The Friendly Road: New Adventures in Contentment

I fear that this work, along with the seven others authored by this writer, have slipped into our misty literary past and can only be found in used book stores and on the shelves of elderly men and women. Like the books, the author has also dropped off the radar scope of most readers. What a horrible, horrible pity this is! David Grayson is the pseudonym used by Ray Stannard Baker, a Pulitzer Prize winner for biography in 1940. Stannard got his start writing for the popular muckracking magazine, McClure's which was quite popular toward the early part of the 1900s. In 1908 he wrote, under his own name, a book entitled "Following the Color Line" and is noted as the first prominent journalist to write about, in a truthful fashion, the deplorable conditions of race relations in this country at that time. Many articles addressing this problem followed and he is considered one of the leading pioneers in this area. He was a close friend of Woodrow Wilson and among his many writings were a series of books, written under the pen name of David Grayson. These books touted the pleasures of country life and country living. Think Tom Sawyer, Henry David Thoreau, Will Rogers and a touch of ever old man who you ever met playing checkers at the corner barbershop, mix well and you get the picture. This review concerns the first of this eight book series. This offering, The Friendly Road, is the first. A farmer, (the author writes all these books in first person) simply puts his hat on, grabs his cane and hits the road. It is sort of like the Australian Walk-about; turn of the century American style. There is no destination, no goal...he just starts walking. This is the story of his journey. The author records, through his farmer's eyes, the land, nature, the seasons and most importantly, he talks with people and actually listens to people. You get a strong dose of countrified philosophy here, astute observations of the condition of mankind and general thoughts and feelings of the man as he makes his journey through the country and small villages. I must say, there are very few of his thoughts that I have not felt myself through the years and very few of the authors opinions that I do not share. He is able to articulate what I am not able. This folks is a mellow read! I can almost promise you that while reading it your blood pressure will drop and your cares will sort of drift away for a bit. Good sound advice; a different and better way of seeing the world around you and a good dose of common sense are all gathered in the pages of this book to make this work one delightful reading experience! We are lucky in that the author does not indulge himself with the flowery prose and verbose, convoluted sentences so popular at the time...no, this book is quite readable even to this day! It should also be noted and strongly emphasized that the authors findings, observations and opinions, grounded though they may be in a past culture, are still as

I really enjoyed this one. A farmer (the author) leaves his comfortable farm life and decides to just "walk" and go on a journey. It takes place in America around the turn of the century. He meets various people along the way and he has moments of insight with nature and humanity. This story reminded me of a combination of Tom Sawyer and Thoreau. I read this in a time in my life when things were very hectic and stressful. It brought me back to the simple things in life that really matter: Nature and our relationship with fellow human beings. After just completing such a journey myself I can only say that this book is still strong in my mind. Occasionally his insightful words would pop out of the page and I would exclaim, "Oh, that's right!" as if I had forgotten some great secret to being happy. We should all take the time to read this book when we are looking for comfort and direction in this new world that sucks all our time and leaves us stressed out and haggard.