What my road buddy came down with in Des Moines was salmonella. The drive back was the right thing to do, though it was also probably REALLY dangerous. I stayed in the car to make sure he was alert, and managed to get him to pull over to a wal-mart in East Nowhere, Illinois. He slept an hour or so in the car while I defiled the wal mart (for America!).

We made it back to Chicago safely, but there's certainly no way we're getting to the convention.


BUT I had actually written ahead a bit, knowing what to expect from driving through Nebraska. So here's the LOST ENTRY:

We're in Nebraska now, on our way to the Democratic National Convention.

So, what's a convention, exactly? It's where the members of a political party gather to finalize their platform (a big list of what they believe and what they want to do) and formally nominate their candidate for President. Many, many speeches are made. LOTS of coffee is consumed, and every effort is made to trot out celebrities in order to get independent voters to watch the speeches on TV.

They've changed a lot over the years. For one thing, it's been a long time since there was a major convention (and no, I'm not counting libertarians here) where everyone present didn't know very well who the nominee was going to be. In the old days, though, primaries (the state elections parties held a few months earlier to determine who the nominee will be ) didn't really mean anything. When the convention came around, there would be a handful of candidates - sometimes a whole bunch of them - in the running. If no one got enough votes on the first ballot, they'd have another ballot. Sometimes it took a while. It took nearly 50 ballots for the Democrats to nominate Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Many of these conventions were spectacularly corrupt; they were full of shady deals in smoke-filled rooms that determined who the nominee would be.

There hasn't been a convention where the nominee wasn't already determined since 1980. Hence, when they have a ballot, it's just a formality, really, but they go out of their way to make it a real spectacle. The representatives of each state don't just say "Iowa casts 20 votes for Barack Obama." It's be more like. "The great state of Iowa, home of the Hawkeyes, pork capital of the world, land of the Iowa caucus and the best state fair in the world, birthplace of John Wayne, and land of Des Moines, the Insurance Capital of the World, casts ALL TWENTY of its votes for the great senator of Illinois, Barack Obama!"

Now, here we are in Nebraska. As Bill Bryson, another Des Moines native, wrote: "I was headed for Nebraska. Now THERE'S a sentence you don't want to have to say very often."

Plenty of states aren't a lot of fun to travel through; southern Illinois could kill a person. But Illinois at least has Chicago in it, so there'll be plenty to brag on. Even Iowa has a lot of lovely rolling hills and some of the best scenery in the country, if farmland is your idea of good scenery. Nebraska, though, is one tiresome state through which to drive.


So I can't help but wonder: what in the WORLD are the delegates from Nebraska going to say, anyway? There's only so much to brag on. Our suggestions for the delegates:

1. Omaha, the insurance capital of the world (though if those Omaha punks try to claim this, it may spark a fight with us Iowans, who know that the REAL insurance capital of the world is Des Moines, yo).

2. The Platte River. This is the main river in Nebraska. It's about four inches deep, and can be walked across even by those of who CAN'T walk on water, like Obama probably can.

3. The Omaha Family Entertainment Center. I came here in the late 80s and can attest that the skee ball is second to none. I won fifty tickets - enough to get a really sharp pair of sunglasses!

That's about it, really.

My road buddy's health didn't improve as much as we'd hoped, and we ended up turning around making a late night drive back to Chicago. If he can improve enough, we could still fly out for the second half of the convention tomorrow, but i sort of doubt it.

SO, since I was stuck in Des Moines, I did about the only thing I COULD do - I walked over to my old elementary school. My third grade teacher, Mr. Summers (who happens to have the same name as the teacher in ANDREW NORTH BLOWS UP THE WORLD) is still there, and I got to sit in on his class for an afternoon and read them a bit of the new book. It was actually a really fun afternoon! I'd been having a hard time remembering what it's like to be in third grade for this book. Mr Summers teaches fifth grade now, but sitting in on his class brought back a LOT of good memories.

I hadn't been in my school in at least 15 years; I think I MIGHT have been there once or twice after 1991, but I'm not sure. They've remodeled a lot; there was just one hallway that didn't look like it had changed a bit. Once in a while I'd see a mosaic on the wall and realize that I knew right where I was, but there was now a room in what used to be an open space and a wall where there used to be a door. A handful of my teachers were still there, and some plaques on the wall still had the names of some of my friends engraved on them.

After school let out, I wandered over to the middle school, but none of my old teachers are still there, so I just stood in the office for a second, said "man, what am I doing here?" and took off to wander the town some more.

We're a bit delayed en route to the convention.

Woke up to find Prof. Rosemont puking his guts out - he suspected that it was the tepid Filet of Fish he ate on the way. Luckily, we were in Des Moines, my home town, so I knew how to get to a clinic. He had to drive, though, since I can't drive a stick for the life of me.

They gave him a shot and said he had about twenty minutes to get back to the hotel before the shot put him to sleep, and that he'd be good to go in the morning. So we got back to the hotel with about eight minutes to spare.

But there was a problem.

You wouldn't think hotels would be all filled up in Des Moines on a Monday, but the hotel was, in fact, full. They sent us to another hotel on the other side of town - without about 7 minutes remaining before Prof. Rosemont crashed.

Thankfully, getting from one end of town to the other in 7 minutes is not unheard of in Des Moines.

We'll proceed to Denver tomorrow if all goes well.

For now, though, I have a day to kill in Des Moines. Perhaps I'll go o Merle Hay Mall and see if they at least have a picture of the statue of the naked guy with angel wings riding a trike that was there when I was a kid. I decided last night to write it into ANDREW NORTH BLOWS UP THE WORLD, and I'm a bit worried that no one will believe that the mall in Andrew's town would have such a thing.

I'm blogging this week from the Democratic National Convention in Denver - these entries will eventually part of the "bonus material" for THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO U.S. HISTORY, which Delacorte will publish in 2010. I'm also updating stuff on twitter

Onward to glory! The Smart Aleck Staff (part of it, anyway) is off to Denver for the Democratic National Convention!

Pictured above, Adam Selzer (me), the head of the Smart Aleck Staff, and Prof. William Rosemont (The guy who fixes the pinball machines at the Smart Aleck Headquarters) about to set on on the cross country journey - by car. Rather than flying and subjecting you to jokes about how you never even get peanuts on flights anymore, we're doing it Jack Kerouac style (see chapter 10). We thought we'd go out and discover America!

So, does one discover America on these road trips? Well, if seeing a whole lot of corn counts as discovering America, than I suppose one does. That's about all their is to see in Illinois once you're out of Chicago. But then we crossed the Mississippi into Iowa and found this:



VALO MILK! The welcome center just on the Iowa side of the river sells these messy, hard-to-find candies, along with such other rare and regional candies as Big Hunk, Twin Bing, chocolate Necco Wafers, and strawberry Charlston Chew. The woman behind the counter was happy to chat about candy past and present. Yes indeed, Iowa knows how to make you feel welcome!

And, once you're loaded up with candy, you're a very short drive from West Branch, birthplace of President Herbert Hoover. When I was a kid, they had a painting of his boyhood home at the Iowa art museum. According to a tour guide I had on a field trip there in third or fourth grade, Hoover kept sending the painting back and having them change it. Apparently, the painters kept making it look nice, and Hoover thought it was a dump. Maybe he was just going for a populist vibe. After the depression got going, he could have used some populist cred.

While we pigged out on candy, Prof. Rosemont said "You know how to get someone to stop taking drugs? Take them to a Civil War re-enactment when they're on LSD. They'll never trip again." No, folks, we CAN'T go that long without making fun of battle re-enactors here on the Smart Aleck Staff.

Iowa is, in general, quite a lovely state. Rolling hills as far as the eye can see, all covered in lush greenery. I grew up in this state and thought that the farmland was incredibly boring, but I now think that it's pretty keen, as farmland goes.

We stopped off midway through the state for dinner and coffee with Mike, an old friend of mine. I haven't seen him in 2008, but in between that time we wrote a book together. It never did sell, but one day we'll get back on it and do it right. Mike is an honorary member of the staff!

At a Holiday Inn now, mentally preparing myself for something I've never had the willpower to attempt before: driving straight through Nebraska.

I'm blogging this week from the Democratic National Convention in Denver (and the road thereto) - these entries will eventually by part of the "bonus material" for THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO U.S. HISTORY, which Delacorte will publish in 2010. The Smart Aleck Staff is a literary device I use when I want to pretend I have a whole staff of people doing research for me. In real life, Prof. Rosemont (not his real name) is a great guy with excellent taste in music. I'm also updating stuff on twitter

A few weeks ago I turned the first draft of THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO U.S. HISTORY in to my editor at Random House.

Part of the supplemental material on the page that will go with the book will be THE SMART ALECK STAFF GOES TO A REAL CONVENTION! I'm leaving tomorrow for the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I'll be blogging from there here, and on twitter and facebook.

Some of these entries will refer to The Smart Aleck staff, which is (mostly) a literary device used in the book - I like to pretend that I have a whole staff of misfits doing research, clearing photo rights, and helping with the jokes. It's only partially true. Most likely, the stuff will eventually end up as "bonus material" on the book's website.


So start checking back tomorrow, and tell your friends!