tone: negative/self- mockery:

‘I come from Des
Moines. Somebody had to’

anecdotes

好词佳句：

• serene(peaceful, calm)
• leering(looking/gazing in an unpleasant way)
• chide(scold)
• cretin(idiot)
• snort derisively(shows a complete lack of respect)
• diddly-squat(least amount of anything, used to mock someone’s ignorance or incompetence)
• prevailing drift of the discussion
• delirious (in an acutely disturbed state of mind characterized as restlessness, illusions and incoherence) with boredom
• delectable(delicious)
• s days and days of unrelenting tedium, in a baking steel capsule on a ribbon of highway
• crummy hotels(dirty unpleasant)

Negative:

– nothing to see (just flat and hot)

– dead little town where the livliest thing is the flies

– inordinate interest of the man beside the road (“I wouldn’t be surprised if even now he thinks of me from time to time”)

– Iowa man’s neck been lasered into deep crevasses by years of driving in a blazing sun and the possibly related outcome for their mind

– the farmer’s tan looking ridiculous

Positive:

– the farmer’s tan is a badge of distinction

From the negative and positve sides of this piece of writing, we can see that the author didn’t enjoy the journey because it was dull with repetitively appearing corn, soy beans, hogs, farms and some dead little towns. We can also tell that the life of the Iowa man was also boring because even a passing car could attract an inordinate interest and even possibly lingered over in their memories.

However, this journey still impressed the author, for he not only could recall vividly the distinguished features of the Iowa man, but also recognized that the “farmer’s tan” is a badge of distinction. And distinction, utterly differed from discrimination, is a way of describing the uniqueness, thus in spite of all the negativeness, the author wasn’t mocking maliciously, but rather teasing humorously. 

6 details:

1. “Climb onto a roof-top almost anywhere in the state and you are confronted with a featureless sweep of corn for as far as the eye can see.” — the featureless, monotonous sweep of corn represents how boring the journey was, which was worsen by the fact that the author had to stay in a hot and small car like a “baking steel capsule”, suffering from “the days and days of unrelenting tedium”.
2. “We quickly discovered…it resembled a porcupine, and casually dropped it out the tailgate window, it was like a bomb.” — when recalling this trick, the author sounded full of pride and joy while using the words “quickly discovered”, “surprisingly”, and that the following cars had to veer “in an amusing fashion”. With a nostalgic tone, the author seems to enjoy very much with this part of his holidays. It contradicts to how boring the journey itself was, and also highlights that even though the trip was tedious, the kids were acting their age, full of mischief.
3. “My mother only ever said two things…mostly she wisely kept quiet.” — The author described his mum as someone gentle and quiet because his dad was a “man obsessed”.” This lays the fundation for the economical decisions dad made. And such “obsession” also directly led to the bad experience in living in the crummiest hotels that the author, when he was a kid, thought might inflict “cooties” and “long, painful death”.
4. “My father invested $19.98 in a portable gas stove that took an hour to assemble before each use and was so wildly temperamental…flicker to life only for a few seconds before puttering out.” — with the number of “an hour to assemble” and “a few seconds” to work, the author gave a good example of all kinds of obstacles the family faced in order to have a holiday. And from here, we can imagine how frustrating and disappointing it must be.
5. “the sort of rundown place where if you wanted to watch TV it meant you had to sit in the lobby and share a cracked leatherette sofa with an old man” — it further stresses how awful the holiday was and it seemed that the journey couldn’t get any wose when they ended up in a rundown place where they even had to share a TV.
6. “blue and glinting sweep of lake or sea in a bowl of pine-clad mountains, a place full of swings and amusements and the gay shrieks of children splashing in water” — the description of the beautiful scenery and children having fun acted like a release of the tension and boredom. We can see that the family “finally” arrived and started to relax and enjoy their holidays.