Jeff Friesen - United States of LEGO®: A Brick Tour of America

For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or . Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation. Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. Cover design by Rain Saukas
Cover photo credit Jeff Friesen ISBN: 9781629146829
Ebook ISBN: 9781629148465 Printed in China For Tetjana and June Table of Contents Federal district, not a state Introduction Making sense of a big country is like taming a horse-sized turkey. There are a few ways to do it, but how do you begin such an epic task? One big country, the United States of America, solves this dilemma with its customary can-do spirit.

The USA has helpfully portioned itself into fifty bite-sized morsels, called states, to aid in its overall digestion. Get a taste of all fifty states, and the vast buffet table of America reveals its essential flavor. Some say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but residents of different states prefer to tell you how their state is better than yours. It is true that every state is as unique as a traffic-stopping snowflake in Atlanta. The founders wisely counseled that each state should be a different shape in order to help distinguish one from the other. Looking closely at a states shape often provides a handy clue to its identity.

Michigan, for example, resembles a mitten. That reminds you that Michigan is cold, so you should knit yourself some winter attire before visiting. Oklahoma is the shape of a frying pan, which is exactly what you will need to fry up the tender beasts grazing there. Minnesotas eastern border is an exact contour of Garrison Keillors profile, foreshadowing that you will soon be asked to give money to a radio station. The traditional way to visit the states is by setting out on a great American road trip. The interstate highway network, a marvel of ingenuity, grit, and corrupt construction bosses, allows you to whisk across the country like a clever cartoon roadrunner.

Conveniently spaced travel plazas will provide you with both food and powerful gas. You can also get gas for your car. The only peril with roadside food is stacking so many cheeseburgers in your gullet that it is only possible to leave your car by greasing its doorframe with chicken nugget juice. That said, you will be able to enjoy many of the open roads wonders while sitting behind the steering wheel. Where else will you be able to gaze at the wondrous piles of newly discovered lint from your pocket as you search ever deeper for coins to feed New Jersey Turnpike tollbooths? Where else will you see the sun rising over the heartland while your car is sandwiched between two Wonder Bread trucks? Where else will an RV grow alarmingly in your rearview mirror as its venerable driver is distracted by an episode of The Golden Girls playing on his dash-mounted DVD player? Road trips are not all fun, however. Carefree travel only applies to the contiguous lower forty-eight states.

The tunnel to Hawaii is under constant repair by hammerhead sharks, and traffic is always backed up in the doldrums. Driving to Alaska requires a hazardous transit through frosty Canada, where the inhabitants are so rude they will only apologize in three different ways if you back over one of their pet beavers. Perhaps its best to avoid getting kicked on Route 66 in favor of flying the friendly skies. Air travel lets you alight in each state and have a decent look around, like a bald eagle searching for a regal toupee. Plane tickets are pricey, but there are practical ways to help with the costs. The best way to raise funds if you are an American-born citizen over the age of thirty-five is to run for president.

Just be vague while asking for donations. If you do not meet those requirements, you can save on baggage fees by traveling without luggage. Many airlines will also eliminate the new clothing fees if you travel in your undergarments (though a surcharge remains for patterned fabrics). Wait a second! It is impossible to visit all fifty states by air. Planes are banned from landing in the so-called flyover states due to new legislation borrowed from Star Trek s Prime Directive. Basically, the folks in flyover states are bewildered by post-blunderbuss technology.

Its best to keep them thinking that airplanes are messengers from the moon. Flyover states include every state without a major city called New York or Los Angeles (since the citizens of those cities invented the term and prefer connection-free flights). Now that the shortcomings of plane and automobile travel have been exposed, let us consider the train. What could be more fitting than train travel in America? You can ride the iron horse that tamed the west and enriched the east, forever linking the two in a bond of steel. How better to contemplate the sheer Nebraska-ness of Nebraska when stopped on a siding for seven hours while passing freight trains get the right-of-way? After all, the details of a wheat field require several days of contemplation. Yes, if you have a free decade or two, taking the train is a truly exhaustive way to see the states.

If your schedule is too tight for train travel, only one realistic option for exploring the fifty states remains: armchair travel. You can simply buy a book about the fifty states and worm your way through pages of information in stationary comfort. The risks of motorized travel are replaced with the mere risk of a paper cut. In fact, you can learn more from a book than from actual travel experience. Do you know that Our Delaware is the official state song of... Delaware? Are you aware that Crowley, Louisiana, is the Rice Capital of America? Have you fixed in your mind that Oregon laid down the nations first one-way streets? You could spend years hunting down these and countless other pedantic facts about the United States of America, but why not opt instead for a book with funny and entertaining information about the stateseven if some (most) of it is made up.

Once you find a humorous book about the fifty states, make sure it is lavishly decorated with photographs. In todays visually obsessed culture, a picture is worth ninety-eight rhyming poems, and that figure rises every day. The only problem with photography is that nowadays everyone carries a camera, and people are unafraid to take more photos of even extensively photographed scenes. Somewhere on the Internet you will find every corner of every state photographed in every lighting condition. Experts say there is a growing danger of scenery disappearing due to being overharvested by cameras. You can do your part to save Americas most photographed landmarks by seeking out a book with photographs of the fifty states that are obtained without using any real parts of the states.