Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Me the Way to Any Other State.” In any case, I crossed the Mississippi-still muddy, still
strangely unimpressive-on a long, high bridge and turned my back on Missouri without re-
gret. On the other side a sign said, BUCKLE UP. ITS THE LAW IN ILLINOIS. Just bey-
ond it another said, AND WE STILL CANT PUNCTUATE.
IplungedeastintoIllinois.IwasheadingforSpringfield,thestatecapital,andNewSalem,
arestoredvillagewhereAbrahamLincolnlivedasayoungman.Mydadhadtakenusthere
when I was about five and I thought it was wonderful. I wondered if it still was. I also
wanted to see if Springfield was in any way an ideal town. One of the things I was look-
ing for on this trip was the perfect town. I've always felt certain that somewhere out there
in America it must exist. When I was small, WHO-TV in Des Moines used to show old
movies every afternoon after school, and when other children were out playing kick-the-
can or catching bullfrogs or encouraging little Bobby Birnbaum to eat worms (something
he did with surprising amenability), I was alone in a curtained room in front of the TV, lost
in a private world, with a plate of Oreo cookies on my lap and Hollywood magic flick-
ering on my eyeglasses. I didn't realize it at the time, but the films WHO showed were
mostlyclassics—TheBestYearsofOurLives,Mr.SmithGoestoWashington,NeverGive
a Sucker an Even Break, It Happened One Night. The one constant in these pictures was
the background. It was always the same place, a trim and sunny little city with a tree-lined
Main Street full of friendly merchants (“Good morning, Mrs. Smith!”) and a courthouse
square, and wooded neighborhoods where fine houses slumbered beneath graceful arms.
Therewasalwaysapaperboyonabikeslingingpapersontofrontporches,andagenialold
fart in a white apron sweeping the sidewalk in front of his drugstore and two men in suits
stridingbrisklypast.Thesetwobackgroundmenalwaysworesuits,andtheyalwaysstrode
smartly,neverstrolledorambled,butstrodeinperfectsynchrony.Theywerereallygoodat
it. No matter what was going on in the foreground-Humphrey Bogart blowing away a bad
guy with a .45, Jimmy Stewart earnestly explaining his ambitions to Donna Reed, W. C.
Fields lighting a cigar with the cellophane still on it-the background was always this time-
less, tranquil place. Even in the midst of the most dreadful crises, when monster ants were
atlargeinthestreetsorbuildingswerecollapsingfromsomecarelessscientificexperiment
out at State U, you could still generally spot the paperboy slinging newspapers somewhere
inthebackgroundandthosetwoguysinsuitsstridingalonglikeSiamesetwins.Theywere
absolutely imperturbable.
And it wasn't just in the movies. Everybody on TV-Ozzie and Harriet, Wally and Beaver
Cleaver, George Burns and Gracie Allen-lived in this middle-class Elysium. So did the
people in the advertisements in magazines and on the commercials on television and in
the Norman Rockwell paintings on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. In topics it
was the same. I used to read Hardy Boys mysteries one after the other, not for the plots,
