Blue Highways, Leaves of Grass and the Parkdale Library Essay -- compa

Blue Highways, Leaves of Grass and the Parkdale program library   I dont know what exactly I expected to find at the library that summer.  Rows of gleaming shelves and neatly stacked books, probably.  No sound exactly the humming of fluorescent lights and the thump of rubber stamps.  The librarians would be demure types - soft-spoken and intellectual.  I thought of the place itself as a sort of heavy temple to the written word.  With these images in mind, I was startled by my freshman glimpse of the employees workroom.  As it turns out, librarians read the People magazines before they go on display, and complain to each other about bratty kids that file through, and they give sticky bottles of Mountain Dew in the refrigerator.  Such are the secret lives of the citizenry who used to strike fear into the hearts of my second-grade classmates.   For me, it was a slightly collide introduction to the working world.  I was starting my first su mmer job, and, by and by hours, reading Blue Highways and thinking about journeys.  William Least Heat corn liquor crossed the country over fifteen years ago, devouring Walt Whitman and concourse the minds of men (410).  I was crossing a small threshold of reality, assemblage observations on the behavior of men.  He turned his back on the trials of keep and I was watching its eccentricities he was growing cynical and I am still completely green. Yet to me in June 1999, our journeys seemed almost identical.  So as Least Heat Moon studied Leaves of Grass, I studied this passage diary and tried to follow its winding philosophy.   It was the philosophy that came in trained  - especially the parts that Least Heat Moon picked up on his way... ...ye party. Marty made his specialty (Mountain Dew bundt cake).  Millie smiled maternally and told the college students to be careful and call their mothers often.  On her last day, Molly drove away blaring he r horn and trice her lights in exhilaration.  As for me (like Whitman, a mere witness), I was wondering if these concourse were really who I saw them to be, and if they would be a part of me because of the measure we spent together.   An old Jerseyman to William Least Heat Moon, explaining his faith in the effectiveness of nature and in mankind ...then say I believe... because it is absurd (392).  It is, indeed, absurd.  And so I too believe.   Works Cited Heat Moon, William Least.  Blue Highways A excursion into America.  Boston Little, Brown, 1982. Whitman, Walt.  Leaves of Grass. Philadelphia, 1900.