North by Southwest – Mike Dillon

The First Freedom (No, not that one)

In popular culture, youthful freedom begins when one is handed a set of car keys (or today’s far-less-romantic equivalent, a fob). But those of us of a certain age know that the car is only a promotion: Our first real taste of freedom had only two wheels.

You Can’t Go Home Again (And Why Would You?)

With the exception of Pittsburgh, where inter-generational families cling to each other like refugees in a lifeboat, a preponderance of Americans, particularly the college-educated, eventually leave their hometowns behind. You can find no end of sociological studies (and lamentations) online about the decline of the geographically proximate extended family.

A Big Muddy Meander With a Beat You Can Dance To

Cash grew up poor and never lost his workingman’s sensibility. He sang songs about the lower-crust: the thwarted factory worker, the soldier home from war with crushed limbs and broken spirit, the Native American stripped of his land and his pride, the highway patrolman who chases his law-breaking brother to the state line and is relieved the law compels him to turn back.

Riding The Natchez Trace

The Nachez Trace Parkway is a miracle. So is finding it with your phone’s GPS. Since the Trace doesn’t have a route number, Siri sent me to and fro, to this side and that side of Nashville. Finally, after two hours of tracing and retracing interstates to the east, west and south, I got off the highway and asked an old farmer how to get there.

Into the West

Last week, I swept across the American South like the needle on an old-time radio dial – tracking west from about AM 650 to 1500. Starkville, Ms., to Amarillo, Tx. Nine hundred miles in one throw. That’s an adult portion. Whew.

Bringing it All Back Home

Yellowstone is spectacular – so much so that waiting in line to enter it can be like idling on L.A.’s infamous I-10. And, when you do finally get in, you experience all that splendor with 75,000 or so new friends, many crawling along in RVs with tiny cars in tow.