Authors in August: An American Ramble With Neil King Jr.

As described in his book American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, Neil King's journey led to beautiful insights on the people, the history, and the landmarks along the way.

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This video was recorded on August 02, 2023.

David Gardner: Two years ago, Neil King Jr. did something remarkable. After a long and successful career as a journalist, most recently at The Wall Street Journal, having recently become cancer-free. At the age of 61, Neil stepped outside his front door in Downtown Washington DC and he walked North. Well, a little West too and a point Eastern probably, a little bit of South, but mainly North. One step at a time, Neil walked from Washington DC to New York City. It took him about a month, and it gave rise to a remarkable work of nonfiction telling the story of what he saw in his book, American Ramble. I loved reading his book which came out just this spring and I highly recommend you obtain a copy for yourself, whether hardcover or Kindle E-book because I believe you'll love it too. I think this week's podcast will show you why. It's our annual Authors in August series, I'm delighted to kick it off with an American Ramble this week only on Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Happy August. Before getting into American Ramble with my guest this week, Neil King Jr., I just want to mention ahead of time next week on this podcast, our second author in August, will be Sunny Vanderbeck. Sunny the author of the book Selling Without Selling Out, speaking here, not about the stock market, but about one's business. Maybe you are a small business person, maybe you started it yourself, maybe you inherited one, a few generations old. Sunny has deep experience thinking about and helping others sell their businesses, in his words, without selling out. We look forward to having Sunny Vanderbeck on Rule Breaker Investing next week. Neil King Jr. is a former national political reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal. He was deeply involved in the coverage of 911 that won the journal the Pulitzer Prize. He's also written for the New York times, the Atlantic, and other publications. The American Ramble is his first book. A Colorado native, Neil lives in Washington DC. Neil, welcome to Rule Breaker Investing.

Neil King Jr.: It's great to be with you, David, pleasure.

David Gardner: There's certainly a Thoreauvian to feel to your journey and your book, Neil, and even very much at certain points in the words themselves, you are obviously aware of this as you went because starting with page 3, you referenced throughout directly using these words, ''My intent like his, was to take a singular interest in all I encountered. To turn my attentions away from the noxious chatter of Washington, the tribal feuding on television and computer screens, and care only for the particularities I found along the way. To shrink my horizons to that of a walking man and to route my views of the world in what I encountered step-by-step to honor and respect what I saw.''

Neil King Jr.: I was referring to Thoreau's first book, 10 days on a Concurrent Merrimack River. If you look at that book, which was not a great seller by the way, even though it's still in print now, it's just filled with my new two observations. He went out for 10 days with his brother to paddle those rivers and to look at things and to lay down and make a record of where things stood at that moment of that season, of that year. He was a great observer among a whole host of great observers from the 19th century. A lot of the book is a bit of a tip of the hat to the powers of observation, the powers of attentiveness, and the pension for taking time to go see things.

David Gardner: Neil, your subtitle is A Walk of Memory and Renewal. Could you refresh our memory a bit? This was the spring of 2021. What was happening for you personally and for Americans collectively?

Neil King Jr.: Yeah. I like to say that I was coming out of my own illness at that time, I had had a cancer scare a few years before that, which I had successfully beaten back, that had altered my sense of time in many ways and even my sense of wonder I think you could say. At the end of March 2021, we collectively as a country in our world, were coming out of our own collective illness, and that we were beating back the whole COVID tragedy of the year before we thought we were coming out of it. I'd been vaccinated. Most people had masks were coming off. I walked out my door on the 29th of March into a world by the way, that was a profoundly different one than the one I was going to walk into exactly a year before, and so much had happened. The killing of George Floyd, the huge debate over statues, who deserves a statue, the tearing down of the statues, the contested election, the insurrection nine blocks from my house. All that, that's a shortlist was fodder for thought when I walked out my door.

David Gardner: Mark Penn, who is part of authors in August in 2018 when we discussed his book, Microtrends Squared, wrote the following and my question for you, Neil, is agree or disagree. Here we go and I quote, ''We need to encourage every rising cloistered college student to take a trip one summer, not to Israel or France, but across America for six weeks. We have become so siloed that Americans simply don't know America.''

Neil King Jr.: Profoundly agree. I come from a generation and I talk about this a little bit in the book, where people are still hitchhiking. Hitchhiking died, I don't know what its official death date was, but it was like 1983 or something like that. That was the ultimate act of trust and a lot of people now would be like, oh my God, how could you possibly do that? But I crossed the country multiple times in that fashion then. You get to know the country not just physically and its layout, but the mixture of its people quite well when you do that, and I've done trips like that a multitude of times and it makes a huge difference in understanding this place, which is beyond any of our tend to actually understand it but it certainly flushes out your feel for it.

David Gardner: One thing I can't remember that much from the book and I think it's because it's not in the book, not just my bad memory, although it could be the latter, but Neil, I don't recall you sharing too much of your previous rambles over the course of your 60 some years, you just mentioned hitchhiking. Can you throw out some of the other places that you've walked or other experiences you had as younger man?

Neil King Jr.: Yeah. This plays into it because I've been good at this thing and drawn to it for a long time. I did a lot of hitchhiking and wandering around. When I was young, I took a trip in-between two years of college. I took off and I traveled around the world for a year and a half, working in Asia, working in France, working in Germany. I've taken trips when I was at Columbia University, I just went to the port authority, bought a bus ticket to Laredo, and spent the whole summer traveling through Mexico and Central America, just no plans, taking buses, taking trains, even walking, even hitchhiking down there. I was a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal overseas, I traveled to probably 50 different countries. To that extent, when it comes to chatting somebody up at the end of their driveway in Pennsylvania or something I'm pretty adapt to that kind of thing.

David Gardner: A big part of my enjoyment of your book came from never quite being sure who or what was going to be around the next bend in the road. I was reminded of one of my favorite comic novels, which is Three Men in a Boat by Jerome Jerome. I don't know if you've ever read that, have you?

Neil King Jr.: I don't know. I don't know that book

David Gardner: Three Men in a Boat by Jerome Jerome. Well, it's similarly itinerant in its nature, it has surprised people and surprise situations popping up all along the journey. But Jerome's journey up the Thames River was fictional, yours was of course real. Neil, how about giving us a couple of examples of colorful moments, people, or circumstances that you encountered around that next bend that may still surprise you to think about now, two years later?

Neil King Jr.: Yeah, one of the ones that really set the tenor for the walk was oddly enough, on the second day, I'm walking in Northern Maryland a little ways outside of Baltimore, I run into a mysterious older couple and I'm having to take a detour. We get to talking, they're curious about my walk. I tell them where I'm going. They say Ephrata, that's a town in Pennsylvania. We used to live in Ephrata in a farmhouse next to some family name Hoovers, and it was on Crooked Lane, and we haven't seen them for years and we don't know if they're still there or still well. [laughs] I said wait a minute, I'm going there. I can find out. I'll look them up. I'll give them good tight and they were like, you will. As I joke, I became a messenger upon that conversation, and off I went. Eight days later, I came down Crooked Lane, I found the Hoovers, the father, and son. They were astonished to see me. They were old-order Mennonites. They don't have a lot of chance visitors out of nowhere, and I pass along the good regards and the continued health of these people they hadn't been in touch with for a long time. There was many, many examples of that. I met a guy named Ted along his drive. I think the next day, African-American guy out getting his garbage. He looked at me, I told him where I was coming from. He digested a few other facts and he launched into a sermon. That was basically telling me that I was on a holy walk to retune myself and retune the nation. I was like, Ted that's putting a lot of burden on me to think that I'm going to retune the nation. But he was like, we need to be healed, we've been through a lot because of this last year. You're out to heal us.

David Gardner: As I read the book, Neil, I was partly wondering how much of the course you had pre-laid out. I don't think you ever really went into that explicitly. I was also wondering at different points whether you're using GPS, smartphone, how much of that technology were you availing yourself versus let's say the 19th century Henry David? Though I was curious about both the mapping of it in terms of planning it out, but also live map in your hand as you go.

Neil King Jr.: Because I had planned this walk fairly meticulously a year before and then I had another year to even [laughs] more fine-tune it, it was very thought out in that regard and I wanted it to be because I wanted to explore a variety of themes. I wanted to meet people who understood their place, historians, archaeologists, activists of different kinds, and mayors. I had people arrange to meet, but every day had ample time built within it. That was the walking time, the getting from place to place time, where anything could happen. When it comes to the mapping, I had pretty much determined what course I was going to take. But in terms of the actual I'll take it right here, I will take a left there, the little tiny roads I took, and I almost always took a little tiny roads. [laughs] That was all by phone really for the most part, just because those things do that thing effectively. I did have paper maps with me. I did consult them occasionally, but the phone does it well, I have to say and I was not distracted by the thing, but I used it as my guidance system.

David Gardner: I like the phrase little tiny roads and you certainly did walk on many of them. I think when we hear of somebody and you're the only one I know who's done this, who has walked from Washington DC to New York City, we're imagining, oh, those are big cities and surely the Northeast is full of cities. But really you are seeing far more country mice and introducing us to many more country mice than city mice in your book.

Neil King Jr.: Yeah, it's funny. I walked through what's really the most crowded, congested part of the country, and yet, I went far straight North to York, Pennsylvania. Outside of Philadelphia, that was the largest town I went through until I got to New York. That was by choice, I decided to go the whole walk was 330 miles. If you go straight to New York, is what? It's 230 miles or something. I took a roundabout way. I very much wanted to go through that area of Pennsylvania. That was, and still is a place of great experimentation. A Baptist area of Lancaster County, I wanted to cross the Susquehanna over Famous Bridge, I wanted to spend some time in New York. I wanted to go up over the Mason Dixon line at a very meaningful part of that very meaningful line. There was a great deliberateness in the route I took.

David Gardner: Fantastic, and indeed a personal highlight for me was your time in and around York and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In many ways Neil and you can speak to this, I see those chapters as the centerpiece of your book. I think one of the reasons, not the only one, by the way, but one is the time that you spent with the plain folk, Amish, Mennonites, people we as tourists may see an a horse and buggy or remember from the movie Witness. But very few of us have actually spent time with them in their community learning from rather than just observing them. This was a special treat for you. I know Neil and by way of opening up this part of your book, I want to share this about the plane folk from page 129 and I quote, "The plane folks are modest and playing in dress, usually avoiding prints, bright colors, laces, fancy buttons, because the bible tells them to Ashu fineries and adorn their spirits instead. They pin their practices to passages and scripture and see themselves as inhabiting a separate Kingdom of the world, but also a step outside of it. Those that shun cars, electricity, or computers do so because they see those technologies as promoting vanity and self-indulgence and eroding social cohesion. Of course, not everyone likes these restrictions, many flee when they come of age or convert to other practices. But the whole of it endures and prospers despite the outside pressures," end of quote.

Neil King Jr.: [laughs] I fittingly left the city of Lancaster and I crossed through a covered bridge, and it was a portal into this profoundly different world than mine. It's spring and they were out with their plows, with mules pulling the plow. Some of these young men would tip their straw hat to me, and I would tip my baseball cap essentially to them and it was the 18th century tipping. It's hard to the 21st century in so many ways. I had just these really quite fantastic encounters, particularly with a whole litany of Mennonites along the way. The Mennonites are a lot more social and open than the Amish are. By far, when you speak of centerpieces, the most magical moment and really in the whole walk was when I ran into a group of school kids and they were playing this amazing game of softball behind their school. At the end of that, at the end of their lunch, we had a conversation and one of the girls step forward and said that they would like to sing for me and their teachers said by all means. I went into their school and they all got on the risers and they saying these two hymns of the afterlife. It was just such an amazing thing. I mean, I've remained in touch with that class, with the teacher. I've been up there several times. Plain folk, they're also just very open and frank, and I guess I would say trusting, and they extended the hand to me, a stranger walking down the road and we clicked straight off.

David Gardner: Behind you we hear birds. You are coming from your beautiful summer retreat high up in Canada somewhere. Do you want to identify the island?

Neil King Jr.: Yes. It's Cape Breton Island, which is an outer third of Nova Scotia. I hope the crows aren't annoying you.

David Gardner: Not at all. In fact, you're bringing welcome nature into this podcast and to the ears of many. Clearly, nature is something that, well, you have deep experience with having reported from 50 different countries as a correspondent, but also having walked and hitchhiked your way, not just across the Northeast but many places. What was it that was so surprising and, at least for me as a reader, so emotional about those few days with the Mennonites? That one particular day, at the heart of it, just drilling a little bit deeper, what is going on there?

Neil King Jr.: I'm not meant to be out as an evangelist or an apologist for the Mennonite or homage way of life. It's a very patriarchal society and it has its drawbacks and allies. But what I find quite interesting about it is despite the fact that they have a lot of conformity within their ranks, they're very deliberate in deciding what they're going to conform with on the outside world. I don't think many of us make those kinds of decisions. Internet, sure, great. Netflix, yeah, great. Whatever's coming down the road in the way of entertainment or technology or whatever, yeah, great. Automobiles, yeah, sure, whatever. Airplanes, yeah. We just adopt what comes our way for the most part. They are more discerning in that way. Just to have witnessed that time with them for there was brief, but the orderliness that they had, the politeness and openness to me, it was startling. I like that element of wariness above what it is that the modern world is delivering to us and that degree of selectivity in going about it. The thing is, and it's astonishing, which I mentioned in that passage you read, is that these are folks who are living in a lot of ways according to the norms of 200 years ago and yet they are doing extraordinarily well, added financial even. These are not poor people. These are quite prosperous people.

David Gardner: That really is an eye-opener. Well, so were those chapters and I really appreciate that part of the book, Neil. American history buffs, especially ones in Pennsylvania, well, no one remember the name Thaddeus Stevens. Many of the rest of us probably don't. His story, as you told it, had me crying at different points, which is hard when you're reading the book aloud to your wife. But heroism of the truest kind often leaves me lachrymose. Would you share some about Thaddeus Stevens here now?

Neil King Jr.: You know what was so great as I walked in the town of Lancaster? This is a place, that dirt leading up to the Civil War. Even during the Civil War, there were two leading lights of the town; James Buchanan, who was the President up to 1861, and Thaddeus Stevens, a very Radical Republican at a time when the Republican Party was brand new and it was a very Radical Abolitionist Party. He was among the most radical of the abolitionist. He wanted slavery ended right now and at all cost, whatever it took. James Buchanan, this dough-faced, compromising Southern coddling, slaveholder coddling president. They were on the opposite poles. Overall the decades, century, or so since then, James Buchanan's house has been meticulously looked after and they've given all the tours, etc. Thaddeus Stevens' house, he, by the way, was a member of Congress, that other ways convenience committee. Lee force is really that pushed Abraham Lincoln to finally do the Emancipation Proclamation. Lee force is after Lincoln was assassinated, leading up to the amendments of the constitution that officially codified the end of slavery and were the first real civil rights portions of the constitution. Only now is Thaddeus Stevens getting his do there. Now meticulously renovating his house, it's soon going to be a museum for civil rights. That give and take of who's honored, who's not honored, who's remembered, who's not remembered was a big part of the walk, and that portion of it in Lancaster was really right for me.

David Gardner: I have family in Lancaster and I've been to both places now, but I completely concur and I think my Lancaster cousins would as well in terms of your read on how each has been recognized over the course of time. I'm thinking about the Mason-Dixon line. You do tell the story a little bit of Mason and Dixon. Many of us will know the phrase Mason-Dixon line, but not know anything about Mason and Dixon. Maybe you could give a quick racy of that in a sec. But I did want to say that the surprising thing to me about your tale about Buchanan and how you've just characterized Pennsylvania is it sounds like the South. It sounds like the South, but Pennsylvania fought on the side of the North, at least that's how I've always thought about it. My Lancaster cousins would say they're Yankees and generally proud, of course, of the way the Civil War turned out. It was surprising to me to imagine that the South had hiked its way all the way up pretty much to Lancaster and York one way of reading your book.

Neil King Jr.: What are the things that were so fascinating about the walk and why walks show us a world that's profoundly different from driving is you get the subtle micro nation differences as you go. You cross the Susquehanna River, and in the time of slavery and well before that, York was a place that answered to Baltimore. York was a very Southern-looking town and county. Lancaster, on the other side, was looked to Philadelphia. Right across the river but profoundly different places. One was very Southern, the other much, much less so. But the reason we call Pennsylvania the Keystone State is it was the big middle colony between the six Northern and the six Southern colonies. It was this hinge force, the cooling force, the rationalizing force in a lot of ways between those two sides. It's a role that it plays to this day really. That swing state aspect to Pennsylvania was very much the case then and is still very much the case now. You drive through there and there's a lot of places where you're going to see confederate flags out in front of people's houses because of that mixed, strange, heterodox nature of the state itself.

David Gardner: Maybe a little bit about who is Mason, who is Dixon, who were these people.

Neil King Jr.: That's a fascinating story. They were both surveyors, essentially. The two of them met because in 1741 or thereabouts, there was a moment when Venus crossed the sun and they knew in advance, the people who pay attention to these things, that that was going to happen. They knew that by using the right techniques from right parts of the world, they could better measure what the distance of the earth was from the sun. Mason and Dixon were put together by the English government essentially to go off on a trip to the South Pacific to take some measurements that were being taken all over the world. Fast forward to 15 years later, they were sent by the English to resolve this malingering border dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania and actually survey the line between those two states. That became known as the line between freedom and slavery pretty much after 1820 with the Missouri Compromise. That's why we know it now.

David Gardner: Fantastic. Thank you for that. At various points, Neil, in your journey, you recognize and you call it out in your book the privilege that you and, I would certainly say, I in many ways enjoy that in subtle but important ways have even in a sense enabled you to ramble. Would you speak to that here?

Neil King Jr.: Yeah, I walk into a lot of people's places. Not literally their houses, but there were times when I would walk into somebody's barn and say hello and there was a Farrier in Lancaster County where I just walked into the door of his barn when he was showing a horse and he said, well, what do we have here? We strike up a conversation. The whole walk was really pushing of the boundaries of where do you belong, how're you welcomed in different places? In doing that, it's all about first impressions and what's the strength of our first impression on the first impression made by a 60-year-old white guy walking along who does that stuff well is probably going to break for the most part in his favor. I talk about that a lot in the book about how if there is an ultimate privilege, it's the privilege of belonging and the privilege of feeling that you belong in a place. Many people extended that belonging sense to me and vice versa. I acknowledged that wouldn't be an automatic given for just anybody. On the other hand, I do hesitate to say therefore a man of this color or woman or whatever wouldn't or shouldn't take this walk because I just don't think that's the case. A lot of it I think is if you're drawn to this thing, if you consider yourself good at it, adopt at it. Of whatever race you happened to be or whatever gender, then you're probably going to be fine.

David Gardner: Go for it. Well said, a recurring motif in American ramble is the author himself occasionally fist pumping, jumping up in the air, clicking is heels, if you will, going hut, hut. As I've gotten to know you a bit, Neil, you come across most of the time to me anyway, is pretty mild mannered. Are you in fact a closet exuberant. How about resharing here, one of your fist pumping moments along the trail?

Neil King Jr.: There were so many along the way and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that if you just dramatically simplify your life and whittle it down to a small backpack worth of stuff and a destination of each day, but a longer destination of where your walks going to go that are more open to moments of joy. I had quite a few of them, arriving at the Susquehanna was a big thing. I had spent a lot of time studying the history of that river. It's a beautiful river that we don't often acknowledged as such. There was an afternoon when I'm walking along and all of a sudden it started snow, which was so unexpected and it was just a slanted, almost horizontal snow. I just add to ecstatic moment because of that. There were lots of moments like that actually. They grew in their scope and in their intensity. I think as I went in part because I think an experience like this has an accumulative effect in that way. I don't know if that means that everybody or anybody who went out like this is going to have that feeling. I don't know. It happened quite a lot to me though.

David Gardner: I'm quite sure some of my listeners are inspired by this conversation. I wouldn't be surprised if I hear a story or two in the coming months or years by somebody who heard us on this podcast and was inspired to go and do a similar walk him or herself. I'm curious, Neil therefore about some of the practicalities of this. This is a beautifully written book, provocative and reflective at different points. It's history, it's today, it's very personal and yet very national. I really love this book, which is why I'm so pleased to have you kick off authors in August for me this year. I'm thinking about those contingencies on the road, the things you didn't write about or the planning. For example, you always seem to be staying at a pretty cool bed and breakfast somewhere. This is obviously part of your modus operandi. Neil, give us some of the particulars advice to those who are thinking about a ramble themselves.

Neil King Jr.: Yeah, sure. You walk at about three miles an hour. Therefore, if some lodging is only five miles away, that's an hour and a half. You have to be deliberate and choosing where you're going to stay. If you're not camping, that is and I did not plan to camp, which is that much more weight than every other thing. I had to figure these things out in advance, which is not easy, even in a pretty densely populated area like I was walking through. There was that, there's obviously that. Make sure you've got your water bottle with you. I had a lot of energy inducing or restoring things to eat along the way. There were just stashed in my backpack. I went super light. I got about 17 pounds, including my laptop. I carried in my case of fishing by very lightweight fishing rod because I did do some fly fishing along the way. I'd one pair of shoes. It was all purpose. I had no ability per se to dress up when I got two places, I wasn't like carrying a blue blazer with me or anything like that, but I'd pick the clothing I had very deliberately with also with an eye to things that I could watch at night and draw and hang up and know that there'd be dry in the morning, which is important. All pretty sensical stuff for anybody doing this walk.

David Gardner: Thank you and yet very helpful for those of us who have no such experience. You really did pick some delightful places to stay, met some new people. Part of the relationship building that you're doing through the book is those who hosted you and sometimes creates special breakfast or other moments for you along the road that was a delight to read. We were reminded so much of what I was reminded by as I read American ramble is just the inherent kindness of so many people. Often these days we assume distrustfully that people are not looking out for us. The vast majority of people were driving past or walking past every day all across America. I would say probably the world would try to help.

Neil King Jr.: I agree with that. I think that was one of the real lessons of the walk because we all live so much now in this world that's dominated by abstract headlines that we see on the television or whatever websites that we go to, flat screen, news that we tend to digest. When you go out into the world like that where you're putting yourself in the way of other people and having to trust in them, but also to be the object hopefully of their little moments of generosity. It just shows you that there is still that world that is easy to doubt the existence of when you're just digesting it through the other means of the news channel means. I'm not arguing that therefore, all the news is not true and my walk down the real truth because it's a complicated plays. But, my only thing I'd say is that there is a distinctly different world out there if you can walk through it.

David Gardner: Well, and that is part of the renewal of a prominent word on the front cover of your book. It's full of, I would say, lots of positivity without ever oozing or trying to be, but just reflecting what you saw. It wasn't always positive. You used the phrase water bottle just a couple of minutes ago. At one point you tell a parable and you tell a couple of parables actually in a memorable early chapter. One of them was the parable of the empty water bottle. Now, maybe no spoilers necessary. I don't want you to retail the whole thing because it's so beautifully written. But could you lightly speak to the parable of the empty water bottles and maybe the lesson?

Neil King Jr.: Sure. It was a moment where I needed water and I asked a fellow if he could fill my water bottle and he just didn't quite understand that if the house he lived outside of was replete with a lot of water, it could have filled my water bottle and his instinct was to guide me elsewhere to a store where I might find water and it was two miles away and it led me both in the walk itself and then in the book too contemplate and discuss the concept of hospitality and what hospitality we extend to strangers that might come by. Now, in our modern American industrialized world, we've made hospitality and industry in its own right. In the end, I feel my water bottle at a Dunkin' Donuts. I gave it away. But it's an interesting thing where the history of mankind is one with a lot of norms and even codes of how to treat strangers along the way. We've just become a little bit more aloof to that thing now and that was just a real example of that. I joke before I set off and people would say, Neil, where are you going to stay. I say, Oh, I anticipate that farmers will see me walking along the road and they'll offer to put me up in their houses or barns. Of course, I was kidding. That's a long time ago when that was the norm in America. But on the other hand, as you mentioned, I had lots and lots of people who, when they heard that I was doing this walks, that I was just muffins on me or take this coffee or take these cookies or etc. That went on and on, those gestures. That was good.

David Gardner: Yeah. Fantastic. Neil, we're getting ready to close this week's podcast with a short round of buy, sell or hold. But before we do, I want to close out the book portion of our interview by asking you to imagine with me briefly and alternate universe, one that resembles this one in every way. With one key exception, the Neal King in that universe never made the journey to New York and so of course never wrote a book about it. How is this Neal King most evidently different from that one?

Neil King Jr.: [laughs] I don't know. I think there's almost like a chamber. I don't know, within my spirit that was wedged open, that remains there and accessible. That came about because of this journey. I've done a lot of traveling. This was the one time where I basically over a month just focused on the place in front of me, the steps that have me that moment of that day. I watched a spring unfold in a way that I never have before. I'd seen 61 springs and I'd never seen a spring like that one. It created an openness, I guess, it opened a portion of my spirit that I think has remained changed as a result of that. I now tell people that they should, if at all possible, carve out their own ramble. My directions for it is pick a place that's accessible from your own house 1, 2, 3, 4 days, 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks, study the terrain in-between, the story in-between, the history in-between, the geology, the route you might take, the settlement patterns of the people who first arrive there and then set off and extraordinary things can happen. You really realize that there's a magical world out there in the commonplace setting that's accessible to any of us if we go about it with a certain deliberateness and a certain level of attentiveness. I've now driven that same patch of land. I don't know, three dozen times [laughs] since the book came out because I've been doing so many book events. All the drives I've done up and down I-95 have left not one morsel of a memory behind in my mind because it's just liquid lost time. That walk was this time that we all have the ability to carve out. That's just a different, it's almost like a time outside of time and it lives in a higher level of vividness or vitality. It's there for any of us have to find and to utilize. I think in some ways, not only to change me, but it also hectors me now to get about the next thing and have more time like that and not allow too much of this slippery on remember time to pass in the meantime.

David Gardner: Thank you for your eloquence. Neil, I do note this was your first book. Do you have another book in you?

Neil King Jr.: I do yeah. We'll see you won't wait.

David Gardner: [laughs].

Neil King Jr.: But, yeah, I'm thinking about another book that will be somewhat similar in terms of intimate, ground-based observation, but dig a little bit more deeply into our collective story from a variety of different settings, probably 10 or so across the country and geared toward the 2026, 250th anniversary of the country. Yeah.

David Gardner: I look forward to that.

Neil King Jr.: Thank you.

David Gardner: Let's close it out with a short game of buy, sell or hold. Neil, this is our first-time playing together. The simple question is, none of these things is a stock, but if it were a stock, would you be buying, selling, or holding today? Maybe a few sentences as to why. You ready?

Neil King Jr.: Yeah.

David Gardner: First up, hitchhiking, eventually making some comeback, buy, sell or hold?

Neil King Jr.: Big-time buy. I think there's a lot of ways to do that and they are doing it in some communities. Park City and some other places I've heard about where you hold up a red sign and it says, I need a ride to Salt Lake or whatever that within communities. It doesn't have to be cross-country. But look, we have Uber. It's version of that. Strangers getting into stranger's cars. I think there should be a rebirth of it. Yes, buy.

David Gardner: As a young man say or our memory of him, if Henry David throw were a stock, would you be buying, selling, or holding?

Neil King Jr.: Oh, I think I've just been holding because it's not as if Henry David throw has taken off in terms of his influence over America. I think he's been a little bit of a failure in that regard. Are we living according to the headaches of Henry David zeros simplifies, simplify now I don't think so.

David Gardner: As I bet you know, he had a successful pencil business. The throw pencil was a real fixture in the 19th century. There was entrepreneurship and innovation in especially the younger version of the man.

Neil King Jr.: I agree. If you see one of those in the store, by the way, buy it. [laughs].

David Gardner: We'll keep our eyes out. Okay, buy, sell, or hold, Neil changing the names of streets named after confederate generals.

Neil King Jr.: Big-time buy. Yeah, I'm very much in favor of a more modern version of who it is that we recognize and memorialize. I have no problem taking down statues and putting up others or changing names of military bases or streets or whatever. But my main point is is that we have to put the emphasis on validating and real lifting up the forgotten or relatively forgotten heroes like Thaddeus Stevens. That it should be a lifting up and not just the tearing down. I think that part is really important.

David Gardner: Well said. You obviously had one with you. I'm guessing it often wasn't plastic, buy, sell, or hold, water bottles.

Neil King Jr.: Big-time hold. Yeah, I'm a fan of the permanent kind and refilling those and I had one with me all the time though it wasn't always full. But yes, definitely. 

David Gardner:  All right, last one for you, Neil King. If this were a stock, the plane folk living the very same way. Again, artificial intelligence, robots and not even sure in the year 2123 buy, sell or hold?

Neil King Jr.: I would say buy because what's so fascinating about them is that they know how to do actual things. They know how to make things with their hands and know how to harness a horse, they know how to shoe a horse, they know how to plant the actual crop. These are all the things that we are systematically forgetting. I think one of the effects of AI is it's going to accentuate what's most human about us and want us, we're all going to want to value the tactile parts of being human. Because the strictly intelligent part of being human synchrony co-opted by some outside force. We're going to want to be able to be the makers of things you can hold in your hands and they do that.

David Gardner: Just reflecting back on that discussion, near the end when I asked Neil about FIS pumps and whether he's a closet exuberant, he gave an eloquent answer, but I realized he also spoke to it near the end of American ramble. I think we should just close this week's podcast and our talk with Neil, with me being able to share this lovely paragraph as he feels elation walking across the Bayonne Bridge in New Jersey. From page 316, I quote "My elation on the bridge or elsewhere along the way may strike some as a little delirious and it should. The Latin coined the word delirium to describe the state of mind of a person who has strayed from his furrow, from his rut, his narrow groove. The world forms us to follow a thorough back and forth. We do it with a sense of duty. We do it due to flee as though we owe it to ourselves and to others to be so diligent because duty is itself a debt we must pay. But strange things can happen when you stray from that furrow, even for a month. When you walk from your door, not to go to the store, not to go to work to the dry cleaner for a run around the park to pick up dinner, but instead, to open yourself to the world for many days on end. Those steps can refresh the spirit in unusual ways. They can create, in the best of ways, a delightful delirium. Those steps can renew the mind."