The American Spectator

p> FOUR LANES, GOOD LIFE br> Re: Peter Hannaford’s You’ll Get Your Kicks on, er, I-40 : /p>

I agree having driven across the great country of ours many times. What we need now is a way to take our cars on the train, or at least, sleeper cars on every train, everywhere in this country. My wife, four kids, and I will be taking the Zephyr with two sleeping cabins from Chicago to Oakland next month. I wish we could do the same from L.A. to Maine.

By the way, Rick Weber and I drove from Daytona, Florida, to Mountain View, California, in 48.5 hours (road time) in 1985. Sixty-seven hours isn’t non-stop. If you can’t do your business while the car fills then you get to drive the next round.

p>Also, if it can’t be seen from the highway then it doesn’t exist. See you on the road… br> — Mark Andreasen /p>

Poor Mr. Hannaford. Route 66 was slow and two-laned; stopped in every little town with Mom-and-Pop motels and seedy bars. Those small towns were where real America lived and to an extent still does. Not the America of Barbra Streisand and ill-educated louts like Mr. Sheen who sees conspiracies around every Republican, but people who loved their families, their country, and their visitors. In the early 1960s I rode my motorcycle to Chi-town for the purpose of riding Route 66 all the way to L.A. It was scenic and filled with interesting people. There was time to stop and talk to strangers. Learn from them and they from you. I remember Middle American men with thick, knurled fingers and massive hands, hardened from work sipping ice cold beer in small smoky taverns. I can still see families dressed in their best leaving churches, children running and laughing on church lawns. I was invited to share meals at people’s homes — no cost, just neighborly and nice. My Harley drew small lumps of the curious wherever I stopped, and I stopped frequently, to savor small town America. Incidentally I didn’t make it all the way to L.A. due to an unfortunate coming together of my motorcycle and a deer, in which neither of the livening creatures was much injured, but my steed was much worse for the wear.

p>Interstates: a car 18 inches from you in each of the four directions on the compass, traveling at 80 or 90 miles an hour; people cocooned in a sterile $35,000, climate-controlled, soundproofed steel box which saves the riders from “outside.” No Mr. Hannaford, interstates have no soul, nor do I suspect do the people who extol their virtues. br> —