Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
which even at the age of eight I could see were ridiculously improbable (“Say, Frank, do
you suppose those fellows with the funny accents that we saw at Moose Lake yesterday
weren't really fisherman, but German spies, and that the girl in the bottom of their canoe
with the bandage around her mouth wasn't really suffering from pyorrhea but was actually
Dr. Rorshack's daughter? I've got a funny feeling those fellows might even be able to tell
us a thing or two about the missing rocket fuel!”). No, I read them for Franklin W. Dixon's
evocative, albeit incidental, descriptions of Bayport, the Hardy Boys' hometown, a place
inexpressibly picturesque, where houses with porch swings and picket fences peeked out
on a blue sweep of bay full of sailboats and skimming launches. It was a place of constant
adventures and summers without end.
It began to bother me that I had never seen this town. Every year on vacation we would
drive hundreds and hundreds of miles across the country, in an insane pursuit of holiday
happiness,toilingoverbluehillsandbrownprairies,throughtownsandcitieswithoutnum-
ber, but without ever going through anywhere even remotely like that dreamy town in the
movies.Theplaceswepassedthroughwerehotanddustyandfullofscrawnydogs,closed-
down movie theaters, grubby diners and gas stations that looked as if they would be grate-
ful to get two customers a week. But I felt sure that it must exist somewhere. It was incon-
ceivablethatanationsofirmlyattachedtosmall-townideals,sodedicatedinitsfantasiesto
small-town notions, could not have somewhere built one perfect place-a place of harmony
and industry, a place without shopping malls and oceanic parking lots, without factories
and drive-in churches, without Kwik-Kraps and Jiffi-Shits and commercial squalor from
oneendtotheother.InthistimelessplaceBingCrosbywouldbethepriest,JimmyStewart
themayor,FredMacMurraythehigh-schoolprincipal,HenryFondaaQuakerfarmer.Wal-
ter Brennan would run the gas station, a boyish Mickey Rooney would deliver groceries,
and somewhere at an open window Deanna Durbin would sing. And in the background,
always, would be the kid on a bike and those two smartly striding men. The place I was
looking for would be an amalgam of all those towns I had encountered in fiction. Indeed,
that might well be its name-Amalgam, Ohio, or Amalgam, North Dakota. It could exist al-
most anywhere, but it had to exist. And on this trip, I intended to find it.
I drove and drove, through flat farming country and little towns devoid of life: Hull, Pitt-
sfield, Barry, Oxville. On my map, Springfield was about two inches to the right of Han-
nibal, but it seemed to take hours to get there. In fact, it does take hours to get there. I
was only slowly adjusting to the continental scale of America, where states are the size
of countries. Illinois is nearly twice as big as Austria, four times the size of Switzerland.
There is so much emptiness, so much space between towns. You go through a little place
and the dinette looks crowded, so you think, “Oh, I'll wait till I get to Fuddville before I
stop for coffee,” because it's only just down the road, and then you get out on the highway
