This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate DeMaio.

A flyer, wheat pasted to a plywood fence around a construction site, or

a staple gun to an events board in a college town, or slipped under a windshield wiper,

or handed out in a street corner.

In 1993, I was 19. I was driving across country in the 1985 Chevy Chivette, light blue, with my friend Jen from high school.

Wanted to have my car out at college in Santa Barbara.

She wanted to see someone in Sonoma, but mostly it just sounded fun to her.

And so we set out one summer morning from Providence, a full tank of gas, some snacks, a bunch

of CDs, dig-will planets hitting as we hit the on-ramp to the George Washington Bridge.

My plan was to make it to DC by nightfall and walk around a bit.

Then we'd head off and stay in some AAA-approved motel in Virginia somewhere, however far we got.

It seemed like what one should do at the start of one's first cross-country drive.

It felt very American.

We'd already listened to America by Simon and Garfunkel while counting the cars in the New Jersey turnpike, and Fugazi and Rites of Spring as we look for parking near the National Mall.

And the Washington Monument went from a sunset peach to a matte white and then shone in the

floodlights in the night and it was beautiful.

It was good to be there.

It was a good idea.

We walked around in the dark among the monuments

and the tourists our fellow Americans.

And he learned a couple of things.

One I had known factually, it was there in the AAA guidebook,

...