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You do accept that the centermost of the apple is acutely hot," a acquaintance said aback he saw me packing Jules Verne's Adventure to the Centermost of the Earth. "The centermost of the apple is uninhabitable."

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The geographic centermost of the forty-eight abutting states is Lebanon, Kansas. For years, I had basic to see it. Not to see it. To bend at the center.

All of my accompany knew I basic to go. I had this accepted I did afterwards banquet area I counterbalanced a bowl on my feel and said the bowl was the U. S. A. and the point of antithesis was Lebanon.

"That's you, all right," my accompany said. "Mister Point of Balance."

Lebanon, citizenry 218, is 108 afar east of U. S. Avenue 83: nineteen hundred afar of craven centermost band active beeline bottomward the average of the United States. It passes through Arctic and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, all the way from Manitoba to Matamoros.

I basic to chase US-83, to drive to the core, to the affection of the matter, as we say. I accept lived in Massachusetts for a decade, but I was built-in in Kentucky and I lived there for thirty years. I apperceive commodity about what the pundits will go on calling our disconnected country.

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But the country is not divided. The animal affection is divided.

I wrote book proposals, I apprehend maps. I did aggregate humanly accessible except booty the trip. And then, a few weeks afore Election Day, I went up into the attic. Booty me to the eye of the storm, I said to my suitcase, and my attache said, Okay.

North Dakota, October 2016. Twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. My car died thirty account from the Bismarck Municipal Airport.

"What brings you to Bismarck?" said a guy I'll alarm Jim. What had brought him to Bismarck? "Married the amiss woman."

"These new cars are annihilation but behemothic computers now," Dan said. He took a baby computer out of his abridged and alleged Bob bottomward at the dealership, who acclimated a medium-sized computer to chase for the band-aid to our problem.

"You're action to drive 83 bottomward the average of the country from actuality to Abilene?" Dan said. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. It's annihilation but two-lane. You shouldn't do that. Why are you accomplishing that? I would never do that. Don't do that. It's aloof farmland," he said, starting the Lincoln. This guardian demon of the aboriginal beginning was a alpine man with wire-rimmed glasses and a gray mustache. "If your rental dies again, you're on your own. But I assumption it's your choice." There is no charge to guess.

The geographic centermost of the forty-eight abutting states is Lebanon, Kansas. For years, I had basic to see it. Not to see it. To bend at the center.

"This is a nice gas station," Dan said. "You and your adorned East Coast accompany ability not eat banquet in a gas station, and I can't say I accusation you."

I told him I was from Kentucky.

"That's all right, then," he said. "You see these tables here? Every Thursday, they advertise a abundant steak sandwich at this gas station. They charge advertise a thousand of them."

I collection east, abroad from Bismarck and Mandan on Interstate 94 through Menoken and McKenzie to Sterling, area I chock-full to eat a half-order of biscuits and gravy and apprehend Outdoor Forum afore axis at avenue 182 for US-83 south.

North Dakota in pheasant division is achromatic silver, yellow, decayed orange and white, biscuit amber and gray, blooming and gold, with masses of crows—the chat for a religious acquisition of crows is not a accumulation but a murder—crows appropriation off from, or clearing into, the blah stubble.

"We accumulate it simple out here," Jim had told me, and it's accessible to see how the ambiance enforces that. Arctic Dakota is simple. For continued stretches, annihilation is arresting but the apple and the sky, and their direct bigness is on a fabulous scale: the animal assembly of Gaea and Uranus, the age-old arena of creation.

In this simplicity, a man is appear as what he is.

"Away with everything," writes Valéry, "so that I may see."

A blurred day. The mirror of Continued Lake at Moffit, bargain accessible by the two lanes of US-83.

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Martha Argerich was on the radio, ripping through the bourréesfrom Bach's English Suite No. 2 in A Minor as I ripped through Hazelton, Arctic Dakota, at eighty afar an hour in my big red busy Lincoln with its California plates.

I thought: Maybe this cruise is not the best abstraction I anytime had. What is the best abstraction I anytime had? How acceptable was the best abstraction I anytime had? Accept I already had the best abstraction I'm anytime action to have?

Temvik Butte, Linton Municipal Airport—Our Concerns: Account for God and Life, Vocations, Patriotism—Lawrence Welk Highway, One Mile About-face Appropriate for the Welk Homestead Historical Site. Welcome to Strasburg, birthplace of accordionist Lawrence Welk.

The sun came out as I anesthetized Rice Lake and entered South Dakota, 120 afar to Pierre, area in the brown-and-yellow appearing unpeopledness I was bedeviled by a angry and camp admiration for a Hostess Baron Don, a alleged amusement I had never enjoyed as a child. Why did I appetite one now? As I advised this, I was bent in a acceleration allurement by a nice agent adolescent abundant to be my son, if I had agape up my aerial academy sweetheart.

Welcome to Herreid, your aboriginal stop in South Dakota.

"Sir, I pulled you over today because I clocked you accomplishing blaster afar an hour in a thirty. Can you acquaint me why you did that?"

"Because I am a fool. That is why."

"License and registration, please."

"My authorization is in my pocket, officer. I'll get it for you now."

"Hey, sir. Attending at me. You don't accept to acquaint me area you're action to put your hands."

"My ancestor was a aggressive policeman in Vietnam," I said.

"And I acknowledge the account you appearance the uniform. You're far from home. I'm action to run this license, and if it comes aback clean, I'll accord you a exact warning. Listen, sir. Shake my hand. I accept a television, you know. I can see these abhorrent cops murdering decent, innocent people. It makes me sick. It makes me cry." He let me go.

Mound City, citizenry 71. Three afar east of Akaska, it can no best be ignored: Arctic Dakota is beautiful, but South Dakota, l'Amérique profonde, is added admirable still, with its far vistas of craven and amber and gold.

Three baby silos, seven beyond silos. To the left, a acreage of sunflowers with their active bowed, as far as the eye can see. To the right, corn, as far as the eye can see. And the eye can see actual far.

Outer amplitude becomes close space. All the arresting distance, cartography as prophecy: It does commodity to you inside.

What happens in South Dakota is a man sees so far advanced of himself that he can see with his own eyes how things are action to be, what's action to appear next, if he keeps affective in the aforementioned direction.

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Was that assurance defaced, or did it beggarly to announce "Agar, pop. 3"? Agar, Home of the 1977 Accompaniment B Track Champions.

Past Onida and on into Hughes County and the state's capital, Pierre, South Dakota, citizenry 13,646. Aback in Bismarck, Dan had warned me that Pierre was rinky-dink, but it looked all appropriate to me.

When I went to get dinner, the assurance alfresco my cabin said, The apple has its music for those who listen. I ate the chicken-taquito bowl with red booze at La Guadalajara and absolved about admirable La Framboise Island, alleged by Lewis and Clark "Good humered [sic] Island." I saw the sun set over the quiet Missouri River and watched blockhead deals appear in a adjacent esplanade afore walking aback against the grunts and coughs of the trucks on the capital drag. Now my motel's assurance said, Arise Peter annihilate and eat Acts 10:13.

Bearing in apperception what Dan had told me about the accent of gas stations to borough action in baby towns in the Dakotas, I took a adventitious the abutting morning on a superb cloister attempt from a collective apparent Coffee Espresso Latte, Drive Thru in Alley, Live Bait. You guys anticipate I can accomplish Omaha in seven hours?

"If you alcohol that, sir, you'll accomplish it in five."

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Don't die until you've apparent the sun appear up over the Fort Pierre Civic Grassland. But I'd had abundant of US-83. I'd been active comatose south all day, befitting the sun on my left, afire my face. I angry east on Interstate 90, active alongside to old US-16 at Vivian, 187 afar to Sioux Falls.

I had coffee, two eggs, toast, bacon, assortment browns, and added coffee at Hutch's Café & Lounge on Artery 16. Abreast my booth, the audience grumbled about appointment and women.

Can you appropriate those eggs for me?

"No."

I apperceive some men who will action in a cage for money, and I apperceive a brace who will do it aloof for fun. But I didn't apperceive anyone who would drive with me through Nebraska.

In 2014, I had a advancing claimed experience, the affectionate that bisected the time you alarm a aberration and the added bisected an insight—half breakdown, bisected breakthrough. The eyes came to me as I austere a archetype of Michael Eigen's The Certifiable Amount in my grill.

My adherent was horrified. "As acceptable about annihilate a man as annihilate a book," she said.

"No," I said. "As acceptable about annihilate a man as annihilate a acceptable book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a acceptable book kills acumen itself, kills God. It's from Areopagitica."

"Sometimes I abhorrence you," my adherent said.

We watched The Certifiable Amount coil and smoke. It's a acceptable book. Eigen is an almighty absorbing psychoanalyst. William S. Burroughs already claimed that "a certifiable is a guy who's aloof begin out what's action on," but Eigen does added than accomplish wisecracks: He wonders what it agency to acquisition out what's action on. "The certifiable actuality dissolves his apperception in adjustment to apple-pie himself from its elements. Or he may assume to charge to chase grimly through its debris, abrogation annihilation out, as if he were attractive for commodity essential, but still unknown. He cannot blow until he sees everything."

"Where they bake books," my adherent said, "they will, in the end, bake people."

"They bake bodies everywhere, all the time."

"Sometimes I abhorrence you so much," she said.

The cardinal of places in this country that alarm themselves the core, the Crossroads of America, will amaze you—from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Vinita, Oklahoma. In a bold with no rules, in a amphitheater after circumference, every point has according affirmation to be the center.

Kearney, Nebraska, contends that it is the Midway City, 1,733 afar from San Francisco to the west and from Boston to the east. My beef with Kearney isn't Nebraska's problem; it's mine. My aboriginal able assignment, which I botched, was to analysis The Answer Maker, a atypical by Richard Powers set in Kearney. Richard Powers is not my affectionate of novelist, but Dick Powers is a acceptable name for a man.

I apperceive some men who will action in a cage for money, and I apperceive a brace who will do it aloof for fun. But I didn't apperceive anyone who would drive with me through Nebraska.

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A albino babe in my auberge in Omaha had aureate from Baltimore for her company's anniversary meeting. "We could accept Skyped it," she said, her beard still wet, as she pushed the elevator button. "Are you action to one?"

"No, I'm action to eleven. Eleven is like one, but it's alert as good."

She stared into my eyes. "Take me with you," she said.

One backing morning in Nebraska, you deathwatch up and attending out the hotel-room window at a red thread-leaf maple and you say: Remind me what we're accomplishing here.

You say: We are active to the centermost of America. It's a metaphor, ablaze boy. A adventure to the axial issue, a adaptation with the Founding Fathers, the allegorical lawgivers, the Dick Powers.

A boyish boy dressed all in atramentous except for the white soles of his low-top Chuck Taylors and his white socks—black hair, atramentous glasses—he's staring out beyond four lanes of Accompaniment Artery 2 into a cornfield, at the Sapp Bros. gas base in Percival, Iowa. He's still there, staring. The cine posters for Accessible Rider said, A man went attractive for America. And couldn't acquisition it anywhere. In Iowa, you can not acquisition it everywhere you turn. It's appropriate there, staring you in the face. If you don't see America, is that America's fault?

On the fifth day of my trip, I headed west out of Kansas City. One blast pole, like a crucifix. A vulture wheeling over the disconnected highway.

I took I-29 south attractive for the avenue to Topeka. I anesthetized massive car dealerships, and the Worth Harley-Davidson approval covering sale, and Dick's and Dillard's at the Assembly Avenue bypass three abode of a mile from Amity Avenue.

The sky was anemic dejected with thumbprints of billow over I-435 to Topeka into Wyandotte County. I collection accomplished avenue 13 to the Civic Agricultural Centermost and Hall of Fame and the Kansas Speedway, and took I-70 west, alert to the adulteration dribble of AM allocution radio.

At the Leavenworth County line, I saw craven wildflowers and orange-and-white cartage cones and anchored architecture equipment. I anesthetized avenue 212 to Tonganoxie and Eudora on 222nd Street.

Ellsworth Prison is hiring, said a advance busy with a behemothic sunflower.

I entered Douglas County and headed for 1927 Learnard Avenue, the little red abode area William S. Burroughs lived in Lawrence, Kansas, from 1981 until 1997, aback he died. Burroughs's abode in Lawrence, with its white balustrade, is the geopsychic amount of my American earthquake.

It is difficult to understand, alteration it twenty years later, how Burroughs's little book Exterminator! could accept motivated me to become an exterminator. I basic to be a writer, Burroughs was a writer. Burroughs had been an exterminator, I would be an exterminator. What a absurd acumen to be an exterminator.

The Japanese beetle, or Popillia japonica, is a scarab beetle. Animalia, Arthropoda, Hexapoda, Insecta, Coleoptera ("beetles"), Polyphaga, Scarabaeoidea, Scarabaeidae, Rutelinae ("shining blade chafers"). Its colors are coppery and brownish green. It is a admirable little creature.

I basic to be a writer, Burroughs was a writer. Burroughs had been an exterminator, I would be an exterminator. What a absurd acumen to be an exterminator.

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I don't anticipate I anytime knew the name of the adulteration we used: acetamiprid, or chlorantraniliprole, or what, exactly. In June 1995 abandoned I charge accept asleep at atomic three thousand Japanese beetles, maybe alert that many. I am apologetic for what I did.

I collection beeline to the Burroughs house, accomplished a clockless belfry bricked in, I imagined, so as not to accommodate a rifleman a advanced acreage of vantage. I anchored the rental and stood there, staring at the abode area Burroughs had accounting The Western Lands. It was a house.

A man opened the awning aperture and stepped out assimilate his advanced porch. He wore a white T-shirt and red gym shorts. He was baldheaded on top, with a agrarian bunch of albino beard over anniversary ear.

He said, "Can I advice you with something?"

"No, sir. I'm actuality because—"

"Burroughs!" he said. "I will acquaint you. It's actionable to esplanade there. And they will admission you." He bankrupt the door.

I approved to accumulate my impressions. All I responded to was the lamb's ear and daylilies buried by the roadside mailbox. The temple was empty. I stood there, not award annihilation like the deep, common acceptation I had admired for, and I mourned.

Mourning is creativity, writes Alice Miller in Prisoners of Childhood. It's a acceptable name for a book—it would be a acceptable name for our planet.

I collection bottomward to the freight-train base and sat in my car and watched the abuse containers pass. Maersk SeaLand, CSX Intermodal, Schneider National, Hyundai, Matson, China Shipping, Triton.

The redheaded babe at the hotel's advanced board said, "We accept you in our apparitional room. I achievement that's all right." A aperture to addition dimension!

"Maybe I can use it to go home," I said.

People from all over the country appointment that auberge to break in its apparitional room. It has been filmed added than once, and it is mentioned in several books about apparitional U. S. sites.

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In no time I was amusement pills off the top of the apparitional dresser. There is no point assuming this wasn't my plan for my life. On the contrary, it has amount me years of precise, amaranthine accomplishment to access here.

I acquaint myself I'm apple-pie and sober, but it's the aforementioned every time I go out of town: snort some pills, eat some lasagna. I absolved bottomward Kentucky Street to the Kaw River and smoked a Fuente Continued Story. I looked at the ablaze on the water. I fell comatose in a restaurant. The bartender looked at me over her affected eyeglasses and brought me a cup of coffee with six Coffeemates.

"Do you anticipate six will be enough?" I said.

"I like my coffee like I like my men," she said. "White and sweet. You appetite commodity to eat?"

"It says actuality that alike the best blah aficionado will be ravished. Ravish my palate. Relish my pivot. Polish my rabbit. Pilot my radish."

"I'll accompany you a menu," she said.

Why stop in Concordia, Kansas? Because of a Union soldier alleged Boston Corbett. In 1865, Corbett asleep the analgesic of Admiral Abraham Lincoln, who had presided over a acutely disconnected country. Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, had been trapped in a afire barn and Corbett had been allowable to abduction Berth alive. But he could not abide the answer of cutting Berth from the aforementioned bend from which Berth had attempt Lincoln.

It seems Corbett's personality was not able-bodied structured. He had, for example, been so anxious as a adolescent man about the administration of his animal urges that he'd cut off his testicles with a brace of argent bed-making scissors. And the civic absorption focused on him in the deathwatch of killing Berth collection him madder still. Corbett confused to Concordia and dug a hole, and he lived in that aperture until he died.

These, at least, were the facts as I afresh accepted them. I planned to appointment Corbett's Hole. I ample I could acquisition it with a little help. The bounded Boy Scout troop had aloft a abundance adjacent in 1958.

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"And afresh what will you do?" said my friends.

"I'll bend there and see how I feel."

"Have you never heard the announcement Be accurate what you ambition for?"

"Yes, of course. I accept heard that announcement many, abounding times."

In the eyes that came to me as Eigen's Certifiable Amount austere on my grill, I saw that the age-old Egyptians were correct: There is addition apple below this one, a spirit apple alleged the Duat, area Amon-Ra's sun agent rides concealed while we face the aphotic of night. The accuracy of that apple is this: Aback Berth asleep Lincoln, Berth became adumbration admiral of the United States. Aback Corbett asleep Booth, the man who had asleep the man who had been the president, Corbett became the president.

President Berth kills the Lincoln-father, Corbett kills the Booth-father, and afresh Corbett crawls into a clay aperture in Concordia. Until 1894, the year it is affected Corbett died, the admiral of the United States lived like a aerial in a aperture in the centermost of the country.

The admiral of the United States! It is an accessible catechism as to which is added pernicious: the ambition to command or the ambition to obey. Area there is no vision, the bodies perish. But the bodies will perish anyway.

We apperceive what we want. Aboriginal we appetite to accomplish a admiral or a king-in-the-woods, a asperse or a father-god. Afresh we appetite to annihilate our god.

We appetite to annihilate the abundant white god beneath the sea, as in Moby Dick, as in Jaws, and we appetite him to acceleration from the comatose so we can annihilate him again, as in Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D, and Jaws: The Revenge.

Most of all, we don't appetite to apperceive that the him we annihilate is absolutely her: a white bang camouflage a atramentous hole.

And why shouldn't we annihilate our god? It's not as if Jesus was such a sweetheart. When's the aftermost time you apprehend the Parable of the Talents? "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall accept abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken abroad alike that which he hath. And casting ye the barren assistant into alien darkness. . . . Depart from me, ye cursed, into abiding fire."

Or, as Billie Holiday sang, "Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose / So the Bible said, and it still is news."

On my way to Concordia, I collection accomplished McCray Lumber and Millwork, Nail Arts, Lawrence Feed & Farm Supply, Title and Payday Loans, Jayhawk Pawn & Jewelry ("money to loan"), and CarQuest.

I took I-70 west. At the Topeka burghal limits, I saw a billboard: The Angelic Bible. Inspired. Absolute. Final. 855-FOR-TRUTH. Psalm 119:89—which is to say: For ever, O LORD, thy chat is acclimatized in heaven.

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I anesthetized Hickory Knob, and Buffalo Mound, and Paxico. I anesthetized avenue 301 to Fort Riley, home of the Big Red One and the U. S. Cavalry Museum. I collection accomplished the 2nd Friendliest Yarn Abundance in the Universe. At avenue 250B, I took US-81 north.

I was accomplishing ninety-five afar per hour in a car I didn't own, alert to Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls" in the average of Kansas. Happiness. The sky was everywhere. I anesthetized Snell Excavating and Demolition at the Concordia burghal limits.

The girls I met aback I chock-full to ask directions, Raylene and Miranda, were candied and helpful. They said there'd been a big rain and I'd never accomplish it up the addled acropolis to Corbett's Hole. They sketched an alternating route.

"I can't accept you said my name appropriate the aboriginal try," Miranda said. "My mother invented it. She couldn't adjudge whether to name me Mary or Amanda. But that didn't account you any botheration at all."

I was accomplishing ninety-five afar per hour in a car I didn't own, alert to Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls" in the average of Kansas. Happiness.

When the alley turns to dirt, you're assimilate something. Aforementioned goes for a arch two cars can't canyon ancillary by side. Soon I was throwing up mud in a banty tail. In the rearview mirror, I saw my annoy advance zigzagging out of the Walk-in Hunting Area.

Alfred, accompany me my Dante: Let all those whose addled minds are still affronted / by abortion to accept what point it was / I had anesthetized through, adjudicator if I was perplexed.

A militarist came in low. The car fishtailed in the mud. I was ashore in a wet, amber aperture in the centermost of our country.

South of Belleville, I angry west on US-36. A man cutting a flower-print dress got out of a minivan at Panther Pause abreast Scandia, a accessibility abundance on the Republican River. If it wasn't a dress, I'd like to apperceive what he anticipation it was.

I collection through Montrose. Except ye see signs and wonders, ye shall not believe, says the Gospel of John. I saw a assurance that said, Welcome to Mankato. I saw a raccoon bridge the alley in ample daylight. I saw a assurance for Mac's Kwik Stop Gas=Grub. I saw a assurance for the anniversary Jewell County Threshing Bee.

"You're far from home," a man at the abutting gas pump said.

I looked at his van's plates. Utah.

"I could say the aforementioned about you. That's appealing country, that Utah. I was abandoned in Zion once."

"You were abandoned in Zion?" he said. "That's funny."

"It wasn't funny at the time."

"That's not what I mean. It's like adage you were captivated captive in heaven. You apperceive what I mean? The alcazar of Zion is the burghal of David. Out of Zion, the accomplishment of beauty, God hath shined. You know? Let them all be ashamed and angry aback that abhorrence Zion."

"Got it."

"Yet accept I set my baron aloft my angelic acropolis of Zion. The LORD loveth the gates of Zion. The Redeemer shall appear to Zion."

"Right on."

"Thus saith the LORD, I am alternate unto Zion."

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"Yes, man," I said. "I accept you."

Lebanon, Kansas. The centermost of the country. A abundance of stones, a plaque, an American flag, a blooming barbecue table, a spring-loaded toy horsey for accouchement to ride on. And a little chapel.

A man took a selfie while in his added duke he held—what? "I told my acquaintance I was action to the abdomen button of America," he said, "and what I've got actuality is the better fistful of axis lint I amount anybody has anytime seen. Can you brainstorm how abounding weeks I bankrupt my dryer clarify to aggregate all this?"

I strolled accomplished the accouchement at comedy and went into the little white chapel. On the belvedere in the comatose centermost of our country, a Bible was accessible to Ezekiel 36:36–38:7, the basin of dry basic and Gog in the acreage of Magog.

Marion, don't attending at it, I heard Indy say. Shut your eyes, Marion, don't attending at it, no amount what happens.

Instead, I knelt to pray. But what to pray.

Despeñéme en la sima y saqué a luz lo escondido de su abismo, says the Knight of the Wood to Don Quixote: I threw myself into the abysm and brought to ablaze what lay hidden there in darkness.

I said: Our Father, who art in heaven.

Outside, in the park, a little babe shouted, "Daddy, look!"

I collection abroad from the center. I anesthetized a anemic craven cinder-block garage.

I took 181 south to Downs and angry east on 24 and anesthetized Cawker City, home of the world's better brawl of twine. I anesthetized Waconda Lake and Beloit and Asherville and Glasco and Miltonvale and Clay Center, and aloof afore Leonardville I angry south on 82 and afresh east afresh at Bala on 24-77.

I was arctic of Maple Hill, fifty-four afar out of Topeka, aback the radio warned me that circulatory action had been detected, circulatory actuality a affable way to say tornadic. It's difficult to advance the activity you aren't in Kansas anymore aback you're still in Kansas.

I afflicted the radio until I begin Led Zeppelin arena "Trampled Beneath Foot" and angry it up as loud as it would go. Appealing loud.

On the belvedere in the comatose centermost of our country, a Bible was accessible to Ezekiel 36:36–38:7, the basin of dry basic and Gog in the acreage of Magog.

I collection into the better storm I anytime achievement to see. All I saw was sky, and the storm abounding the sky. It began to barrage whomping big rocks. I saw a bifold bubble affecting on both ends while lightning addled consistently all annular it.

Oh my God, you can't be serious, I thought. What is the point of active ten hours out actuality accomplished area Judas threw his boots if no one is action to accept me aback I get home, unless you bodies see signs and wonders you will never believe, but I'm attractive appropriate at it and I still don't accept it.

Before long, I was hydroplaning beyond an bypass at avenue 355 to Forbes Acreage Airport via 75 south. As I spun in circles, I anticipation about my own death. It has to appear sometime.

To Oklahoma afresh I came,where the auberge bar had bristles trompe-l'oeil bookshelves corrective on its walls and not a distinct absolute book to be seen. There was commodity faintly untoward, not to say treif, about my fried-chicken sandwich served with an over-easy egg on top. I ate it. I can eat fifty eggs.

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There were weddings in Oklahoma, weddings everywhere I turned. The brides' mothers appealed to me abundant added than the brides, a assurance of a new era in a man's life.

In those huge Oklahoma skies, anniversary black was momentous. I listened to the Schweriner Blechbläser-Collegium comedy Handel for assumption as the sun went bottomward over Oklahoma City.

In the morning, in Oklahoma, a retired dairy agriculturalist told me and my new acquaintance Gloria about the old S&H blooming stamps over country-fried steak with gravy, biscuits, breakfast potatoes, and two poached eggs.

"Long day?" Cody asked aback I pulled over for a sandwich at his cafeteria counter. He could acquaint aloof by looking. I had to accept it, the drives were cutting me down. "You be careful. Drive safe, now."

I took I-40 west through Oklahoma to Texola at the accompaniment band and on to Shamrock, to resume active south on US-83.

Everywhere I angry in Oklahoma, I saw signs instructing me to stop actuality or there and buy this or that. But in South Dakota, the alley signs had said, It is banned to stop your car in the adequate Civic Grasslands.

Do you anticipate I can accomplish Abilene in four hours?

"I've never heard of that town, sir."

In Texas, Avenue 83 passes through Perryton, Canadian, Wheeler, Shamrock—another Crossroads of America, with a Happy Accompaniment Bank and a Dollar General, Tendall's Rexall Drugs, Sears Robertson Refrigeration, Geana's Chop Shop, Accurate Remodeling, Bartlett's Lumber & Hardware, Budget Fuels, James Reneau Seed Company, and the El Sombrero Restaurante—through Lutie and Wellington—home of the Wellington Skyrockets 2013 accompaniment football champions, home of the Salt Fork Cafe and Cherokee Inn, Roberson Family Restaurant ("truck parking at rear"), the Gettin Spot Drive Thru and the Taco Shack—through Childress, Paducah, Guthrie (pop. 160), Aspermont (pop. 919), Hamlin, Anson, and Abilene. It's like a song, or a poem. It's the country itself that writes the poem.

Every man at the gas base in Childress was cutting a cowboy hat.

Three comatose agrarian boars lay by the ancillary of the alley in Radium, Texas.

Welcome to Anson. Waylon's Annoy Service, the Western Observer bi-weekly (est. 1883), Anson Chamber of Commerce Welcomes Hunters, Haechten Crop Insurance, and Butterbeans Busted Knuckle Garage.

And afresh there was Sam. I handed over my rental car and got in Sam's shuttle for a ride to the Eleganté hotel.

We Admire Americans Who Don't Forget Their Roots

He said, in his amazing English, "Tell me something, sir. You for Trump or Hillary? It don't amount abundant to you? Listen, sir. Aback Hillary Clinton crooked. Aback she crooked. And she lie."

"To a assertive extent, that is true," I said. "But Donald Trump is additionally crooked. And about every chat he says is a lie."

Sam seemed never to accept advised this. "Yes," he said, and he frowned. "But I acquaint you, sir, aback they demography In God We Assurance off the money. Aback this country congenital on God and trust. I assurance him. In my gut."

Sam trusted his gut. I'm not adage I accusation him. My aptitude had taken me in chase of my country's certifiable core, or my own.

My gut said, Drive, and I answered, O gut, I apprehend and obey.

When's the aftermost time you had a continued attending at what emerges from your gut?

Sam alone me off at the Eleganté auberge beyond from the Mall of Abilene. I ordered the Monterrey bowl at Ta Molly's (two sour-cream craven enchiladas, one bendable cheese burrito, refried beans, rice, and guacamole) and cut the end off a cigar with a steak knife at the table.

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I ate my banquet and absolved out into the aphotic and sat on a bedrock and lit my cigar. A barter slowed and a man leaned out its passenger-side window.

"You're an asshole!" he shouted.

This commodity originally appears in the May '17 issue.

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