Back twenty years to... Monday, August 28th, 2006. Day 142. 'Frisch's Big Boy Burgers', a cardboard cut-out Roy Rogers, the super-kitschy Springmill drive-in movie theatre and the grandly ornate Ritz cinema. The historic and poignant Underground Railroad, and a lakeside 'seaside resort'.

"Hurricane Katrina. One year ago, tomorrow. Thinking back, I rather think that 'President Bush – The Supercilious', might have done something better, than grinning for the cameras, and heartily congratulating Michael Brown, the then FEMA Director, for "Doing such a great job" – while around twenty thousand stranded souls were still sheltering in acutely atrocious conditions in the New Orleans Superdome.

It’s raining heavily again, and it looks as though it’s set-in for the day. This makes me feel just a little less guilty, as the plan is simply to get to the first motel I can find with quick-enough wi-fi, and deal with the massive backlog of e-mail and pictures steadily accumulating in my mental 'in-box'. And so after some fairly intense driving – manic lane-changing, through the maze of the teeming metropolis of Cincinnati – we're finally rolling-up at the mock Tudor splendour of the Best Western Hotel in Mariemont. But it's a rather unfortunate choice. Half of the place is undergoing reconstruction – and the other is filled to the brim with a trade convention of some kind or another.

I try finding alternatives on sat-nav, but the selection it reveals are mainly all back west from here. So east again on US Highway 50, seven or-so miles to Milford, but there’s nothing here either in the way of acceptable accommodation. I do however, find a marvellous older version of the 'Frisch's Big Boy' burger-bar sign, and to avoid getting out in the wet, make a nuisance of myself, driving around in the parking-lot, getting my pictures from the van.

The rain is torrential now, under dark grey skies. I reach Hillsboro, where there's a 'chalet-style' motel at the west end of town – and another to the east. But I can guarantee with confidence, that neither will have anything approaching a high-speed internet connection. And so I pull-over, weigh-up my options, and check for the next substantial-looking town on the map. This will be Chillicothe, probably three times the size of this place, and about thirty miles on. The day will be wasted completely if I can’t get online – and so I get motoring."

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.