AMERICAN GRITLAND

It likely all began when I was 5 and we took a trip in the station wagon from Cincinnati to visit friends of the family who had a dairy farm in western North Carolina, outside Hendersonville, and then relatives living in a summer home in the nearby mountains in Lake Junaluska. It was a whole other world from the suburb I grew up in, and I especially remember the drive down, through Kentucky, heading southeast on US 25E from Corbin, winding through the Cumberland Gap, nose pressed against the window, winding into Virginia briefly, then through eastern Tennessee, through Asheville and finally to our destination. This was before the interstates had been completed, so it was nearly all two-lane the first time, and I remember the many small towns, the accents of the waitresses, the gas station attendants and the family friends, how people moved, what they said. We’d visit every three years, and even though I-75 and I-40 eventually reduced the travel time from two days to five hours, the imp...