I think Hank's best when he's going off on under-appreciated America. Check out this piece from last week, if you haven't already: What if the government had left Route 66 intact as it was, and people got bored with it anyhow, and the motels and curio shops closed all the same? Imagine the whining about the traffic light in Beatrice, Neb. Even before the highway act was signed we were already going suburban; we were already homogenizing, Woolworthizing, turning Texacoid, watching for the next orange roof of Howard Johnson's. The interstate didn't create us, it is us; it is something we built. However it may depress you to pull off at a building that is a gas station and a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut and a KFC all in one, however dislocating it may be to sleep in a Sleep Inn one night and then sleep in the same exact Sleep Inn four states later the next night -- isn't all of that somehow swept away by that endless glorious panorama through the windshield?
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