I thought might have been a model for Fenimore Cooper but might actually be named after an Australian town), some beautiful, stark countryside. As it grew dark, the signs telling how many miles to Binghamton ceased. It was with great relief that we finally entered the outskirts of the connected communities of Vestal (where my mother was born), Endicott, Johnson City, Binghamton, and Chenango Forks. Once mighty manufacturers of the Empire State, they are now remnants of their former selves. The people of these towns knew how to make things once. Great things. It is one of the heedless cruelties of capitalism that the factories that made the region prosperous have pulled out or gone under. It was with an unbelievable sense of relief that we got off at [...] Read More »
Indiana to Ohio
The next day we saw the most we had seen of Chicago—in our rear view mirror. By mid-morning we had passed Garry, Indiana—the birthplace of Michael Jackson and by midday we stopped in South Bend (home of Notre Dame) for a bathroom and exercise break. The dominance of football was obvious from our entry into the city. The lanes of the public highway were marked (permanently, it seemed) with the parking lanes for the football stadium (VIP, Season Tickets, etc.). We found a spot in a quiet park by the river (the one that bends south, I presume). It was a beautiful fall day, the wind gusting and sending leaves floating down from the trees. It was something I was sure Felix had never seen before. I tried to get him to appreciate them but he was more concerned with running around, and the big dog we passed. The park had an old cabin that had belonged to the first resident of South Bend. It was locked and deserted. So were the public bathrooms. We moved on. It was one of the longest days of the trip. We lost an hour as we passed into East Coast time. [...] Read More »
Omaha to Chicago
Iowa City, Iowa I had the camera ready when we stopped at the bookstore in perhaps the nicest find of a city in our passage across the country: Iowa City. We entered town from the north, along a significant river, and parked next to what turned out to be a pedestrian mall. This walkway, which ran north as well as east and west, and was flanked on one side by the clean granite walls of the public library, had a large playground in the middle of it. Rika and Felix stayed there while I headed north one block to the Prairie Lights Bookstore. Prairie Lights is one of the great bookstores in the United States. And a lot of the credit must go to Paul Ingram, to whom I will always be grateful for insisting that I make sure the book was available on Ingram (or else most bookstores would not give us the time of day). I did not know his last name, in fact, until just now when I looked up the bookstore, and can only chuckle at his coincidental last name. Paul welcomed me and took a good look at the book. His mind [...] Read More »
Red Cloud, NE to Omaha, NE
What came down had to go back up. We returned from Red Cloud to the Interstate via Hastings, passing a Pony Express Road on the way. We drove by Valentino’s on the city’s main drag, the pizza and pasta buffet highly touted by AAA that is not going to make the Journey Through Gustatory America tour book. There was a bookstore in Hastings that I had made an appointment to stop by but they were closed that Sunday—or so I came to believe, when I called their number twice and it rung 15 times without a response. When you make a cross-country tour you begin to get a feel for the long roads, a broader vision. Quite a few Americans live most of their lives along sections of highways that, as stretch hundreds or even thousands of miles in one direction or the other. When I was growing up we lived along Route 7, which ran to the Canadian border in one direction and to Norwalk, Connecticut in the other. I, who possessed none of the geographical acumen my two brothers inherited (somehow the Cartography Fairy skipped over me), assuredly had no idea of its length until I was much [...] Read More »
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