Good evening. I am Mary Ann Brownlow and this post is bill press political commentator and author. Before hill center even opened bill had an idea that he wanted toan create and host an in depth conversation with distinguished guests and overr the years there had been so many very distinguished guests that i had to say no when moore extinguished in our guest. [applause] Political Editor and reporter neil king and his extraordinary book american ramble a walk of memory and renewal and neil will sign the books afterwards. The reviews have been overwhelming to say theth least. Without further ado please welcome neil king and bill press. [applause] thank youu maryanne and good evening. Great too see you all and thank you for coming this evening. I wantt to give a big welcome to first to our friends at the hill center. I dont know what number talk on the hill that this is that they are always fun and exciting. I also want to welcome all of our friends from cspan who were watching on cspan around the country and around the world tonight. Thank you for cspan and for covering our event tonight. Its very appropriate that cspan is here. The talk of the Health Program started at the hill 10 maybe 11 years ago now. We had many programs and their first guest was brian lamb the founder of cspan. [applause] and i also want to welcome all of those people who will be listening to tonights interview on my podcast the bill press pod. Our conversation will be part of that podcast as well. And its such a great treat to welcome a good friend and a Good Neighbor neil king for a couple of years ago did a thing walking out of his front door and to central park new york. There are easier ways to get their as you know. Know way more exciting and no play filled with more adventures than neil discovered and i wrote all about it in this wonderful r book american ramble. It would encourage you to it least read it once and they are copies for you to buy and he will sign after the program. So neil lets get started. You live two blocks away. Yes. Did you walk over . Are you kidding . I just want to be sure. Start us off on page 11 if you will. Set the scene for us. I will say all of the events that have occurred and all books at any of you have read this book is starting and finishing on ninth street. We know what an honor that is. The beginning of this book has a section called the preamble. I spend a lot of time talking about why i walked out my door and the history ofet the territory. We will get to that. This is at the very end of that chapter. I set out that monday morning nine days into spring eager to see if anything of interest might popup along the way. As i turned away from her barracks five blocks away broke out and recorded rendition of the star spangled banner. He there was aloud speech in, dont and they did it every morning at eight sharp. It was a version and for those and arching path over rivers and freeways and farmland to where the hutson is built into the big harboran with labor lady liberty. The sun was warm over my shoulder and there were birds in the trees. I had a skip in my step and i could feel a little bliss seeping in. What a great beginning. Lets not wrapped that up but by . It started out as an idea when mourning corey said what if i just navigated as a pedestrian to new york city and didnt take i95. What would the pedestrian experience the end so that for a whileil and then i read more and thought more about how others had taken that same trip and by the time were to 2020 when will the round i had done tons of preparation. So the route you took he decided he would not take anything close to 95, right . You wanted to go the roundabout way which you did and we will get into that. Why that routes . Its funny because i took the right and came down thend avenu. To go over the chesapeake and up and across and up the jersey shore and that would be a week and a half of the oceans in jersey shores. The more i thought aboutbo the route the more i realized i had to go to pennsylvania and Lancaster County or the i had to cross the masondixon line. I had to go to valley fortune had to cross the delaware where washington did insert things fell into place. How did how long did it take you to plan a . It took basically your pet is going to walk out my tour in march of 2020. Something happened. It didnt disrupt my life by the way so i had to scratch it and so i walked to my door in march of 2021 and everything unimaginable had happened including a couple of months before i left. I walked into a world that was profoundly changed since i originally decided to do so would increase the number of things to think about the magnitudes. Yankee took off for 26 days. Did you take things with you . I took very little with me and i didnt camp so i was living in an airbnbs and i had to plot those places which is not easy. I had 16 pounds and a fly right into fishing and one pair of shoes. One pack. One pack, it was a satchel. How many pairs of shoes did you wear a . I just had onehoim pair. The whole time . So we talked about this on a big fan of travel writers and have read a lot of them in some of the oldfashioned ones like hp morton eric newby bill bryson paul theroux. Have you read them and did theyy inspire you and were you following their lead . Yeah well Bruce Chapman or patrick fillmore, yeah. The reading i did do really did inspire t me to the stage for te whole stream of riders in the 1920s, 30s and 40s and had done basically what i was doing which was to travel through the important parts of the country to figure out what the lasting could this Young Country made up of all these languages ever form into one union . And alexis de tocqueville was a member of that. I read dozens of those books. My attitude was i went to go out as if i wasnt already usually familiar with the landscape and the people between which making up my mind about various things. There so many Different Levels toic the book. So many interesting spaces you walk through and walked to and learned a lot about in so many interesting people you encountered along the way and theth big picture of the so many life lessons that you came back with sos lets start you talk about Lancaster Junction to me thats thoreau wrote. Hanover, im sorry. Say this was one off the things that i had read how there was a juncture at the train station and this was one of the first railun lines that was completed from philadelphia to baltimore to new york in 1834 and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln took that line at Hanover Junction theres a line that goes to gettysburg. You can pause there for half an hour so like you were waiting for the governor of pennsylvania to show up and a year and a half later lincoln was on the train that went this way and kept going straight on this very the long route to take him to springfield for his burial. There is was something that was fascinating about that station. That was one of my pilgrimage destination destination was to go to that destination take about those two things. Also lancaster new learned a lot about president buchanan. The only president to come from pennsylvania. Joe biden. Im sorry im frome. Delaware. Oh okay. We forget aboutt . Scranton. Buchanan and then Thaddeus Stevens came a. You may have heard about before and you talk a lot about buchanan and stevens. One of the things that was great about the memory in the subtitle wasnt mine it was a National Memory and when i walked into lancaster they were actively debating who to rename one of the Elementary Schools after because they wanted to take James Buchanans name off leaving the last president before lincoln one of these democrats who was a owning confederate from the confederacy. And the moral coward essentially and ever since he died yet meticulously looked after his mansion in thee, jr. League had been very attentive to that. Ate when buchanan was president Thaddeus Stevens, was the head of the ways and Means Committee in the house and was way more righteous. Abraham lincoln or almost anybody else. Congress and was lincolns in a lot of ways. He was on really pushed lincoln to issue the emancipation proclamation. So on. And they were just then getting underway to sort of rebuild tate his house and now soon going to become a museum. What it should be, which is like a civil rights destination, but that is stevens was one of the great figures of the 19th century, a person who hundreds of times more important than, James Buchanan and james, at least in that place, has been held up until now, is finally rightfully, you know. They didnt have to tear a statue down. But if there had been one, i would have been fine with replace. With Thaddeus Stevens a statue. You know youve walked into the middle of this debate. Yeah, which was really great. And it seems that every youll find out when you read the book that every city you went to, every town you went to, you connected with the town historian, right . Who told the history of the place and showed you the places that werent that you should you should see terms of learning. Know our history. Yeah, precisely right now. Gettysburg well. Oh, i actually i did not go to get his. He talking about valley forge charlottesville. Unfortunately yeah. So valley was was a really fascinating thing to me because so im sure many of you are familiar but so valley forge the winter of 1770 778 Continental Army outwits and they dont even have shoes they have nothing but hardtack to eat theyre falling apart the have taken over huge portions of the country and theyre in philadelphia all sitting around fires and the Continental Army is freezing in valley forge the valley. What i went to valley forge and i met an historian there who agreed to meet me and she had written a book about what i was interested in, which was not that winter. It was when we decided to care about that winter. And it took us basically century to care about that winter and we kind of needed have that moment in the late 1800s where all these various kind of victorian sensibilities and other things came together and we needed this symbol of grit and, persistence and sticking it out. And valley forge became that place. And so its its a fascinating thing that, you know, we codified. Speaking of gettysburg, gettysburg became a more memorial immediately after that battle. And 13 years before valley, forge became like a thing of importance and its many times since then and now become a Huge National park, which didnt happen until gerald ford actually. But that to me was also, you know, i was walking through a landscape we had been fighting over what statues should be torn down, not. And were we erasing history or . Not erasing history. And the is history is a very fluid thing always has been. Sometimes it takes us a long to acknowledge that certain happen and the fact that some people are being erased with, our statues are being torn down as part of that process. Right. So there are so many other historical places, particularly revolutionary war. Youre crossing the delaware. There was boom. And then to me, one of the most interesting places was, the great mound of the great mound. Yeah i had on a drive back new york down to washington. You know, if you take the jersey turnpike, youll see these things that were not so proudly building, but we are building which are these trash mounds, these landfills. And i saw one of them i was like, wow, very landfill. I want to go to the top of that landfill. So i sent them in a dump a dump yeah, but its a quite a structure were building and you can see it right there by the river. So they said, yeah, sure, we would love to take to the top of it. So i arrived there and you know, i went up as the explorer and it was from the top of that landfill that i got my first glimpse, 32 miles away of the tiny, tiny glimmer of manhattan. But, you know, i a bit in the book about how if go to the grand canyon and the top youre in the present and within about 5 minutes youve walked out of all of Human History and you go down about 1. 9 billion years in geological the landfill. You started that like the eisenhower administration. And then you walked up. And at one point i started i thought i said, where are we now . And the guy said, about 2006. And i was like, wow, thats it thats enron, george bush, second term, you know, and then the present is when you get there and the trucks are dumping stuff in it, its not its sort of fun to make fun of, but its not so funny, but its just to see the immensity of this. This is one counties creation. And this is still an active landfill. A very yeah. And the guy that i went with had gone to ohio state university. And when we walked up, i said to, you know, theres this culture of years ago that built mounds all around the ohio river valley down the mississippi. So you might be is would all be aware of these these. And he said, oh, i know. I went to the university and he then started telling me about those maps and he said, our mounds are not like those mounds. So, so many interesting places and many interesting people. So youre walking along, youve got a water bottle and your Water Bottles empty. Youre thirsty. Oh yeah. And you encounter a very in the interesting individual all you want is to fill your bottle not so easy right. Tell us you know it was of the things that really was amazing was that by the second day it only took two days for me to realize that when you go out on a walk like this where you have a destination and its going to take weeks to get there, you start to experience water like bona fide parables like like you have encounters with people along, the road and youre like, wow, this stands for something more than just this thing. And so that afternoon i was walking along in my Water Bottles empty and im walking through this really rich new subdivision of these huge mansions that had been built of baltimore and this young guy in his thirties came down his drive and there was the big house and my bottle empty. And i said, do you have any idea where i can get some water with my cousin . I asked it that way. Intention as opposed to could you please fill my water . And so he said and he gave me these very elaborate to this place. It was like two miles away. And i said. Wow. Okay, thanks. I appreciate that. And i started walking and then he oh, by the way, i would advise you be careful . And i said what should i be careful of . And he said, well, there are going to be people in this neighborhood that are going to be a little wondering why youre just walking through the neighborhood. And i said really are they and i, i told him then this story about this guy, paul salopek, whos now walking like around the world, essentially. And when he walked across the country of georgia, 54 nights every night, he was put up spontaneously. The people in georgia and i said so. And i ended up walking, oh, while i was leaving the guy, he said oh, one thing i just want you to know when i said be careful, i wasnt talking about me. I think youre fine. I was warning you about the other people in the neighborhood and and in the book. I then go on to muse about our version of hospitality you go back and look at any of the holy they all its about how do you treat the stranger who comes down the road and you know, in our case we basically turned hospitality into an industry and rightfully i then filled my water bottle at dunkin donuts, which is where youre supposed to get water. Right. Theres never occurred to him to say, oh, yeah no, and i didnt ever you. I kept thinking because like it took me like 45 minutes to get out of this ghastly place. And i kept thinking, hes going to show up at any moment, right . Like when it just struck me, you know, heres some water. I got plenty water. But, you know, never did. No, didnt happen to me. One of the most magical moments in the book is when youre walking the quaker, the mennonite country, and you come to some kids ball, which turned out to be quite a visit, right . Yeah. You know, that was one of these moments. I mean, i just want to impart one obvious fact, but i cant overstate it walking is, you might say, 20 times slower than driving miles versus 60 miles an hour. Its hundreds of times more meaningful, hundreds of times richer and all of experiences that i had not just i mean, some of them were just walking and, noticing and watching a spring unfold. Right id never done that before. Like literally, i just spent a month watching a spring. But you also have these encounters that you would never notice. But anyway, this wouldnt have happened. So im walking up a road, i look over and i see beside school theres just a woman young woman. Shes like ninth grade or so, and shes there with a long floral dress such as the head bonnet on. And she has a baseball mitt on her hand. And then i hear this, this whack, and she backs up and she catches this fly softball and she hurls it back to the right of like what going on . So i go into the playground and there are these mennonite kids on, this huge game, two games of softball, all the young women are wearing these ankle length dresses and are amazing softball players like fall out slide thing and second base ball thing. And so at the end their they they stop playing they all come over towards me their teacher comes over and you know in terms of the whole welcoming of a stranger the first thing he said, what brings you here . And i told him, he said, kids, gather around. Lets hear what mr. King has to say. And it was like, tell us what youre doing . And i started to talk to them they were kind of taken aback by my commentary about just seeing their part of, the country. And then one of the young women stopped for it. And she said, mr. Weaver, could we sing for, mr. King . And he said, you have time. And i said, ive got time. And so i went into their school. We went down the basement. They got on the risers there, about 30 of them. And they these two incredible hymns of the afterlife, which was so bizarre because. These are like, you know, 14 year olds on a beautiful spring day and theyre singing about their longing for having but anyway. And was the as spontaneous like that saying a thanks me that i had that i was there and that i had come and was interested in them. Basically it was extraordinary. And one last thing, when i was leaving that this hullabaloo occurred and then i went up and i was going to fill my water bottle out of there drinking and mystery goes back into the class and. Instead of