Stories from travels in

Americas

A cowboy stole my heart

My bucket list is long and varied but right up there was to go to a real, live rodeo. One that wasn’t for tourists but

The land of enchantment

The New Mexico state motto  is Crescit Eundo (It grows as it goes). From the epic scientific poem De Rerum Natura   (On the nature

The mother road

I finally got to drive Route 66. Not all of it, just a short stretch, but enough to feel the magic. Dubbed the ‘Mother Road

Larger-than-life eccentricity

The city of Amarillo, TX, is sitting on 90% of the world’s helium supply. Aha, I hear you say, that might explain the association with

The Mystique of Texas

I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a

A trail of tears

Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn – ah, yes, Robert Burns, you certainly got that right. The countless thousands I have in mind

Odd ducks and Beale Street

Memphis might be the home of the blues but in the heat of the sun on a Thursday afternoon in June, it’s heart was bordering

When the sun came out

Sam Phillips didn’t know his ass from his elbow when it came to recording music. He winged it. And he made mistakes. And those mistakes

What a waste of a good man

Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis’s voice seeps through cracks in the pavement and every public TV shows him in action. Hotels have guitar-shaped pools and 24/7