Back twenty years to... Monday, October 10th, 2006. Day 184. A steamy, smoky paper mill, and an absurdly tall Indian Brave. Skowhegan and Dover-Foxcroft. Hyping-up for Halloween, and gearing-up for my old school-chum, visiting from back-home. Lobsters, lighthouses and cranberries.

"Columbus Day at last. I wake in the early hours, and can’t get back to sleep. I’m now 'terminally exited' about getting to Boston and meeting my best buddy Wayne from his plane. I leave Saco and find State Highway 9, all around the coast, past Goose Rocks Beach, through Cape Porpoise and Kennebunkport, and now finally to Kennebunk Beach, where I make a stop for coffee. In the diner there's a 2007 calendar, and a most superb novelty key-ring. A backward-counting clock. Counting-up, that is, until January 2009, when George W. Bush will end his second term, and be replaced by a Democrat.

But to find them on sale here – especially right here – where the 'Bush Family Dynasty' have a rather super summer home, is such a flagrant and perhaps surprising 'raised middle finger' to the supercilious half-wit idiot. I'm wondering whether he’s home there just now – and if so, should I drive there and assassinate him. But instead, I choose to drive on south – and get onto US Highway 1 again.

It’s a gloriously sunny day yet again – I’m almost sick of saying it now – driving the prime, coastal tourist route, in-amongst the lycra-shiny and colourful cyclists, and past purple-studded collars on fluffy white dogs. Fishermen, sailors, swimmers and surfers.

There's so much lobster in Maine. So many of those – and of course, billions upon billions of cranberries. I fill-up with diesel at an incredibly cheap, two dollars sixty-nine per gallon, and make a half-hour photo-stop in Ogunquit, which is heaving – not only with holidaymakers – but a throng of 'arty' Halloween scarecrows, artfully placed on benches, under trees, outside shops and all around the churchyard gardens. All gearing-up for the 31st."

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.