By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--December 24, 2023
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It’s a personal song for Larry Cordle, who wrote it about a stretch of road in his home state of Kentucky just about 42 miles long. The great Ricky Skaggs styled it in classic bluegrass fashion as only he can. He made an anthem and an ode out of it for everyone who ever headed out onto any road and came back home sadder but wiser.
The title has universal appeal. Some harken to Interstate 40 that runs from Barstow, California along old Route 66 all the way to Wilmington, North Carolina. Lots of people call that stretch of road home. It’s really about the romance and lessons of the highway. The theme has its own genre in literature.
For me, Highway 40 can only be one road, the old National Road that originally started in Cumberland, Maryland and went to Vandalia, Illinois. Begun in the 1810s, it was the first real road west across the Appalachians. It was Jefferson’s idea. It became an original segment of the numbered federal highway system in 1926 and only the second paved highway in the country.
Like historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed, it’s important to know the history of our places of origin. Growing up, the National Road was part of our education, declining as it was, to learn about our county and understand its importance and contributions. The National Road went right through the two counties of my origin, Henry County and Wayne County, Indiana. I walked along it, crossed it many times, rode a Schwinn Corvette along it and won a drag race against a high school rival on it. I’ve celebrated its history and lore throughout my life.
There’s a slight bend in the road at about 10th Street in downtown Richmond that’s there because there was a mudhole that had to be avoided way back in the early days of the National Road. Pioneers came across the Appalachians to settle what was then the West, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and points beyond. I always thought the verse by Katherine Lee Bates from America the Beautiful must be about the thoroughfare I knew as the National Road:
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
Right there at the entrance to Glen Miller Park is the statue of the Madonna of the Trail, honoring our sturdy pioneer mothers who took care of the children and made sure civilization moved west with settlement.
Even as a small child I began to notice the Federal style brick buildings along the route dating from the 1820s and 1830s. They were already old when I began to notice them. They had been residences and inns and general stores. West of Richmond was Centerville, packed with Federal style buildings and home to Oliver P. Morton, the great Civil War governor of Indiana. I had the privilege of working in a grand National Road inn at Mt. Auburn, just to the west of Cambridge City, Indiana. I grew up with the history of Richmond, a town uniquely and richly endowed with historical significance but now a shadow of its former self. We had textbooks that celebrated the town’s importance in American history, textbooks that are now out of print and no longer used.
When I discovered Highway 40 Blues only a few years ago, it resonated immediately. From the album Highways and Heartaches, it came out in 1983 and went briefly to #1.
If you’ve ever set out on the road to someplace different, or if you remember leaving home to find a living or a love, it might just speak to you.
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Well, these Highway 40 blues
I've walked holes in both my shoes
Counted the days since I've been gone
And I'd love to see the lights of home
Wasted time and money too
Squandered youth in search of truth
But in the end, I had to lose
Lord above, I've paid my dues
Got the Highway 40 blues
The highway called when I was young
Told me lies of things to come
Fame and fortune lies ahead
That's what the billboard lights had said
Shattered dreams, my mind is numb
My money's gone, stick out my thumb
My eyes are filled with bitter tears
Lord, I ain't been home in years
Got the Highway 40 blues
You know, I've rambled all around
Like a rolling stone from town to town
Met pretty girls I have to say
But none of them could make me stay
Had fancy clothes and big, fine cars
Things a country boy can't use
Dixieland I sure miss you
Got the Highway 40 blues
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Dr. Bruce Smith (Inkwell, Hearth and Plow) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from Indiana University Press.