Writings by David A. Ek

When Death Doth Close Cairo’s Tender Eyes

by David A. Ek

Death is displayed prominently in literature—an insecure salesman, Ivan Ilyich’s traumatic experience, legacy-obsessed archbishops, and Faulkner’s Addie character narrating her family’s coping with her sufferable demise. Few, however, explore a city’s downward spiral. Why is that? It may be while death comes to archbishops and to all people, cities are eternal.

Living flesh decays. This is a truism as sure as time’s one-way trajectory. The only truly eternal things are legends, rumors, and our collective capacity to make bad choices. However, barring a global dystopian catastrophe movie à la Mad Max or The Planet of the Apes, cities and the concrete jungle only appear eternal.

Cities are enduring testaments and living monuments to humanity’s permanence and resilience. Like family legacies, they mark a community’s collective spirit and aspirations. If banks are too big to fail, then cities are too human to die. Besides, if cities are merely ephemeral, what does that say about the importance of humankind and our longed-for enduring legacy?

Surely, cities die, the inquisitive may counter. Ghost towns are real. We hardly need to imagine their footprints. Ghost towns litter the American landscape as fleas on a back-alley mongrel. However, cities are different—because we humans are different. Towns are newborn pups, flashes of inspiration, and opportunities to momentarily seize, while cities endure and have become an ingrained tenet in our lives. Until recently, this was true. Cairo is the lone exception.

Can Cairo provide insights into our society and who we are as people? A look inward is monumentally hard—to see our true self, not the airbrushed image we see in a mirror. A true image would show not just the aspirational and noble but the baggage-filled prejudices, preconceived notions, warts, blemishes, and dogged rigidity—fleas and all—that lies below our thin and fragile veneer. Cairo knows something about this veneer and death—the death of its people, buildings, and sense of community.

Cairo’s proximity to the Great Pyramid Complex leads some to think the city existed during Ancient Egyptian times. But no, the Egyptian Cairo has a history as separate and distinct as the Cairo at the southern tip of Illinois. Time works miracles upon the shifting sands of what societies value and undervalue. This truism is as relevant today as it was for all the Cairos worldwide.

While the Ancient Egyptians built pyramids, they didn’t always appreciate their colossal monuments. Later, internal shifting sands caused them to abandon their once cherished temples. Policy decisions then, as well as today, have real-world consequences. Soon, glorious buildings fell into decay. Many years later, new ruling pharaohs reversed their predecessor’s neglectful policies, stabilized their shifting sands, and dedicated themselves to fostering a sense of community. They appeared to have become concerned with character, integrity, and what type of legacy they left behind.

Can the same community spirit rub off on Americans and their appreciation for modern-day Cairo, Illinois? Cairo, after all, knows a thing or two about veneers and death—the death of its people, buildings, and sense of community. Do we have the collective will to offer Cairo, the flesh and bone still-living Cairo, a lifeline out of the concrete jungle—or at least provide a life-giving resuscitation? Do we? Or rather, should we—despite knowing what they did to themselves?

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Illinoisans named their Cairo after the Egyptian city to emphasize a shared dependency upon a river and having grown a shoreline culture. Cairo, Egypt lies at the crossroads of dominant transportation corridors that run up and down the lower Nile River. Illinois’ Cairo prospered due to its location at the confluence of dominant transportation corridors that run up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

Cairo sits on the Mississippi River shoreline midway between St. Louis and Memphis. Cairo lies down the Ohio River from the industrial might of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The combined Mississippi and Ohio Rivers provide an economical means to transport goods to market: Appalachian coal, Midwest agricultural products, and Allegheny petroleum—as well as gravel, sand, and bulk resources critical for commercial and industrial growth. The Ohio and Mississippi Rivers connect a sizable portion of the inland United States with international ports along the expansive Gulf of Mexico shoreline. Without the non-stop river commerce that flows past Cairo, much of the nation’s Midwest would not have access to the lucrative international marketplace. For economic prosperity in Cairo’s heyday, there was no better place than the confluence of the mighty Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

Famed author Mark Twain, once the licensed Mississippi River steamboat pilot Samuel Clemens, recognized Cairo’s strategic position. Years after he left his river pilot career, Mr. Twain returned to Cairo. He wrote about this experience in his 1882 book Life on the Mississippi.

Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially built, and has a city look about it which is in noticeable contrast to its former estate….Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade, and her situation at the junction of the two great rivers is so advantageous that she cannot well help prospering.

Unlike Mark Twain, not everyone looked upon the world strategically or considered future potential. Famed British novelist Charles Dickens, the author of the classic novels A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities, took a more cultural approach in describing Cairo in its early tumultuous years. Dickens visited Cairo forty years before Mark Twain’s hope-filled experience. Dickens, in his book American Notes for General Circulation, wrote, “At the junction of the two rivers, on ground so flat and low and marshy, that at certain seasons of the year it is inundated to the house-tops, lies a breeding-place of fever, ague, and death.” Later in the same day, he continued with his description of Cairo.

A dismal swamp, on which the half-built houses rot away: cleared here and there for the space of a few yards; and teeming, then, with rank unwholesome vegetation, in whose baleful shade the wretched wanderers who are tempted hither, droop, and die, and lay their bones; the hateful Mississippi circling and eddying before it, and turning off upon its southern course a slimy monster hideous to behold; a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise : a place without one single quality, in earth or air or water, to commend it: such is this dismal Cairo.

From Dickens’ and Twain’s descriptions, we may conclude that Cairo had overcome its early obstacles to prosperity within the intervening forty years between the two novelists’ visits. During President Theodore Roosevelt’s layover in the city twenty-five years after Mark Twain’s experience, he shared Mr. Twain’s vision of a prosperous Cairo. While in Cairo, Theodore Roosevelt gave a bull-rousing speech to throes of visitors and residents.

Here was the breeding place not of disease, but of heroes, the best people that ever trod the face of the earth. The country that Dickens so bitterly assailed is now one of the most fertile and productive agricultural territories in all the world, and the dwellers here represent a higher average of comfort and intelligence than the people of any tract of like extent on this continent.

Cairo, in its prime, its glory, was a sensory experience. Residents, visitors, and patrons galore flowed down cobblestone sidewalks. Walkways-lined streets wound through deeply set commercial buildings—one after one, built like urban row houses on steroids. A kaleidoscope of color, sound, and motion. Like carnival barkers luring in excited crowds that had been milling about, colorful commercial advertisements, signs, and storefronts erupted as spectacularly as the most robust Fourth of July fireworks display at its explosive climax. Cairo’s streets in the late Eighteen-hundreds had it all—and then some. Excited crowds filtered in and out of one building after the other. Sounds of ferry whistles cut through the overzealous saloon barkers, chiming church bells, and children’s playful merriment. Local and international travelers rubbed shoulders with tailors, druggists, bank lenders, cigar factory owners, buggy manufacturers, restauranteers, and boarding house guests, as well as those hawking dry goods, lumber, furnishings, coal oil, and livery services. Whiskey flowed as grandly within its fifty saloons as it had in the most boisterous Southern speakeasy at the height of Prohibition.

Bursting out of the southern Illinois wilderness, Cairo’s commercial sensory flowage brought business prosperity, prompting the residential population to swell to over fifteen thousand by 1920. The community unified and realized Mark Twain’s prophecy by breathing flesh and bone life into the proud city of Cairo, Illinois.

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A modern walk down Cairo’s streets reveals a sidewalk littered with glass shards, derelict commercial buildings, and ivy-swallowed homes concealed as adeptly as an abandoned military bunker deep in a tropical jungle. Faded signs swinging by loose rusty bolts greet lonely wanderers. Once vibrant thoroughfares now totally deserted—except for an occasional emancipated dog scratching through rubble for scraps that may have blown in from more prosperous winds. Any short walk would take the wanderer past far too many fire-ravaged buildings to blame on faulty wiring. Logic would conclude that hopeless property owners may have, in despair, resorted to taking up diesel and a lighter—and praying that they had fully paid their latest insurance bill.

A walk down modern-day Cairo does not elicit Mark Twain’s 1882 hopeful premonition, Theodore Roosevelt’s 1907 glowing praise, or the idyllic moments caught on camera from Cairo’s 1922 prime. Instead, a Cairo walk elicits scenes from Dresden in 1945. Sarajevo in 1995. The Gaza Strip in 2025. So much had happened in Cairo during the intervening years that it prompted some residents to claim it is the first and only city in the United States to have died. What? You may ask. Death comes to insecure salesmen, legacy-obsessed archbishops, and once glorious Midwestern cities? Not quite. While Cairo is not dead yet, any visit reinforces that it’s in desperate need of hospice care.

This claim should shock us as deeply as an eviscerated Cairo basement that had suffered a lobotomy. Can a city die? Surely, small towns do—they have for a long time. Ghost towns across the American landscape are more numerous than dogs scavenging for scraps in Cairo’s dystopian streets. If towns die, then why not cities?

Philosophical questions haunted me well beyond Cairo’s lonely-shard-littered streets. They stayed with me beyond my cross-country travels—and remained with me ever since. Before exploring these existential philosophical questions, we should first delve into what went wrong.

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For all its lovely prime years opulence, Cairo never outgrew the frailties common to one-industry communities. When a mining town’s minerals peter out, the community fails. So does a river city fail when it disconnects from river commerce. Cairo’s first hit began in the late 1880s when industrialists built the Illinois Central Railroad Bridge—the first span that disconnected the city from the river.

Fortunately, this first hit did not hurt that badly. Despite trains replacing steamboats, the railroad tracks ran through Cairo. City merchants adapted by servicing the railroad’s commercial wants and needs. However, Cairo’s ferry culture, along with its support services, drowned in time’s shifting currents.

The city didn’t easily adapt to the next hit. In 1905, the new railroad bridge crossed the Mississippi River twenty miles to the northwest, thereby bypassing Cairo. This marked the beginning of the end for the city. Just as a mining town needs a mine, a river city needs river transportation, or at least, railroad transportation. To lose both proved catastrophic.

Despite the changes that railroads brought to river communities, commerce still plied the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The newer diesel-powered tugboats pushing or pulling barges had much greater range and flexibility than the older steamships. Consequently, tugs motored right past riverside communities without the need to stop, refuel, or service temperamental steam engines. With fewer services and amenities, the city provided no need or reason for motorists to stop either, so they too, motored right past the once vibrant city. Businesses and residents slowly moved out to search for better economic horizons. Cairo, the one-industry town, never recovered.

Long before transportation shifts to this one-industry town had set Cairo upon an economic malaise, significant demographic changes had swept through the city that would later recast its values, character, and sense of identity. Cairo was no longer a solely lily-white community. A tsunami of freed African Americans left the Deep South after the American Civil War and fled to Midwestern and Northern cities. Three thousand had settled in Cairo. This demographic change agitated the city’s powerful White leadership.

Increasingly, White civic leaders showed all who held the true power within Cairo. Employment became one of the first power struggles. White business owners wouldn’t hire Black workers—and exposed the few they had to poor working conditions and severe discrimination and intimidation. Increasingly, Black laborers began union organizing. Unwilling to budge, the powerful White community increased its pressure to keep the status quo.

A series of escalating scrimmages in downtown Cairo led to the lynching of a Black man by an angry White mob—as they cheered, “String him up. Burn him!” As a further sign of who wielded power in Cairo, the entrenched citizenry displayed the lynched man’s head at a public intersection and sold strips of flesh cut from the victim’s body.

By the 1960s, White business owners still refused to employ Black applicants, but increasingly, Black residents resisted. The African American community protested the complete segregation forced upon them throughout city life. For example, to keep Black people from the city’s swimming pool, city managers turned the public pool into a private club requiring membership. Unsurprisingly, they issued membership cards only to White citizens. Black demonstrators eventually won access to the pool only by circumventing local managers and taking the case to higher authorities. State officials sided with the Black community. However, instead of integrating, local managers permanently closed the pool.

Other Cairo business owners began taking the lead from the pool debacle. Preston Ewing, Jr., as the president of Cairo’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), wrote Illinois State Treasurer Adlai Stevenson that Cairo banks refused to hire Black applicants. State regulators wrote Cairo banks demanding to either lift their ban or risk financial consequences. White business owners continued their business closures rather than obeying court orders and state and federal court mandates.

In the late 1960s, civic unrest in Cairo reached a new high after White Cairo police officers brutally killed a Black resident while in full custody. Frustrated Black demonstrators took to the streets and demanded justice and equal treatment. City managers responded by forming a White-only vigilante group called “The White Hats.” Cairo’s civic unrest escalated and became even more untenable.

Violence broke out on the streets nearly weekly, including neighborhood shootings, sniper attacks, and assassinations. In one series of back-to-back incidents, a demonstrator fired over one hundred rounds into the police station—followed by another demonstrator that fire-bombed the Tri-County Health Center. When emergency responders arrived at the Health Center, a sniper shot at the firefighters. Rather than risking being killed, the firefighters sat back and watched as the Health Center burned to the ground.

Despite admonishments from federal and state courts, Cairo leaders and business managers refused to follow court orders. In the end, city managers lost their power struggles. In 1969, under increasing pressure from the Illinois General Assembly, city managers disbanded the White Hat vigilantes and allowed racial integration to continue. However, with constant violence wreaking havoc on the public sphere, it’s little wonder that economic recovery had stalled. The City began losing population precipitately.

Cairo’s population reached nearly fourteen and a half thousand in 1940. By 1980, it fell to under five thousand. The population dropped to one thousand seven hundred by 2020. In these eighty years, Cairo lost eighty-eight percent of its population. This precipitous drop became a self-feeding vortex. While it is not dead yet, Cairo has become an example of how not to manage a city. How not to adapt to change. And how not to foster a sense of community for its residents—all its residents.

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I’ve long been intrigued by broad philosophical questions. How could Cairoites go along with the polarization and break-up of community values? How could they have tolerated such non-civil behavior within their once proud city? Is this who they wanted to be as a community? Do we all have the same elements lying just below the surface today? Cairo offers many explorations into humanity for us to ponder—well beyond the reach of Cairo’s flood waters.

He broke the silence by introducing himself. The same local NAACP president Preston Ewing, Jr., who in 1967 elevated to the state level Cairo’s ban on hiring Black applicants, was now sitting next to me, probing why I came to the library. I soon discovered that he spends much of his free time researching and compiling Cairo’s history. Preston proudly self-identifies as the expert on everything Cairo. For years, he brought attention to a broader audience of Cairo’s plight and struggles. He had become accustomed to researching alone in the library’s history archives—especially not with someone White.

Once, while pondering such civic notions within the Cairo Public Library archives, the door creaked, and a middle-aged man stepped in and broke the silence. Upon seeing me sitting there alone, his eyes instantaneously froze. Who is this strange guy hunched over archive documents within the rarely used Cairo library shelves? I imagined him asking as he sized me up from top to bottom.

Forever talkative, Preston kept probing me with questions. He was more intrigued by what I was doing than by whatever topic he came to investigate. I think he wondered if I had ulterior motives. Once cautiously satisfied with my authenticity, or at least offering no imminent threat, he let go of the floodgates holding back his Cairo knowledge, thoughts, and ideas. Despite inundating me with pent-up information, I sensed he remained guarded on certain topics. I understand that—a person needs to earn trust. He had no reason to trust me, and history has proven that on racial matters, few outsiders, and even some insiders, are worthy of trust.

Our library conversation shifted to Cairo’s future. I offered several unsolicited and naïve suggestions for reinvigorating Cairo’s stalled economy. The river is still a remarkable asset to the city, I said. Cairo just needs to capitalize upon it in a new way. “Throughout the country,” I added, “many river towns have successfully revitalized their riverfronts.” I instructed Preston that other cities have turned once-blighted land into lively and robust visitor attractions. San Antonio and Boston have all successfully revamped their riverfronts. My volume and animations grew to new revitalized levels with each passing word and praise. By the close of my oration, I feared my naivety had crossed level “11” on the Nigel Tufnel relativity scale (as depicted in Rob Reiner’s “mockumentary,” This is Spinal Tap).

Passionately, I graced Preston with my infinite wisdom in understanding, managing, and directing the African American cultural experience. My wisdom and suggestions floweth over, for I foresaw tremendous interest in Cairo’s revitalized riverfront. I conjured images that if we build it, they will come. If only Preston Ewing, Jr. and the city managers implemented my vision for their future, businesses would fill in as surely as flood waters through a levee breach.

Preston remained silent as if struggling for words. His facial expression turned from sincere interest to polite dismissal. In case I wasn’t clear or animated enough, or that the depth of my African American wisdom would need more time to sink in, I repeated myself. Surely, my logic will transform Preston’s opinion, the Cairo business establishment, and the community’s civic leadership. I envisioned they had been patiently waiting for such a moment—when sage and thoughtful advice would fall from the sky, or in my case, roll in from Fauquier County, Virginia. That someone, and that someday had finally arrived. I had arrived.

In the oft-chance that I was too thick to read his not-so-subtle facial expressions, Preston chose words that maybe even naïve outsiders could understand, “No rich White folk will want to visit and walk through a Black community.”

Apparently, I am more challenged than others, for I blurted, “I would.” However, I cut the thought off upon the instantaneous awareness that maybe, just maybe, I should instead silently listen to Preston and attempt to understand the situation from an African American perspective. The real Cairo reality—not the one conjured by an uninformed visitor with no authentic relatable experience.

Preston’s words further tested and challenged my naivety and sheltered White Middle-Class upbringing. I wondered, could this be true? Would affluent White tourists come in droves to visit a revitalized Cairo shoreline?

Visitors to San Antonio’s revitalized waterfront enjoy reveling in the authentic and perceived authentic Mexican culture. We all can envision non-Hispanic tourists sipping margaritas while celebrating Cinco de Mayo at a riverfront bistro in San Antonio. Along the New Orleans waterfront, there is a balance between the familiar American and exotic French experience—at Mardi Gras or not. But what exotic culture or flavor could a revitalized Cairo riverfront provide? A violently imposed ghetto of racial injustice? Barges filled with grain, gravel, and gasoline? Firebombing, sniper fire, or White Hat vigilantism circa 1969?

Maybe visitors wouldn’t flood into Cairo bringing in wads of new money and investments. Naïve enthusiasm cannot totally replace the realities of place, time, and experience. As such, I have never, and could never, walk in a Black Cairoites’ shoes, or have shared experiences. I am not Black, and I have not lived day-in-and-day-out as a disenfranchised racial minority under an oppressive and deeply ingrained social system. I can learn from and appreciate their struggle, but I could never relate.

Other cities have revitalized their riverfront and constructed riverwalks that offer no exotic experience, including Chicago, Louisville, and Cincinnati. However, these cities already had large and diverse economies that attracted visitors for other reasons, so the river renewal only diversified an already robust tourism economy. Also, for these cities, a revitalized river provided an attractive amenity for its residents. Since Cairo has few residents, who would this amenity benefit?

Thoughts of riverfront revitalization should factor in where the money would come from. With no substantive population or thriving businesses, Cairo doesn’t have the tax base needed for an expensive renovation effort. It would need to depend on private donations—or the state. For a state to prop up a self-inflicted failing city, wouldn’t the state need to have a shared affinity for the local community? For Cairo, do Illinois managers have a shared sense of identity with Cairo? According to Preston, the state has consistently ignored the city’s plight, drug their heels, or buried the problem in bureaucracy. While pondering these matters within the Cairo Public Library, I had an epiphany—maybe not too naïve this time. Timidly, I shared my idea.

“Preston,” I said, “do you suppose one of the reasons for Illinois’ apparent lack of interest in helping Cairo is due to cultural differences, perception, and sense of identity?”

“What? Preston asked.

To better explain, I provided examples. San Antonio is interested in promoting Mexican and Southwest themes along a revitalized riverwalk because San Antonio self-identifies with the Southwest culture. Similarly, a Frenchesque theme to New Orleans’s revitalized riverwalk is also self-evident. However, for Cairo,” I continued bending Preston’s ears, “I see no shared sense of community between Illinois and Cairo?”

Even an Illinois travel brochure described Cairo’s culture as being widely different than the rest of the state. Cairo has a close affinity with the Southern Mississippi Delta region, which is predominately Black. Illinois’ culture is distinctively Midwestern, and mostly White. Statewide demographic data supports these observations. Statewide, Illinois’ demographic is fifty-eight percent White and fourteen percent Black. While Cairo’s is twenty-five percent White and nearly seventy percent Black. This brings my thoughts back to asking Preston a direct question. “Could it be that state managers don’t have an interest in preserving its only Delta community because that is not their culture or identity, nor does it relate to the state’s monied interests?”

“There is a lot of truth in that,” Preston admitted while shaking his head in agreement. This reminded me of his earlier words, “No rich White folk will want to visit and walk through a Black community.”

Preston hesitated as if considering a matter of deep importance, before mumbling, “Since Cairo lies on low-lying flood-prone land, it shouldn’t have been built in the first place.” This defeatist comment caught me off guard. For one, from what I’ve read and seen, Preston had spent his entire life championing Cairo’s interests and preserving its history. Also, throughout Cairo’s history, the city has flooded no more frequently than other low-lying Mississippi River cities, including many thriving economically. Despite appearing to contradict his recent defeatist comment, Preston emphasized that since the construction of the floodwalls encircling the city, Cairo has not flooded once—not once.

Fundamentally, I can see the logic in the notion that we shouldn’t have built Cairo on flood-prone land. However, by the same logic, we should never have built New Orleans below sea level. We should never have built Los Angeles on the San Andreas Fault. Farmers should never have planted water-hungry crops in the arid West. Denver and other populated places should never have sprouted in eastern Colorado if the only dependable water to sustain them is in western Colorado. Kansas farmers should never draw more water from the Ogallala Aquifer than nature recharges. We should never have built cities in the Southern Puget Sound region on former volcanic mudflow deposits. Marin County California should never have built in fire-ravaged canyons. South Florida should never have drained their protective wetlands and hurricane-moderating barrier reefs. Throughout the world, we’ve built things that we shouldn’t have—if we were a strategically thinking species and one given to societal reflection.

We can only deal with the world we have been given, not what we should have had—or what we should have done. As such, Cairo should not be the sole community punished for our past sins and poor strategic thinking. To do so would only perpetuate the inherent bias towards Cairo and its people. Cairo is, or can be, more than the sum of a string of bad decisions that triggered and enabled humanity’s darkest prejudices.

Mark Twain once wrote that Cairo’s location is “so advantageous that she cannot well help prospering.” In this observation, Mr. Twain failed to account for the depth of prejudice, stubbornness, and inhumanity of the city’s powerful elites that would one day consume Cairo’s heart and soul. As such, maybe Charles Dickens’ opinion of Cairo was more suited to the Cairo elite:  “…teeming…with rank unwholesome vegetation, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise.”

Cairo’s prejudiced elites also proved that cities, and not just towns, can, in fact, die. However, one could legitimately argue, Cairo’s death was unnatural. If so, then was it involuntary manslaughter? Although I would suggest that it wasn’t involuntary and wasn’t just the slaughter of a man, but instead the slaughter of men, women, children, and the hopes, dreams, and inspiration of an entire community.

Cities may differ from towns because time has allowed them to develop and foster a more mature sense of identity. Cairo may not have matured enough to develop into a fully functioning community. Perhaps this discussion is best reserved for study and reflection—as a lesson of what not to repeat in the present or future.

As a nod to the character Miracle Max in the movie The Princess Bride, shall we say that Cairo is only “mostly dead.” Regardless, while clinically, Cairo may not be dead yet, few would dispute that it is a city on hospice life support and that we as characters and participants in our collective society are to blame.

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While Cairo appears ready for hospice care, there is still a chance for redemption and recovery. If so, how do we breathe life back into Cairo’s moribund trajectory—save it from itself? The Ancient Egyptians found a way to rebuild their decaying legacy. Perhaps we can learn from history and restore Cairo’s sense of community. If we strive for such noble deeds, whom would we include within this shared community? All races, ethnicities, and classes? Across the entire economic spectrum from poor to elite?

These philosophical questions are applicable well beyond Cairo’s floodwalls, for there are similar challenges facing all towns and all cities across the entire American landscape. Today, somewhere in America powerful “White Hats” who lost their humanity and sense of community are forcing their will upon our neighbors and our disenfranchised fellow residents. Consequently, there is a sense of urgency in these discussions. A key requisite for restoring community must be fostering the understanding that integrity and character matter—whether in Cairo or beyond.

— The End —

© Copyright 2025 David Alan Ek. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This story is nonfiction. It reflects the author’s present recollections of experiences over time.

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Through TAR, we travel and experience the diverse Americana landscape. Our last post found us exploring the nature of humanity through the eyes of a Chihuahuan Desert coyote. In the meantime, please check out my website’s Portfolio page for a description of my compelling novels, Pedro’s Pickles and the American Dream and Lizard People: Death Valley Underground, and my relatable literary nonfiction book Nowhere Bound—A Spud’s Reflections on Climbing, Caving, and Other Useless Toils. I encourage you to like or follow my Facebook and Goodreads “Author’s Pages.” Until then, take care and I look forward to our next glimpse into Americana on our next TAR adventure. See you then.