Oh I love that Blue Highways Revisited, thank you, Frybabe, and it's allowed me to catch up to where I think you are. It's a quick way to catch up and not miss anything.
I went to college in the south in 1961, and I think it's quite heartening to see the changes since then. I also think that it's important to preserve the oral history as it were and what was the situation then, so people growing up today can see a difference. If, in fact, there really IS one. Recent revelations about a popular cook's perspectives have raised that issue. Again. Everybody loved the Help, everybody loved saying to themselves well of course I wouldn't be like the (bad) people depicted; this is just another chapter.
But at the same time, he's only a tourist, driving through. You can't judge anything or anybody by the offhand observations of people you encounter, (tho most people do, and form their opinions of that area forever frozen based on the 15 minute stop)...as you drive through a place, there may be (and always is) another side or perspective. And certainly not everybody on either side of the fence in an issue can be firmly put in one camp, either.
I like this statement: "The photographs, happily, reveal a recognizable continuity – but for how much longer who can say –" A recognizable continuity, what an interesting thing to say. Continuity may be one thing lacking to us in 2014.
I love the Revisited book and the photos. I am most struck by the cottonwood tree in Texas (you can really catch up fast) and the fact anybody would take a photo of it or think it was meaningful enough TO take a photo of and cut down every year. I think I need the book Revisited.
I would like to know exactly where we are, that is the page (if paperback) or chapter or? What city in Alabama? Selma?
There's another real change happening in America, which is exemplified by what we think of as "quaintness" of some of the photos, it's quaint now, it wasn't then. Along with regional dialects in speech and pronunciation, we're possibly losing some of that individuality as time progresses. Is that a good or bad thing, one wonders. Is it good we all sound like TV announcers? Is the "recognizable continuity" good or bad? So many issues this book brings up, not all instantly (a la 2014) solvable.
This has become somewhat addictive, I notice in the map above the "Old South Carolina State Road" appears to run smack thru my area. I can find no reference to it, today, that is, which road it might have been, they say the original route here is unsure. But there is a road which runs to Asheville through Spartanburg to Union a mile and a half from me, and there are old plantations out here, some quite fine, and of course Glenn Springs, the church of which remains, a famous spa resort town of the 1900's. Here's the colorful history of Glenn Springs, SC: http://library.sc.edu/blogs/newspaper/2011/08/09/glenn-springs-south-carolina/.
Some people, when they travel, (I think all travel is a quest) are looking hard for something meaningful, and take every word from the mouth of strangers as omens or more. Oracles maybe. SOMETIMES in some circumstances, they may also just be the musings of somebody having a bad day or heartburn. This reminds me of Studs Terkel, interviewing "the common man," tho how common each man is, I guess, is debatable.
I would like to start the book over, in fact, and probably will, this week, tho it seems a book to savor slowly and think about. You kind of want to read 3 pages and put it down and think about it.
