Blue Highways: A Journey Into
By William Least Heat Moon
I first picked up Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon from the book exchange shelf of the English Department when I was in college. It has remained one of my top ten favorite books since that time.
The opening lines are some of the most intriguing I have found in any book. I copied them down and have read and re-read them over the years, “Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren’t turned properly; they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources.” I have always found this to be true but in a useful way, clearing away the inhibitions that held back my best writing.
The adventure started in the late 1970’s when William Least Heat Moon took his truck, Ghost Dancing, on a circuitous route around the United States, sticking to the old “blue highways,” the less traveled roads that were marked in blue on the map, where people lived. He was a thirty-eight year old English professor who had just lost his job and realized his estranged wife wasn’t coming back.
“Call me Least Heat Moon,” he introduces himself. “My father calls himself Heat Moon, my elder brother Little Heat Moon. I, coming last, am therefore Least. It has been a long lesson of a name to learn.”
Perhaps it was his simple rating scale that started my fascination with mom and pop diners -
“No Calendar: Same as an interstate pit stop.
One Calendar: Preprocessed food assembled in New Jersey
Two Calendars: Only if fish trophies present.
Three calendars: Can’t miss on the farm-boy breakfasts.
Four calendars: Try the ho-made pie too.
Five calendars: Keep it under your hat, or they’ll franchise.”
The beauty of the land he describes has made me want to pack up and take off every time I re-read it, “I went to the Trace again, following it through pastures and pecan groves and tilled fields; wildflowers and clover pressed in close, and from trees, long purple drupes of wisteria hung like grape clusters.”
He encounters people all along the way and shares their wisdom in their own words, like the delightful conversation with the waitress in the three calendar café where he is served a biscuit with a smiley face button on it because he looked like he needed one. The waitress asks what he’s looking for and he responds at last with “harmony.” She tells him, “I started out in life not likin’ anything, but then it grew on me. Maybe that’ll happen to you.”
The author deftly weaves the interesting bits of conversation with haunting descriptions. “It was one of those moments that you know at the time will stay with you to the grave: the sweet pie, the gaunt man playing the old music, the coals in the stove glowing orange, the scent of kerosene and hot bread.”
It is this blend of philosophy, introspection, descriptions of land, people, architecture and explanations of the history that built it all which give the book its’ distinctive feel. It is a slow book for deep reading, perfect for the coming winter.
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