The Lost Continent

Bill Bryson

Presented by Danielle Zeigler

Amalgam: The Perfect Town

Based on the backdrop of towns in TV shows from his childhood

Never encountered it through the course of childhood road trips

Surely existed somewhere, thoughThis perfect place must exist in our nation so

attached to small-town ideals.

Change & Sense of Loss

Cannot ever go home againAt least, not the home remembered

Businesses gone Empty lots Grass in sidewalk cracks People driving 30 miles for a loaf of bread

Road Trip Observations

Midwesterners

Directions vital “Innate need to be oriented”

“European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane” (15).

Disappointment in Small Towns

Used to be a gas station and Dairy Queen, maybe a motel, on the outskirts of town

Now, a mile or more of fast-food places, discount cities and shopping malls, all surrounded by immense parking lots and no sidewalks

“The town had no center. It had been eaten by shopping malls” (46).

Billboards

“In places like Iowa and Kansas they were about the only stimulation you got” (49).

Older billboards far superior to those of today. 3-dimensional elements Coming attraction advertised with signs every several

miles Often adorned with interesting quotes and

information, like oversized postcards Now, simply show the attraction and directions

Daylight Savings Time

States go their own direction in this regard“It made you realize to what an extent the

United States is really fifty independent countries” (53).

Arizona

South

Often see a white person’s nice house right next door to a black person’s shackThat would never happen in the North.

Ironic, considering the past relations

Voices from the North on Southern radio Indirectness and slowness make Southern

speech unique

Almost Amalgam

Columbus, Mississippi nearly achieved perfection

Savannah, Georgia and Chestertown, Maryland also nearly his ideal Cooperstown, New York also close, but too many

tourists Began to realize that he would never find it all in

one piece “I would have to collect it piecemeal—a courthouse

here, a fire station there” (67).

College Towns

“Only places in America to combine benefits of small-town pace of life with big-city sophistication” (71)Nice bars and restaurants Interesting shopsWorldly airFeeling of youth and vitality

Warm Springs, Georgia

Franklin Delano Roosevelt died there Path leading to the Little White House lined with

rocks from every state Some cut in the shape of the state, buffed and

engraved Others just “featureless hunks”

What will the state quarter of Kansas look like?

Hotels

Bryson gets personally offended by the hotels in Savannah, Georgia.Beautiful old buildings interspersed with

massive concrete chain hotelsRuin the mood and ambience achieved in

some cities

Idea of Vacation

“Not to expose yourself to a moment of discomfort or inconvenience—indeed, not to breathe fresh air if possible” (94).

RVs like life-support systems on wheels And why are tourists fat and dress like

morons?

Appalachia

Beautiful sceneryWhy haven’t urban professionals flocked to

this area of beauty? Instead, it is inhabited by the truly

impoverished. White people living in poverty Also seen in places like the Smoky

Mountains and Vermont

Gettysburg

“It is a pity, verging on the criminal, that so much of the town of Gettysburg has been spoiled with tourist tat and that it is so visible from the battlefield” (132).

Fort Hays in Hays, Kansas

Tourism in Amish Towns

Fascination with Amish way of life causes millions to come and gawk

Non-Amish businessmen established tourist stops that the Amish cannot even patronize

Tourists left to take pictures of each other since the Amish never come to town anymore

Nebraska Football

No “fair play” in Cornhusker vocabulary “The University of Nebraska would send in

flamethrowers if it were allowed” (208). Sitting in the midst of Nebraska fans is an

unnerving experience, “particularly when you consider that a lot of them must work at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha. If Iowa State ever upset Nebraska, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they nuked Ames.”

Kansas

The Quintessential American State Home of Dorothy and Superman Place where people still say “by golly” and “gee

whillikers” Visiting Great Bend was like traveling through a

time warp Between Great Bend and Dodge City, people

stop wearing sneakers and ball caps and start wearing boots and cowboy hats

Santa Fe

“Too rich and pretty for words” (229) Oldest continuously inhabited city in

America, founded in 1610 Everything made of adobe

Not just a front for the tourists, eitherSimply the indigenous building material

Savannah hotels could take a lesson

United States in General

Compartmentalization

No commercial activities inside a national park

Unrestrained development outside, even though the scenery is just as beautiful

“America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn’t have to be confined behind fences” (95).

Compartmentalization, cont.

Smithsonian now has everything categorized and organized into its set placeNational Air and Space Museum

No sense of discovery or element of surprise

Clinical and uninspired

Genuineness and Ugliness

“There was just modern commercial squalor—shopping centers, gas stations, motels. Every once in a while there would be a white church or clapboard inn standing incongruously in the midst of Burger Kings and Texacos. But far from mollifying the ugliness, it only intensified it, reminding you what had been thrown away for the sake of drive-through burgers and cheap gasoline” (156).

The American Way

Little room for sentiment Don’t preserve the past for its own sake Past revered only as long as there is

money and modern conveniences in it

House from the movie Paper Moon

Food for Thought

Which is worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored?

Tourism Discussion

Good or bad? What will make it succeed in Rural

America? Would it be better for some towns to just

throw in the towel and admit defeat in the battle of attracting outsiders, or should they keep fighting for those tourist dollars?