Back twenty years to... Tuesday, April 4th, 2006. A central and pioneering figure of fifties rock and roll music, Buddy Holly died tragically in a light-plane crash, on February 3rd, 1959 – aged just twenty-two. 'The Day the Music Died'.

"The star's death came at the end of a most fabulous era, and in a successful and highly influential career that lasted less than two years – his true potential was never altogether tested. In 1986, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number thirteen, in its list of: "One Hundred Greatest Artists." Following a two hundred mile drive on US Highway 62, I make a stop in Lubbock, and take a walk around 'The Buddy Holly Center', which was added to the 'National Register of Historic Places' in 1990. According to its blurb, the place has, "Dual missions; preserving, collecting and promoting the legacy of Buddy Holly and the music of Lubbock and West Texas, as well as providing exhibits on Contemporary Visual Arts and Music, for the purpose of educating and entertaining the public."

What I noticed last summer, and am seeing again on this excursion through the vast American landscape, is the unbelievable number of scrapped cars there are lying-around all over. In small towns especially, they're everywhere. In front-yards and back-yards, in ditches and in vacant lots. Many of course will be 'restoration projects', but so many others will simply be left; rusting-away and rotting down into the earth. My question is – what will become of them all? Who will ever finally restore them, or clear all the others away – and when? I am so afraid that the answer has to be, possibly no-one – and probably, never.

For me, it's an indictment on the modern American consumer society. Unlike today, it can't all be put down to 'built-in obsolescence' – more like overproduction, over-choice and dare I say it – sentimentality; a hankering for better times, gone-by long ago. As my epic road-trip progresses, I'll find quite literally hundreds of thousands of them. Cars and vans; buses and trucks. Not so much, 'blots on the landscape', but 'beauty in fading' I guess, but with no clear path for their ultimate resurrection – what's the answer."

In Search of Small-Town America: Volume 1 is a free-of-charge Pdf digital download – available from our shop. A table of contents, the introduction, the route-map – and featuring content on the first two States travelled: New Mexico and Arizona.

Jeremy Hammond I am a British writer and photographer, and have travelled through India, China, Southeast Asia and Australia, but most extensively in North America. In the late seventies and early eighties, I worked as lighting crew, and later designer, for many top-named British bands, on tours through Europe, Japan, and the USA. I’ve worked as a cruise-ship photographer, in office and store design, database design, visual arts book publishing and as a London-based freelance photographer, specialising in interiors and architecture.