02 Jun 04
The next morning's breakfast confirms the randomness of quality on the back roads. At a little truck stop, we are served charcoal masquerading as bacon. But we are rewarded later when we meet Ed Lemmons, president of Veterans of Four Wars, who each year plants flags in every single serviceman's grave in his area. We bump into him at his last cemetery visit of the season, flag 594 in hand. His work is so inspiring from the road that we have to stop off and take a look.
Route 70 towards Knoxville feels like Alpine tourism. You are required to admire your surroundings, to concentrate on the scenery that passes outside of the car and of yourself. To speed up our arrival at my old acquaintance Larry's house in the mountains, we switch to the Interstate - a choice we've been avoiding but now deem necessary if we're to get to New York in under a week. With cruise control on, and automatic gears, you only have to think of the steering. Oliver and I either have our best conversations or fall comfortably silent, thoughts ricocheting around the car.
It's great to see Larry again after almost a decade, but before long we realise his political views are somewhat at variance with our own. Extremely so. And Larry seems to want to talk politics. After dinner, Oliver and I make excuses that we want to do some night photography and jump in the Volvo for a break.
Soon we're lost on the spaghetti roads again, and in the dark a terrible thought takes seed. We haven't unpacked the car of our stuff. What's to stop us just zooming off Eastwards? I'm not proud of it, but taken by the compelling freedom of being on the road and the magnetic spirit of the night on an American Interstate, we leave Larry behind in Knoxville, Tennessee.
