All Gone to Look for America (49 page)

Here is what was playing on Peter’s iPod.

New York, New York – Frank Sinatra

An Englishman in New York – Sting

Waitin’ for My Man – Lou Reed

America – Simon and Garfunkel

All Along the Watchtowers – Jimi Hendrix

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald – Gordon Lightfoot

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? – Chicago

What Made Milwaukee Famous – Jerry Lee Lewis

Swingin’ on a Star – Bing Crosby

After the Gold Rush – Neil Young

All the Way to Reno – REM

You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille – Kenny Rogers

Year of the Cat – Al Stewart

Do You Know the Way to San Jose – Dionne Warwick

Cracked Actor – David Bowie

All I Wanna Do – Sheryl Crow

C’mon, Take Me to the Mardi Gras – Paul Simon

Jambalaya – The Carpenters

Moon Over Bourbon Street – Sting

Memphis – Marc Cohn

Heartbreak Hotel – Elvis Presley

Memphis Blues – W.C. Handy Preservation Band

City of New Orleans – Arlo Guthrie/Steve Goodman

Woodstock – Joni Mitchell

VISITING AMERICA TODAY
no longer means weak tasteless lager. All across the continent there are literally thousands of new microbreweries, and a few of the old ones have been reinvigorated too. Here are just a few that helped me wash away the dust of the railroad.

PETER MILLAR
was born in Northern Ireland and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. He has worked as a journalist for Reuters, the
Daily
and
Sunday Telegraphs
, and
The Sunday Times
based in London, Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow. He was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year for his coverage of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He is the author of two novels, three translations from the German and one book of oral history, and is popular fiction critic for
The Times
.

He is married with two sons and lives in the beer-drinking idyll of Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, when he is not sitting with his eyes closed and fingers crossed in the North Stand of The Valley, Charlton Athletic’s South London football ground.