This book didn’t put US-20 on my to‑drive list, that happened long ago, but it did move it up quite a bit. At 3365 miles, Route 20 is currently the longest of the U.S. Numbered Highways so it’s quite naturally a road I’ve thought about driving. I have driven bits of it, of course, and crossed over it many times. It would be pretty hard to completely avoid a road that crosses the entire country as this one does. In Historic US Route 20: A Journey Across America’s Longest Highway, Bryan Farr documents an east to west drive over the entire length of the highway and the entire breadth of the nation with a couple hundred great color photos. There is something I’d like to see in just about every one of those photos.
A chapter on each of the twelve states crossed by US-20 follows an introduction and a brief history of the highway. Each chapter’s opening page contains a small map and some statistics such as length and highest and lowest elevation. A few pictures also appear on those opening pages but the best pictures form the chapter’s body. Many get a page all to themselves and few pages contain more than two. That means they are generally big enough to appreciate and the good print quality also helps.
Some images are of noted man made landmarks, such as the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and the Veterans Memorial Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. Others capture the natural beauty of places like the Driftless Area near Elizabeth, Illinois, and Yellowstone Lake. Together they show off the wide range of experiences available along the highway as well as Farr’s photographic skills.
Although it’s certainly not overdone, the book is not without text. There is that one-page introduction and two-page history that open the book and virtually every picture gets some sort of description. Some get a one-line caption while others get a paragraph or two. Most descriptions that go beyond a sentence provide some history about the subject and all are interesting. There are essentially no travel directions. This is not a travel guide. It is a photographic trip journal and a very attractive one. Even without directions, it will certainly be an aid in planning my own trip. As I said, just about every one of those photos contains something I’d like to see and something likely included in any itinerary. Plus, just flipping through it randomly keeps my desire to drive “America’s Longest Highway” at least on simmer.
A Kindle version of the book is available through the Amazon link at the end of this article. New paperback copies are available directly from the publisher at Historic US Route 20.
Historic US Route 20, Bryan Farr, The Historic US Route 20 Association, Inc., February 16, 2015, 8.5 x 11 inches, 166 pages, ISBN 978-1628476880
Available through Amazon.
And now for something completely different. Anyone who thought releasing two books within three months might be overdoing it will have no doubts about that being the case when they see another appear a week later. But this is a different kettle of fish. Really. Six of Each is a collection of photographs drawn from the previously published travelogues. Each of those travelogues is available in two forms. There is a black-and-white printed version and a color digital version. Photo-quality color printing is still relatively expensive in the low-volume print-on-demand world. Printing the books in black and white keeps them reasonably priced. On the other hand, color in digital files is free. Offering B&W paperbacks and color ebooks isn’t ideal but it keeps the books affordable and color at least available.
So what I’ve done is pick a half dozen pictures from each of the existing travelogues and combine them in a Blurb magazine. The magazine is only available through Blurb (that’s one of those magazine restrictions) and there is no digital version available (that’s my restriction). It’s also more expensive than it seems a 32-page “magazine” ought to be. But it does let me see what some of my photographs would look like using something besides black ink on stationary paper. And it’s there for anyone else who would like to look.
Too soon? What had been my most recent travelogue, 
This is my fourth self published book; All are travelogues. This one is a midquel that covers the omitted middle section of a trip that formed part of the previous book, 
A funny thing happened on the way to this review. Not funny ha ha; Funny peculiar. This is Jim Grey’s second book. I reviewed the first, Exceptional Ordinary, in April, 2017. I figured that this review would reference that one, make some comparisons, make some jokes. It would be fun; Maybe even funny ha ha. But that review has gone missing. I don’t know how or even when. I’ve 
I photograph a fair number of signs as I travel, and I know quite a few people who photograph many more than I. Not one, however, is in the same league as Debra Jane Seltzer. If sign hunting was an Olympic sport, the petite Seltzer would be buried under gold medals. Her photo expeditions are legendary. Until recently, when she and her dogs (currently four) headed out in the white Chevy van named Sparkle, they would take along a big stack of notes and marked up map printouts. Today there might still be a printed list of targets but Google maps and a smartphone have reduced the need for paper considerably. The target list is never limited to signs. It’s almost certain to include interesting buildings and other roadside attractions of all sorts.
The “Animals” chapter is probably my favorite. Colorful birds, fish, and dogs draw customers to businesses of all sorts. Sequenced neon segments can make birds appear to fly and dogs and horses appear to run. A pig almost always indicates a BBQ restaurant although one sign shows a line of pigs merrily leaping in to a grinder to be made into sausage.
“Things” is as varied as you might imagine. Bowling balls and pins are popular as are skates, cars, and assorted food items. Donuts and ice cream cones seem to be the most common edibles used to attract customers. Bowling balls lend themselves to animation and when a neon bowling ball rolls, a strike is virtually guaranteed. Together, “Types of Signs” and the three chapters of the “theme” section make up a sort of sampler of the massive Roadside Architecture site. Picking less than 200 images to populate this sampler had to be tough but the choices made were excellent.
Old-car guys and old-road guys are hardly one and the same although there is definitely a whole bunch of overlap. With this book, Tom Cotter stakes out a position deep in that overlap. Tom is, however, much more of an old-car guy than an old-road guy so it’s not surprising that his position is closer to the car side than the road side. The story of how plans for the trip came together is telling. The idea that Tom started with was driving an old car across the United States. Over the years, the idea had been refined to involve a particular old car. He called it a dream and admitted that it was unlikely to be realized but the car he really wanted to drive across the country country was a Ford Model T. In his dream the road was secondary.
Anthony Wayne gave Fort Greene Ville and Fort Recovery their names. They were significant in both his life and mine although the level of significance is severely tilted toward Wayne. Fort Recovery is where the army led by Arthur St. Clair was nearly annihilated in 1791. It got its name when soldiers under Wayne’s command built a small fort there in 1793. Also built in 1793, Fort Greene Ville stood twenty some miles to the south and was Wayne’s home base during the Northwest Indian War. The treaty ending that war was signed there in 1795. The town that developed on the site of the abandoned fort adopted the shortened name Greenville. I grew up near the midpoint between Greenville and Fort Recovery and adopted Anthony Wayne as a hero at a very early age. I eventually figured out that much of the initial attraction was due the the cool bicorne hat he was commonly shown in, but the fact remains that I’ve known of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne nearly all of my life.
It was probably about sixty-five years ago that I was hooked by that super groovy hat and decided that the dude under it was my hero. It was only a few years later that I saw a painting of a hat-less Wayne and was shocked to learn it was the same person. That painting might even be the same one that appears on the cover of this book. It was at least similar. I recognized that there was more to a man than his hat and Wayne survived as a childhood hero. Inside Unlikely General, Mary Stockwell reveals a lot more than a high forehead. Anthony Wayne was not, as some have interpreted his nickname, insane, but he was a long way from perfect. Perhaps the fact that I’m much older now explains why I was less shocked at learning of the imperfections than I had been at my first sight of Wayne bare-headed.
The question was never if there would be another book, just when and what. The answers are “now” (actually February) and “toll gates”. In my review of Cyndie L. Gerken’s first book, Marking the Miles Along the National Road Through Ohio, I noted that the huge amount of information presented in that book was only a portion of what Gerken has collected and that we would probably someday see “a Gerken penned treatise on bridges or taverns or toll houses or something else” which shows that taking three or four guesses really improves one’s chances of being right. Nailed it!
As she did with her first book, Gerken details her subject in a chapter per county moving east to west. However, before that happens, there is an introduction filled with information about the road and toll gates in general, then chapters on vehicles, toll house architecture, and bridges. Each of these, and the county chapters too, contain numerous photos and stories that color in the detailed information and keep things from becoming boring.
Pictures of gate houses and gate keepers are to be expected, but they are not the only photo subjects presented. This might be the only book available with pictures of the world’s longest bar, grave robbers, a two-headed calf, a Spanish dime, Hopalong Cassidy, and the author’s mother riding in a goat cart. And every one of them belongs.