Country Roads [antikvár]

Introduction If you've ever found yourself walking down that long and lonesome road staring at the glow of the sun as it settles low over a small town nestled in the pines, on the bank of an old free-flowing river—then you may recall a time in your life when the words 'country road' caused a rising in your chest that made you want to return, and linger there. There is nothing so peaceful as a country road—one of those narrow thouroughfares that are delicately but indelibly etched on the landscape and the psyche of the nations of the North American continent. This book that I am privileged to introduce is a wondrous treasury of those roads that time forgot, yet are timeless and which will outlast in our fond memories even the grandest superhighways. The great railroads and highways of North America may be the bands that hold the continent together, but country roads run deep into the very substance of these great lands. These are the two-lane blacktops and gravelled ruts that lead us nowhere and yet everywhere. Like the end of an age, like a sunrise, that clear watercourse of memory winds its way along the canyons, past buttes and cacti that seem to hover there, in the high desert heat, their bases separated momentarily from the cares of the Earth. Stay awhile, then follow. . . Somewhere in the Northwest, an Indian fisherman tends to his mussel traps, and it reminds me of the time I sat and listened to a seasoned and cheerful fisherman, as he mended his nets and spun out tales of terror and sheer joy—the legends of a lifetime on the sea—years ago, and thousands of miles past in my own journey. I remember the welcome hiss of the big rig's air brakes at sunset as the weathered truck driver delivered me from a blistering hitch-hike across the Oklahoma hills. He knew—and told me so—that the essence of the country road is one in sameness with the soul of this, the greatest of all great lands. Beside crashing waterfalls, in the stillness of midday on the bayou, atop the spectacular beauty of the sheer rock cliffs, I stood and marveled, somewhere in the heavenly reaches of this continent and the tiny road that took me there. That twister I saw dancing beneath a black cloud from the shelter of a Kansas farmhouse—it was the same, somehow, as the biting winds I was glad to be out of when the blizzard hit, and found that shack in Alaska. Or that wonderful mansion, remnant of another time—the warm courtesy the master of the house showed me when I stopped for directions in Georgia. . . it made me think of home, that little house by the brook, where the weeds and flowers intertwined in loving casualness, thanks to the kindly ministrations of dad's increasing fondness for things that grow of their own accord, and things that grow because we want them to. I can remember so many times during the autumns I spent in Michigan, when renewal of a youth's fragile spirit meant a long drive up the Huron River Valley— alone with my thoughts, alone with my country road. Here it is, a compendium of fondness, a photo album of another time that is yours to live. You need only set out on that small, buckled thoroughfare that is somewhere in your neighborhood, just down the block; a pathway to the wind, the sunshine and the rain—that country road that is, actually, best not forgotten, as its cleansing meanders strip away all that obscures your way. It may not have been the longest that I've travelled, but the country road that will remain the longest in my memory is that narrow two-rut lane to Grandma's house. That last time, her lilacs were still there, but all was strangely silent. The low picket fence nodded sagely in the breeze, its roots softening in the soil. — William Patricic Jennings