Jean Shepherd's America

Shep recalls the sights, sounds, and experiences of working in a steel mill at age 17, as the operations of a contemporary steel mill play out on screen.

Shep loses his bait but comes up with some tall tales on a fishing trip in Maine's backwaters on the banks of the Kennebec River, with a stop at the Skowhegan County Fair to meet Bob, champion horse weight-puller.

While rumbling across Wyoming aboard a Union Pacific railroad car, Shep recalls a previous trip during his World War II Army days when he pulled KP duty on a troop train.

Recalling the origins of his interest in Alaska in the second grade, Shep journeys through the Alaskan frontier exploring the captivating landscape, the sights and sounds of an Eskimo village, and the pervading silence.

While he cracks lobster claws, Shep cracks jokes and stories about his crazy love affair with all manner of delicacies, from rainbow trout to pecan pie.

Recalling a comic-strip from his boyhood in which the hero escapes on a houseboat from the pursuing villains, Shep takes the helm of a houseboat and contemplates a nomadic life at sea.

Shep gets behind the wheel and moves out on the turnpike of life, as he muses on the mystique of the open road.

Shep contrasts man's "nesting" instinct with his desire for mobility in a vision of tomorrow's styles of living.

Beer, considered by some to be the universal language, is the focus as Shep travels to the archetypal neighborhood tavern in Milwaukee and presents a poetic pastiche of beer commercials -- "the folk music of our time."

Shep talks with one of Florida's natural wonders: Sea Weed Ernie, a hermit who lives in an old wrecked boat in the middle of a watery nowhere, trades fish stories and casts a line in the fabled Black Water Bay.

Tall stories -- airborne. Shep takes off at the controls of his four-seater and visits a convention that features home-made airplanes built with some interesting components.

What happens when you let a guy like Jean Shepherd loose in a place like Hawaii? He has a luau, watches the surfers and talks about his old man, the All Time Inner-Tube Specialist of America.

Stranded during a blizzard in Wyoming, Shep and the crew romp in the snow outside the "Little America" motel while he recalls another childhood memory of cold mornings in northern Indiana, and his mother's unsympathetic reply to his plea to stay home from school.