The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [22]
In a forlorn effort to keep from losing my mind, I switched on the radio, but then I remembered that American radio is designed for people who have already lost their minds. The first thing I came across was a commercial for Folger’s Coffee. An announcer said in a confidential whisper, ‘We went to the world famous Napa Valley Restaurant in California and – without telling the customers – served them Folger’s instant coffee instead of the restaurant’s usual brand. Then we listened in on hidden microphones.’ There followed an assortment of praise for the coffee along the lines of ‘Hey, this coffee is fantastic!’, ‘I’ve never tasted such rich, full-bodied coffee before!’, ‘This coffee is so good I can hardly stand it!’ and that sort of thing. Then the announcer leapt out and told the diners that it was Folger’s coffee, and they all shared a good laugh – and an important lesson about the benefits of drinking quality instant coffee. I twirled the dial. A voice said, ‘We’ll return to our discussion of maleness in sixty seconds.’ I twirled the dial. The warbling voice of a female country singer intoned:
His hands are tiny
His arms are short
But I lean upon him
For my child support.
I twirled the dial. A voice said, ‘This portion of the news is brought to you by the Airport Barber Shop, Biloxi.’ There was then a commercial for the said barber shop, followed by thirty seconds of news, all of it related to deaths by cars, fires and gunfire in Biloxi in the last twenty-four hours. There was no hint that there might be a wider, yet more violent world beyond the city limits. Then there was another commercial for the Airport Barber Shop, in case you were so monumentally cretinous that you had forgotten about it during the preceding thirty seconds of news. I switched the radio off.
At Litchfield, I left the interstate vowing not to get on again if I could possibly help it, and joined a state highway, Illinois 127, heading south towards Murphysboro and Carbondale. Almost immediately life became more interesting. There were farms and houses and little towns to look at. I was still going fifty-five miles an hour, but now I seemed to be fairly skimming along. The landscape flashed past, more absorbing than before, more hilly and varied, and the foliage was a darker blur of green. Signs came and went: TEE PEE MINI MART, B-RITE FOOD STORE, BETTY’S BEAUTY BOX, SAV-A-LOT FOOD CENTER, PINCKNEYVILLE COON CLUB, BALD KNOB TRAILER COURT, DAIRY DELITE, ALL U CAN EAT. In between these shrines to dyslexia and free enterprise there were clearings on the hillsides where farmhouses stood. Almost everyone had a satellite dish in the yard, pointed to the sky as if tapping into some life-giving celestial force. I suppose in a sense they were. Here in the hills, the light failed more quickly. I noticed with surprise that it was past six o’clock and I decided that I had better find a room. As if on cue, Carbondale hove into view.
It used to be that when you came to the outskirts of a town you would find a gas station and a Dairy Queen, maybe a motel or two if it was a busy road or the town had a college. Now every town, even a quite modest one, has a mile or more of fast food places, motor inns, discount cities, shopping malls – all with thirty-foot-high revolving signs and parking lots the size of Shropshire. Carbondale appeared to have nothing else. I drove in on a road that became a two-mile strip of shopping centres and gas stations, K-Marts, J.C. Penneys, Hardees and McDonald’s. And then, abruptly, I was in the country again. I turned around and drove back through town on a parallel street that offered precisely the same sorts of things but in slightly different configurations and then I was in the country again. The town had no centre. It had been eaten by shopping malls.
I got a room in the Heritage Motor Inn, then went out for a walk to try once more to