Iowans
Bryson elucidates, “Above all, Iowans are friendly... In Iowa you are the centre of attention, the most interesting thing to hit in town since a tornado carried off old Frank Sprinkel and his tractor last May. Everybody you meet acts like he would gladly give you his last beer and let you sleep with his sister. Everyone is happy and friendly and strangely serene.” Bryson’s illustrations suggest that the Iowans exhibit extraordinary friendliness. Consequently, their pleasantness may elicit suspicion in an individual who is not accustomed to it. Therefore, a visitor is bound to pump into sociable people throughout Iowa.
“Grandparents’ House”
Bryson recounts, "It was always Christmas at my grandparents' house, or Thanksgiving, or the Fourth of July, or somebody's birthday. There was always happiness there. When we arrived, my grandmother would scuttle off to pull something fresh-baked out of the oven. This was always something unusual." The house is utterly merry at all times. Being in the house activates gratification. The grandparents are absolutely hospitable which makes visitors including Bryson to feel welcome. Baking denotes the grandmother's generosity which guarantees that all will be nourished adequately while at their house.
Shacks versus ‘Good houses’
Bryson remarks, “Occasionally, there were also nicer houses white people’s houses - with big station wagons standing in the driveways and a basketball hoop over the garage and large, well-mown lawns. Often these houses were remarkably close -sometimes right next door - to a shack. You would never see that in the North. It struck me as notably ironic that Southerners would despise blacks so bitterly and yet live comfortably alongside them, while in the North people by and large did not mind blacks, even respected them as humans and wished them every success.”
Bryson makes this observation on the way to Tupelo. The racial experiences are epitomized by the types of dwellings which are attributed to races: shacks are for the blacks whereas the good houses are for the whites. Accordingly, being born black predestines a child to the shack dwellings whereas being born white implies that that child is more likely to dwell in decent houses. Bryson delves into the North versus South binary by contrasting the treatments of the blacks in both regions.
He depicts the North as favorable because blacks are treated with dignity. Comparatively, in the South, the blacks re deemed inferior to the whites. The arrangement of dwellings in the south is ironic because Whites and blacks live in close proximity: the whites in the South would have been expected to live far apart from the blacks whom they despise. The closeness of shacks and good houses, in the south, depicts the intersection between whiteness, wealth, blackness and poverty.
George Washington
Bryson writes, “But that’s the appealing thing about Washington, he is such an enigma. We don’t even know for sure what he looked like. Almost all the portraits of him were done by, or copied from the works of Charles Willson Peale. Peale painted sixty portraits of Washington, but unfortunately he wasn't very hot at faces. In fact, according to Samuel Eliot Morison, Peale's pictures of Washington, Lafayette and John Paul Jones all look to be more or less the same person."
The tranquillity at Mount Vernon elicits George Washington's memories. The portraits are not effective in pot raying Washington accurately. Accordingly, despite being popular, he is still mysterious because his exact face is a puzzle that has not been unraveled by Peale's photographs. Similarities with other figures such as Paul Jones underscore the George Washington's mystifying nature that Historians would find complex to deconstruct entirely.
