The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America

by Bill Bryson

In fact, every single product—from the lemon-scented toilet bowl cleansers to the scent-o’-pine trash bags—promised to give you a brief buzz. It’s no wonder that so many Americans have a glazed look. They are completely junked out.

I got on Interstate 93, thinking I would follow it for a few miles just to get away from Cape Cod, and start looking for a room, but before I knew it I was in Boston, caught in the evening rush hour. Boston’s freeway system was insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains. Every few hundred yards I would find my lane vanishing beneath me and other lanes merging with it from the right or left, or sometimes both. This wasn’t a road system, it was mobile hysteria. Everybody looked worried. I had never seen people working so hard to keep from crashing into each other. And this was a Saturday—God knows what it must be like on a weekday.

There was nothing much to it, just rolling fields, but every color was deep and vivid: the blue sky, the white clouds, the red barns, the chocolate soil. I felt as if I had never seen it before. I had no idea Iowa could be so beautiful.