“I always thought it was our America as much as anyone else’s – circus people and carnival freaks, prisoners and music makers, troubadours, minstrels, hobos and poets and such, we can’t let the goddamn country go down to politicians and corporate madmen and media people and college professors, run it over and ruin it all. It’s ours, our goddamn country. We built the midway, didn’t we? And we make the music that goes on the midway, from sea to shining sea. You know, goddamn, Ronald Reagan died recently and they flew the flag at half-mast. Well, did they fly it at half-mast for Ray Charles? For Johnny Cash? Declare a national holiday? Yet these people, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, they moved and changed the daily lives more than any politician who are just grifters and scum. Wouldn’t even let them in the goddamn midway. So let us now praise the real American heroes, the ones with heart and soul who changed things for the good.”

– Little Jack Horton, quoted in the epigraph of More Miles Than Money - Journeys Through American Music, by Garth Cartwright, published by Serpent’s Tail.