Back twenty years to... Friday, August 18th, 2006. Day 132. A colourful and fragrant Produce Show, a night at the funfair and the unequivocal recipe for corn dogs. The soo impressive Soo Locks, Ishpeming and Cadillac – and a misguided dalliance in a 'Gentlemen's Club'.

"My driver stops-by an ATM, I get loaded-up with cash, and as we drive through town, he tells me that the place is good, and the girls are just fine. I'll guess that it’s about seven-thirty. The entrance is around the back – where I pay the five dollar cover-charge, stride purposefully to the bar, take a seat – and order-up a six dollar beer. The place is quite empty, but there’s a tall, blonde-haired girl in a scanty black bikini, languidly contorting herself around a silver pole, planted at the centre of the small raised stage.

Maybe five-or-six other girls moving about the place, in various states of erotic undress, as they wait their turns to take to the stage. I nurse my beer, and as time moves-on, the room is filling up. Now, a really gorgeous, and perfectly petite, raven-haired girls climbs to the stage for her two song set, and I feel there’s something 'different' about her.

Gyrating around the pole, she very gradually strips-down to a tiny green thong, and I'm mesmerised, trying to catch her eye. When she’s done with her act, she gathers her discarded garments, rubs her perspiration off from the pole, and disappears behind a curtain. I order more beer and watch the action on the stage again. But now I seem to sense her. She must have passed right by me as I was talking to the unsmiling bar-guy. I motion for her to join me. She accepts, I smile as she sits, and ask if I can buy her a drink. "A cocktail." Now close-up, she is just astonishingly beautiful – and my eyes don’t leave hers as I unroll another twenty and hand it absently to the barman.

I doubt if there’s a drop of anything alcoholic in her pink drink, and I don't even look at the change I’m given. But I’m certain that the price for 'rosé water' – is excessive. I’m no first-timer when it comes to girlie-bars, and the format doesn’t change. Hayley and I chat for quite a while. She's really great to talk to. Intelligent and eloquent. She tells me all about her twin nine year-old girls, who have no idea that their mom 'dances' for a living, and their useless absent father, who gives her zilch. So although I may think I’m not a rookie, I’m entirely taken-in. Her beauty, her so perfect complexion, her perfume, her voice, her easy smile – plus the fact that she’s in a bar – dressed only in her bra and panties. "Would you like a private dance with me?"

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.