The Lost Continent

Feeling vaguely homesick for Blighty, I walked up to have a look at it and was disappointed to see that there wasn't anything particularly British about it. The guy behind the counter wasn't even wearing a turban.

You can see them from a long way offin Kansas you can see everything from a long way off-glinting in the sunshine. At first you think the truck must be broken down or abandoned, but just as you get within thirty or forty feet of it, it pulls out onto the highway in front of you, causing you to make an immediate downward adjustment in your speed from sixty miles an hour to about twelve miles an hour and to test the resilience of the steering wheel with your forehead. This happens to you over and over. Curious to see what sort of person could inconvenience you in this way out in the middle of nowhere, you speed up to overtake it and see that sitting at the wheel is a little old man of eighty-seven, wearing a cowboy hat three sizes too large for him, staring fixedly at the empty road as if piloting a light aircraft through a thunderstorm.

Everything about them looked brandnew and unused-their clothes,

I may have been that stupid once, but I was never that shallow. These kids wear button-down-collar shirts and penny loafers. They look like they're on their way to an Osmonds concert. And they don't know anything. You talk to them in a bar and they don't even know who's running for president. They've never heard of Nicaragua. It's scary."

The Lincoln Memorial is exactly as you expect it to be. He sits there in his big high chair looking grand and yet kindly. There was a pigeon on his head. There is always a pigeon on his head.