For High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I’m Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas. Today we are talking about The Lost Continent: Travels Around Small Town America by Bill Bryson. I love this book.
To me, this is like going on vacation without leaving your home! And it only costs you the time to read the book. Bill Bryson was raised in Iowa. As a small kid, he said, “I just want to get out of Iowa. I just want to get out of America.” When he becomes an adult, then, he moved to England and after ten years in England, he comes back to America when his father dies and he decides to embark on a small town American journey.
He tells stories of his childhood and he mingles it with stories across his travels. There are plenty of funny things.
One of the funniest things I liked--because it sounds like something I would do. He’s at Pizza Hut. He hadn’t been to a Pizza Hut. He is just looking through the menu. There are so many options for pizza. He says that every 20 seconds, the waitress comes over and asks, “Are you ready to order? Do you need more time?” Finally, the waitress comments, “You’re kind of slow today, aren’t you?”
Bryson replies, “Yeah, I’m out of touch. I just got out of prison.”
The waitress responds, “Really?”
“Yeah,” Bryson says, “I killed a waitress for being too pushy.”
After he says this, he gets all the time in the world to order his pizza.
There is a lot of nostalgia for me, being a kid in the 80s where he’s talking about listening to the radio as he is driving through the Midwest. He hears a Folgers commercial. It’s the one where they say, “We’ve secretly switched their coffee with Folgers.” Of course everyone in the commercial is commenting about how much they love the coffee. It’s the best coffee in the world. It totally reminds me of the 80s. And, probably my favorite.
My wife and I were actually on a road trip recently and we were listening to the audio book of Lost Continent. He tells the story of going to a movie theater as a kid and everybody would be Nib and throw Nibs at the movie screen. I never did this because I liked Nibs too much. I wasn’t going to waste them on a movie screen. But it made me think of Nibs, something I hadn’t thought of in years.
We pulled into this small grocery store and when we walked in, they had a package of Nibs! I was in Heaven, to be able to eat Nibs and then get back on the road to listen to more of this story.
We have a little history lesson. He talks about going to the battle of Gettysburg. I, like Bill, thought that when Abraham Lincoln gave the Address, it was shortly after the battle and there would be bodies and blood everywhere. No, apparently, according to what he learned, when he was at the Gettysburg Museum, that address was made a few months afterwards. It was a bit cleaned up; it wasn’t at all what he’d thought it was.
Yes, this is a book that you can easily get into whether you read it or listen on the audio – again, it’s much like a vacation without leaving home. It’s a chance to go back to a simpler time. If you’re like me and you’re tired of all the present day problems that we have to deal with, this book takes you to a simpler time and you will meet plenty of colorful characters along the way. .
For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Shane Timson from Colby, Kansas.
