Back twenty years to... Thursday, August 24th, 2006. Day 138. The Amish Community, The RV Hall of Fame, and a tour at the 'birthplace' of my motorhome. The never built settlement of Radioville, the small town of Patriot and the gangly and ghastly, 'yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp'.

"I retrieve the electrical cable from the mud and wash it down. Dear Caroline has sunken into the sludge, and it takes a few gentle and careful manoeuvres to free her from the quagmire. And so I leave the so soggy place, out into the maze of County roads, and eventually find my way to US Highway 421. I make a stop at San Pierre – for shots of a burned-out diner and an equally, but differently buggered-up gas station, and now drive south to find Radioville.

I really like the name. But much to my dismay, I find nothing. It seems there’s actually no such place. Just a long stretch of separated, but undeveloped lots. There's a substantial, stone-built, boarded-up bowling alley, and I get some pictures of this particular, and highly unusual dereliction.

Now, a super cool-looking guy approaches, who lives close-by. He's seen me arrive he says, and wants to tell me about the 'Land Deal' – that should have created the town of Radioville. He says that the eight-lane alley was built in the late fifties, as a 'Flagship Attraction', to get folks buying-into the big property scam. But the 'town' was intentionally never realised. Most of the lots still belong to a 'self-made developer'. The deeds no doubt – safely locked-away in a filing-cabinet, in a nondescript office, on the seventy-second floor, of a classy glass skyscraper, in a really big city – very far away from here.

US-421 is a very fast two-lane trucking route, and the big-rigs are seriously hacking it. Now through Francesville: "The small town with a big heart." Again, how many times have I seen the slogan before. How many identically worded small-town signs can there be? Two diners, an auto-repair shop and a 'Family Express' gas station. Next, I take a lengthy stop for pictures in Monon. It’s hot out, and walking around the place is tiring – but I get what I can before driving further south."

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.