The road to Rolla: Day 2
What makes being out on the road again such fun (for me, at least) is that you always learn something new. This morning, I spent a couple of hours at an ethanol manufacturing plant, so now I know how husks of corn can end up as fuel in the tank of my car. (Don't ask me to explain in too much detail, but I do know that enzymes play an important role in the process.)
I also learned that while the starch in the corn is turned into fuel, the rest of the stuff makes high quality animal feed that is shipped off around the world. So don't tell the ethanol guys that they're responsible for high food prices ... they just don't accept it.
And voters in this part of rural north-eastern Missouri, on the western bank of the Mississippi, north of St Louis, who I had imagined would be staunchly Republican, in fact are overwhelmingly "Dixie Democrat", in other words, much closer to the conservative Democrats of the deep South than to their more liberal fellow-Democrats of Chicago or New York. (So neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton would have been their first choice as Presidential candidate.)
Tonight, I'm in St Louis, home of beer, often spoken of as a symbol of America right up there with the Stars and Stripes. But now a Belgian company is bidding to buy it, and many local Bud-lovers are up in arms. Mind you, when I sampled some views in a downtown bar earlier this evening, the drinkers seemed more concerned about the state of the economy than who owns the brewery.
I've just been watching Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican convention: they loved her and her folksy, gutsy style. And by the way, so far on my travels, I haven't met a single Missouri Republican who wasn't impressed by her.
Tomorrow, weather permitting (they say we're due to be hit by what's left of Hurricane Gustav), we head for Rolla, to get ready for Friday's programme.
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