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One might have thought it would be difficult to find inspiration in a Kentucky cross-country road trip on foot, in this god-forsaken nanotech-walmart-RFID-Halliburton-iPod new millenium we currently inhabit. After all, it's hard to get back to one's roots these days when what's left of the wilderness is so pockmarked with cellphone towers, toxic waste dump sites, covert Government installations, and built-overnight housing developments with names like "Spruce Acres" even though there isn't a goddamn spruce tree in sight. Leave it to Ron and Sarah Whitehead to distill the moonshine of inspiration from the genetically modified corn of today; to make lemonade from the lemons of the 21st century. The inevitable comparison to Kerouac's "On the Road" looms large, but this ain't Jack and Neal boozing and whoring their way across the desert: this is more like Walt Whitman and Emmylou Harris on safari, as William Burroughs put it, "deep in the heart of darkest America." Their journey begins by walking the gauntlet of Dixie Highway on foot. This in itself merits some sort of award, and could probably stand alone as the subject of a book. Pink porno parlors and liquor stores highlight a road strewn with dead animals, broken bottles, abandoned clothes and condom wrappers. Frightening "Deliverance"-style characters lurk everywhere. As their sojourn continues, they speak of their encounters with snarling dogs, rat-filled trailers, derailed trains, Fort Knox paranoia, hobos, motels, hitchhiking, roadkill, creosote, junk food, corporate convenience stores, (and mom-n-pop general stores that carry mostly the same stuff), greasy diners, bootleggers, rattlesnakes, and dangerous bloodsucking pests such as ticks, mosquitos, and policemen. Outside it's America. And yet, it really isn't a grim story, and what keeps it from being such is the emphasis placed on family and on history. The carpenter's glue that holds these wood shivs together is Ron and Sarah's rememberances of what happened on this land before it became dotted with gas stations, and their strong tribal sense that includes not just their blood relatives (who are interviewed at length) but the greater circle in its most inclusive sense, including the ghosts of Pee Wee Reese and Bill Monroe. Best of all, at the end of the road there is no pot of gold, save that which Ron and Sarah already carried there in their hearts. The trip itself is the reward of wisdom, not the path to it. Like Captain Willard finally reaching Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now," the Whiteheads hit the confluence of the rivers and report, "We became aware of how little we know, how little anyone knows."
- Jeffrey Scott Holland, Louisville and NYC.
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