Odyssey of a Mugwump

Anyone motoring westward during this summer of distraction will find among the most impressive phenomena—after the uniform lumpish-ness of service station attendants in Indiana, the tedious road system of Ohio, and the abysmal cooking all through the Midwest—the stirrings of politicians as they take the field to save the nation and mislead the people. As the great biennial wardance begins, one cannot fail to be impressed as these brave patriots crawl forth from their cocoons of rationality to appear resplendent in the raiment of hyperbole, obfuscation, subterfuge and pure, lyrical inanity. It somehow makes the trip less wearing to find at each caravan-sery and oasis of the 3,000-mile journey from New York to Los Angeles, some new candidatus performing the great American ritual, operating under the primordial rubric of balonus perennis.

Our trip took us from central New York via Erie, Pa. (which, in the immortal words of Sellar and Yeat-man, “is not a good thing”), to Columbus, Ohio; then Route 40 to St. Louis, and thence on Route 66, America’s answer to the Orient Express, through the terrifying blind corners of Missouri roads, the hiatus of the Oklahoma turnpikes, the hallucination of the Texas panhandle, .New Mexico (the most charming American state), Arizona (stronghold of Barry Goldwater, air-conditioners and retired dentists), to California, the mythical island of the Amazons immortalized in Las Sergas de Es-plandidn.

DS

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D. J. Stewart

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Anyone motoring westward during this summer of distraction will find among the most impressive phenomena—after the uniform lumpish-ness of service station attendants in Indiana, the tedious road system of Ohio, and the abysmal cooking all through the Midwest—the stirrings of politicians as they take the field to save the nation and mislead the people. As the great biennial wardance begins, one cannot fail to be impressed as these brave patriots crawl forth from their cocoons of rationality to appear resplendent in the raiment of hyperbole, obfuscation, subterfuge and pure, lyrical inanity. It somehow makes the trip less wearing to find at each caravan-sery and oasis of the 3,000-mile journey from New York to Los Angeles, some new candidatus performing the great American ritual, operating under the primordial rubric of balonus perennis.

Our trip took us from central New York via Erie, Pa. (which, in the immortal words of Sellar and Yeat-man, “is not a good thing”), to Columbus, Ohio; then Route 40 to St. Louis, and thence on Route 66, America’s answer to the Orient Express, through the terrifying blind corners of Missouri roads, the hiatus of the Oklahoma turnpikes, the hallucination of the Texas panhandle, .New Mexico (the most charming American state), Arizona (stronghold of Barry Goldwater, air-conditioners and retired dentists), to California, the mythical island of the Amazons immortalized in Las Sergas de Es-plandidn.