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The Lost Continent
Bill Bryson
Presented by Danielle Zeigler
Amalgam: The Perfect Town
Based on the backdrop of towns in TV shows from his childhood
Never encountered it through the course of childhood road trips
Surely existed somewhere, thoughThis perfect place must exist in our nation so
attached to small-town ideals.
Change & Sense of Loss
Cannot ever go home againAt least, not the home remembered
Businesses gone Empty lots Grass in sidewalk cracks People driving 30 miles for a loaf of bread
Road Trip Observations
Midwesterners
Directions vital “Innate need to be oriented”
“European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane” (15).
Disappointment in Small Towns
Used to be a gas station and Dairy Queen, maybe a motel, on the outskirts of town
Now, a mile or more of fast-food places, discount cities and shopping malls, all surrounded by immense parking lots and no sidewalks
“The town had no center. It had been eaten by shopping malls” (46).
Billboards
“In places like Iowa and Kansas they were about the only stimulation you got” (49).
Older billboards far superior to those of today. 3-dimensional elements Coming attraction advertised with signs every several
miles Often adorned with interesting quotes and
information, like oversized postcards Now, simply show the attraction and directions
Daylight Savings Time
States go their own direction in this regard“It made you realize to what an extent the
United States is really fifty independent countries” (53).
Arizona
South
Often see a white person’s nice house right next door to a black person’s shackThat would never happen in the North.
Ironic, considering the past relations
Voices from the North on Southern radio Indirectness and slowness make Southern
speech unique
Almost Amalgam
Columbus, Mississippi nearly achieved perfection
Savannah, Georgia and Chestertown, Maryland also nearly his ideal Cooperstown, New York also close, but too many
tourists Began to realize that he would never find it all in
one piece “I would have to collect it piecemeal—a courthouse
here, a fire station there” (67).
College Towns
“Only places in America to combine benefits of small-town pace of life with big-city sophistication” (71)Nice bars and restaurants Interesting shopsWorldly airFeeling of youth and vitality
Warm Springs, Georgia
Franklin Delano Roosevelt died there Path leading to the Little White House lined with
rocks from every state Some cut in the shape of the state, buffed and
engraved Others just “featureless hunks”
What will the state quarter of Kansas look like?
Hotels
Bryson gets personally offended by the hotels in Savannah, Georgia.Beautiful old buildings interspersed with
massive concrete chain hotelsRuin the mood and ambience achieved in
some cities
Idea of Vacation
“Not to expose yourself to a moment of discomfort or inconvenience—indeed, not to breathe fresh air if possible” (94).
RVs like life-support systems on wheels And why are tourists fat and dress like
morons?
Appalachia
Beautiful sceneryWhy haven’t urban professionals flocked to
this area of beauty? Instead, it is inhabited by the truly
impoverished. White people living in poverty Also seen in places like the Smoky
Mountains and Vermont
Gettysburg
“It is a pity, verging on the criminal, that so much of the town of Gettysburg has been spoiled with tourist tat and that it is so visible from the battlefield” (132).
Fort Hays in Hays, Kansas
Tourism in Amish Towns
Fascination with Amish way of life causes millions to come and gawk
Non-Amish businessmen established tourist stops that the Amish cannot even patronize
Tourists left to take pictures of each other since the Amish never come to town anymore
Nebraska Football
No “fair play” in Cornhusker vocabulary “The University of Nebraska would send in
flamethrowers if it were allowed” (208). Sitting in the midst of Nebraska fans is an
unnerving experience, “particularly when you consider that a lot of them must work at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha. If Iowa State ever upset Nebraska, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they nuked Ames.”
Kansas
The Quintessential American State Home of Dorothy and Superman Place where people still say “by golly” and “gee
whillikers” Visiting Great Bend was like traveling through a
time warp Between Great Bend and Dodge City, people
stop wearing sneakers and ball caps and start wearing boots and cowboy hats
Santa Fe
“Too rich and pretty for words” (229) Oldest continuously inhabited city in
America, founded in 1610 Everything made of adobe
Not just a front for the tourists, eitherSimply the indigenous building material
Savannah hotels could take a lesson
United States in General
Compartmentalization
No commercial activities inside a national park
Unrestrained development outside, even though the scenery is just as beautiful
“America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn’t have to be confined behind fences” (95).
Compartmentalization, cont.
Smithsonian now has everything categorized and organized into its set placeNational Air and Space Museum
No sense of discovery or element of surprise
Clinical and uninspired
Genuineness and Ugliness
“There was just modern commercial squalor—shopping centers, gas stations, motels. Every once in a while there would be a white church or clapboard inn standing incongruously in the midst of Burger Kings and Texacos. But far from mollifying the ugliness, it only intensified it, reminding you what had been thrown away for the sake of drive-through burgers and cheap gasoline” (156).
The American Way
Little room for sentiment Don’t preserve the past for its own sake Past revered only as long as there is
money and modern conveniences in it
House from the movie Paper Moon
Food for Thought
Which is worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored?
Tourism Discussion
Good or bad? What will make it succeed in Rural
America? Would it be better for some towns to just
throw in the towel and admit defeat in the battle of attracting outsiders, or should they keep fighting for those tourist dollars?
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