ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Least Heat-Moon, the pen name of William Trogdon, is of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He lives near Columbia, Missouri, on an old tobacco farm he’s returning to forest.
His first book, Blue Highways, is a narrative of a 13,000-mile trip around America on back roads. His second work, PrairyErth, is a tour on foot into a small corner of the great tallgrass-prairie in eastern Kansas. River-Horse is an account of his four-month, sea-to-sea voyage across the United States on its rivers, lakes, and canals. His three books of travels have never been out of print. Heat-Moon is also the author of Columbus in the Americas, a compendium of the explorer’s adventures in the New World.
* Contextual footnote for those offended: Gus Kubitzki said he once visited the opolis of Halfway, Missouri, to see about joining the Halfway Christian Church, figuring it accurately described him, but his aged mother (who forbade him to use the word Devil in her presence lest evil be called forth) told him he’d be better off in Peculiar where maybe they had a Christian church for his kind. I have all this on his authority. (back to text)
* Anyone thinking Southern speech is slow has not traveled enough among the magnolias, for a true Southerner can roll out the words as fast as any Brooklynite about to miss the F train; in truth, below Mason and Dixon’s Line, most verbal slowing down is for narrative punctuation, an art the youth of Yankeedom could well stand to learn. (back to text)
* In the year I write of Gus’s dust, 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid and 100,000 tons of metals will be put into the soil to make newly deceased Americans comfortable. Kubitzki’s cadaver remains even yet to turn in his coffin at the refusal to give him a green burial. He wanted nothing more than a cotton shroud. (back to text)
* Pickle Pie: 5 eggs; 2 cups sugar; 1 tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon extract; 2 tbsp cornstarch; l cup and 2 tbsp light cream; 1/2 cup melted margarine; 12 ounces sweet pickles, drained and ground; 2 pie shells. Beat eggs and sugar until lemon-colored and thick; beat in spices, extract, cornstarch, cream, and margarine. Stir pickles into mixture and pour into 2 pie shells. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 to 75 minutes or until a knife into the center comes out clean. [Q tip: Add a soupçon of diced sweet pickles for crunch.] (back to text)
William Least Heat-Moon, Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey
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