Back twenty years to... Monday, May 22nd, 2006. Day 44. The American automotive service-industry at its best, and my return to the 'Mainland'. Washed-out in Washington State, the astounding Grand Coulee Dam and a weekend Street Parade.

"I do some sums and some 'logistics'. I’ve covered almost five thousand miles to date, and I'll need to get to 'Sea-Tac' – the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport – by Wednesday night to make my flight to Alaska at six the following morning. I leave Walla Walla at nine-thirty and drive west on US Highway 12, which runs parallel to the Oregon border two-or-three miles to the south. I’m specifically in search now of the vast, Stateline Wind Farm, one of the Nation’s largest, but the day is dreadful and dreary, and full with Monday morning gloom. An overcast sky, gathering storm-clouds and rain, but suited most perfectly to the chain-smoking, Big Industry operations I’m now passing.

Further west on US-12, I make a fairly decent picture stop in Prosser – population five thousand or-so. The railroad, a flour mill, and some other nice stuff around the downtown area. But best of all is the Roller Rink – where inside, past the gaudy lights of the large skating enclosure, right by the pool table, there’s a simple tally of misdemeanours – punishable either by instant expulsion or long-term exclusion. This is altogether excellent to my mind. Good, sensible and right. Teach the kids an early, valuable lesson in how properly to behave. For me, 'common courtesy' is entirely essential in the fraught times we're living through. The world is in such flux. Consideration and respect for others is of paramount importance for our collective well-being and contentment. It's also, just plain – common sense."

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.