When I was a kid in Topeka, I remember that my dad had a drawer in his desk filled with maps. I would pick one out, spread it on the floor, find the little towns with funny names and dream of going there. Years later, preparing for a National Geographic story, I did the same thing and found America City on the map. That seemed too good to be true, and in fact it wasn’t there when I tried to drive to it. I was told later that cartographers put a “signature” imaginary town on maps so they can tell if someone steals their map.

In a car, far from the runways and freeways, there is the rolling-past-yesterday romance of the old routes; the rambling rivulets that flow between East and West; the ribbons that wrap an ever-diminishing rural America into a gift from the past.

Rather than creating images, I find them. The reality is someone else’s; the humor is mine. I might enhance that humor through juxtaposition. Sometimes a “grab shot” is the only way to get the picture. But then that’s just what you might glimpse from your car window as you’re riding.

This is my way of avoiding the straight and narrow of the four-lane bureaucratic beltway. It makes me wonder whatever happened to touring: “Waaall, sonny, d’ya want the shortest way or d’ya wanna take the scenic route?”

I always take that scenic route. These photographs are for anyone who has ever taken a ride
in a car.