Blue Highways was first published in 1982, and that’s when I bought my copy. Here is a picture of it on my desk. The pages are yellowed, the print is small, and the book cost $3.95 in 1982. It’s been on my shelves, and in boxes, for all these years.

When I first bought it, I read perhaps 20 or 30 pages, and then I faded. It has 426 printed pages and the print is quite small.

Recently I bought it again on Kindle, at many times its original printed cost, just so I can read it in an acceptable formfactor. Printed books just don’t work for me anymore. And somehow I can read long books more successfully on Kindle, than when I have to turn physical pages.

And there you have it, I have read Blue Highways all the way through. It’s a classic, I have talked about it many times over the years with people, acting like I knew it, and now I have finally earned it.

William Least Heat Moon is a travel writer, and Blue Highways is his most popular book, the one that put him on the map. On the first of day of spring, on March 20, 1978, he left his home in Columbia, Missouri in his van to travel around the country, avoiding all freeways, and  going only on country roads,  which were shown in blue on the maps of those days. Hence the title Blue Highways.

Here is a diagram of his van:

He called the van Ghost Dancing.

Ghost Dancing, a 1975 half-ton Econoline (the smallest van Ford then made), rode self-contained but not self-containing. So I hoped. It had two worn rear tires and an ominous knocking in the waterpump. I had converted the van from a clangy tin box into a place at once a six-by-ten bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, parlor. Everything simple and lightweight—no crushed velvet upholstery, no wine racks, no built-in television. It came equipped with power nothing and drove like what it was: a truck. Your basic plumber’s model.

Ironically, I had a high school friend who took his van, I believe it was an Econoline, across the country in the summer of 1978,  from New York state to Arizona, where I lived at the time, to visit us. It seems like more than one person traveled the nation is vans in those days, but not too many wrote books about it.

He circled the country clockwise as shown on the map below:

In his billfold he had four gasoline credit cards and twenty-six dollars in cash.  Hidden under the dash were all his savings: $428.

With that, he managed the trip around the country in three months, coming back on the first day of summer of 1978.

He tells vignettes of adventures or challenges, and he tells the stories of people he meets and spends time with along the way, be that hitchhikers, shop keepers, bar maids, gas station attendants, fishing boat skippers, ferry captains, and many, many residents in various small towns of America of the 1970ies.

I identified with the stories, because the late 1970ies is when I came of age and started my adult life. One of his stops is Kennebunkport, Maine. I now know that town because it became notorious through George H. W. Bush as his summer estate. The entire country learned about Kennebunkport. But Bush became president in 1989. Blue Highways was published in 1982, and the trip happened in 1978. Nobody then had ever heard of Kennebunkport, except for the locals there.

I saw many parallels of what one might encounter on a trip around the nation on blue highways today, and what it was like in 1978. It almost makes me want to retrace his trip.

Reading Blue Highways for me was rewarding just because I can now say I read the old yellowed book. It was a nostalgic trip through my early years. When I put the book down I decided I am definitely ready for an extended road trip.

I need to get out!