One of the neat things about this "100 Days" road trip has been the steady stream of ideas flowing in from NPR's audience. It was a listener's email that guided me to Kentucky houseboat country and to Orlando.
Then came an e-mail from a horse enthusiast, who insisted a visit to Colorado horse country would open my eyes to another facet of the recession.
She was right.
categories: Road Trip
Yes, traveling across the country means seeing and tasting new things. But once in a while you've got to go with an old standby -- like the scrumptious soul food served up by Izola White.
I interviewed the 85-year-old last year at her diner on Chicago's South Side and got my first taste of her salt pork and greens. This week, I went back for lunch and to check in.
categories: Road Trip
Full disclosure? I grew up in Pittsburgh.
There's my disclaimer, before I tell you things in the Steel City don't seem all that bad these days. As 2008 ended, Pittsburgh made news by bucking recessionary trends. Housing prices in 2008? Up. Wages? Up. Unemployment? Tolerable.
All this created a resilient mood in a city hardened by its own downturn, after steel collapsed in the 80s.
categories: Road Trip
As I cruised south on I-75 near Cordele, Georgia, billboards like this -- one after another -- caught my attention.
No, I wasn't interested in discount Disney passes. I was interested in asking the staff how business has been. With vacation travel down, I thought they could have some insight, from their perch 300 miles north of Orlando.
That is, if they were still in business at all.
categories: Road Trip
On my 100 Days trip, I'm finding the recession harder and harder to keep up with. While eating at a the Stone Soup Kitchen, a hip coffee shop in south Atlanta, I ran into Jelani Cobb, a U.S. history professor at Spelman College. He talked to me about belt-tightening at the historically black college for women, and about students dropping out for lack of tuition. But knock on wood, he said, his campus had so far been spared actual job cuts.
No sooner did I leave Atlanta Tuesday afternoon than news comes on my car radio that Spelman was cutting jobs -- 35 jobs, the department of education and more.
categories: Road Trip
Tape: Martha Downey knows what happened to the customers.
This road trip is helping me understand recessionary ripples.
Think about General Motors. One of its many painful decisions involved closing an SUV plant just outside Dayton, Ohio. Gone were a few thousand jobs.
But what about the nearby Dayton Nut & Candy Company, a local business that's been on Main Street in Dayton since 1923? Longtime employee Martha Downey noticed GM workers weren't coming in this holiday season to buy their Christmas nut tins.
categories: Road Trip
While I was in Detroit this week, I had to stop at my favorite restaurant -- the Lafayette Coney Island. The Detroit landmark is a downtown greasy spoon famous for its Coney dogs -- smothered in chili, mustard and onions -- best accompanied by a can of Labatt's.
Full disclosure: I like the place so damn much my wife and I had our post-wedding photos taken here after our wedding in Detroit. But back to the economy . . .
During the recent auto show in Detroit, much was made of the cutbacks companies in attendance were making. Coincidence or not, Lafayette was asked by an automobile consulting company to shut down for five hours, and host a private party.
categories: Road Trip
Shane Bailey used to work here.
David Greene/NPRNPR's David Greene has hit the road for a big "100 Days" project. He's talking about the recession with people around the country. The idea is to travel south on I-75, starting in snowy Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
Greene sends the photo above, along with this first report:
categories: Road Trip
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