North Maple Rag

A few years ago, I bought the book, These United States. It's a compilation of essays, by a number of accomplished authors on their home states. Kathleen Norris, one of my favorite South Dakotans, wrote one of them, so I bought it.

I first read the essays on the states with which I was most familiar: South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Virginia, Maryland and D.C. A few months later, I prepared for my cross country road trip by reading my way across America from West Virginia to Northern California (some of the states have more than one essay). I prepared for the move to Manhattan by reading about New York City, Long Island, and New Jersey. Lately, I've been satisfying a bit of my wanderlust by filling in some of the blanks: New Mexico, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio. I love this book.

While I was home for Christmas, I noticed in the cover that this book is a remake of a similar book of essays that had been compiled in the mid-1920's entitled These United States: Portraits of America from the 1920's. I ordered it online and it arrived today.

The 1920's version also boasts a number of impressive contributors. W.E.B. Du Bois writes about Georgia; Theodore Dreiser about Indiana, H. L. Mencken about Maryland; Sinclair Lewis about Minnesota; and Willa Cather about Nebraska.

So far, I've only read the South Dakota essay (by columnist Hayden Carruth) and already, I'm smitten. Carruth's essay is entitled, South Dakota: State without End, which I like. It reminds me of the ending of the Glory Be prayer ( . . . as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end . . .). As I've been selecting other essays to read, I've been struck by some of the titles the other writers chose.

A few of the best:

Iowa: A Mortgaged Eldorado

Maryland: Apex of Normalcy

Missouri: Doesn't Want to Be Shown

New Hampshire: Not Yet Abandoned (which implies abandonement is inevitable)

North Carolina: A Militant Mediocracy

Tennessee: Three-Quarters of Bewilderment

Texas: The Big Southwestern Specimen (ew.)


And, my favorite:

Ohio: I'll Say We've Done Well


Indeed.