You might want to follow this explanation on a map. How US 20 (America's longest highway and the subject of my book trilogy The Yankee Road) ended in Newport, or even at Yellowstone, is a complex story. First and foremost, it begins with boundaries. After the American Revolution, the British kept control over the eastern seaboard… Continue reading Boundaries
Tag: Blog
Some Rough Travel Comparisons
Something that seems to be left out of most accounts of travelling overland across the continent is how long it took, especially for those going west from the Mississippi River valley, and what the introduction of the railroad and then the automobile meant to the traveller. For the wagon going to Oregon, or the Mormon… Continue reading Some Rough Travel Comparisons
The Creation of US20 – The Yankee Road
With the publication of Volume 3 of The Yankee Road launching August 2020 (here's a bit of the story behind US 20, America's longest highway. US 20 stretches across the United States nearly 3400 miles, from Boston to Newport, Oregon. It is a designation connecting a number of largely pre-existing roads rather than a singular… Continue reading The Creation of US20 – The Yankee Road
Lowell, Jack and Me: An Excerpt from The Yankee Road – Volume 1
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?Jack Kerouac, On the Road What a long, strange trip it’s been…The Grateful Dead, Truckin’ Lowell is a former mill town to the north of Boston. It is named after Francis Cabot Lowell, who developed the first American textile mill in 1814. It is located… Continue reading Lowell, Jack and Me: An Excerpt from The Yankee Road – Volume 1
On “Cactus Ed”
Perhaps the most notable character to inhabit the 1900s desert West was “Cactus Ed” Abbey, who died a few years before we took the first of our many trips to the Southwest. We loved what he saw and worried about its sustainability as well, but we were, sort of, part of the problem. Abbey worried… Continue reading On “Cactus Ed”
The Medium of Writing and Dunbar’s Number
Writing provides a way to transmit messages accurately into the future, but it also has the side-effect of increasing social cohesion by homogenizing and stabilizing a ruling class, as well as by distinguishing one society from another. The medium of writing, according to the late Marshall McLuhan, has a greater effect simply by just being… Continue reading The Medium of Writing and Dunbar’s Number
The Unlucky Inventor
The oils from different coals require different treatment. The oils of Albert coal (ashphaltum) [New Brunswick, Canada], Boghead coal [Scotland] and Breckenridge coal [Kentucky] are easily purified, while the oils from ordinary American, English and Scotch cannels, require more skill….The author has made more than 2000 experiments in reference to the manufacture and purification of… Continue reading The Unlucky Inventor
Retailing “Yankee Notions”
Every inhabited part of the United States is visited by these men. I have seen them on the peninsula of Cape Cod and in the Neighborhood of Lake Erie, distant from each other more than six hundred miles. They make their way to Detroit, four hundred miles farther, to Canada, to Kentucky, and, if I… Continue reading Retailing “Yankee Notions”
A Story for Labour Day
In these days of ‘gig’ employment and lots of home delivery options, we may forget why there is a day dedicated to those who work for a living—that is, most of us. In the late 1800s, there was a lot of labour unrest, in part because of long hours, over-controlling bosses, low pay and dangerous… Continue reading A Story for Labour Day
Those Healthy Yankees Part 2: Joel Shew, Mary Gove Nichols and the Water Cure
This is the second in a two-part piece on the early 19th Century Yankee contribution to healthy lifestyles (you can read of Part 1 here). The parallels with today’s pandemic are most interesting. The material comes from a chapter in Volume 2 of my book, The Yankee Road. By 1840, Massachusetts school reformer Horace Mann… Continue reading Those Healthy Yankees Part 2: Joel Shew, Mary Gove Nichols and the Water Cure
Old Professor by the Sea 