American cookery, part 5 of 5

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SOUTH DAKOTA: Bad Lands, multihued in early dawn, starkly white at noon, red-toned under setting sun. Black Hills, with gold at Lead, Passion Play at Spearfish, buffalo at Wind Cave. Mount Rushmore facing history; Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt. Split by the wide Missouri, verdant to the east, "full of distance: to the west, with seldom a clouded sky to darken a day.

TENNESSEE: Mountain folk say only the "journey proud" ever leave.

Beloved Davy Crockett did, to hi woe. Those who stay talk of Lookout's "Battle of the Clouds," of Nashville's Grand Old Opry, of Memphis levees, of marble, of smooth-strutting Walking Horses.

Tennessee, the "Big Bend," whose waters aid TVA to make all the land green by day and bright by night. TEXAS: From Red River to Rio Grande, big in miles, long on memory; Remember the Alamo, Lone Star Flag and longhorns on the trek to Kansas. San Antonio, Houston, Big D, Fort Worth, great cities near the plains, in sight of roaming steer. Roses in Tyler, fruit in Magic Valley, rice beside the Gulf.

First in oil, grain and winter vegetables, first in pridefull spirit.

UTAH: Great Salt Lake, six times as salty as an ocean, Bingham Canyon, sunk for copper, Bryce Canyon, nature's cathedral, Rainbow Bridge, Monument Valley, Great Dessert; echoes of distant past.

Clean wide streets, voices massed in choir, tabernacle without nails; tributes to Mormon resolve. Honeybee for toil and a sea gull to recall a miracle of salvation in 1848. VERMONT: New England's most rock bound, with out an inch of coast, Green the Mountains, from whence sprang Ethan Allen, from whence maple sugar and organ pipes.

Taconic hills, sliced for marble, alive with ski lodges. Champlain, blue to the west, the Connecticut, rolling to the south. Covered bridges by towns as sturdy and proud as the people who founded them.

VIRGINIA: Old Dominion, Mother of Presidents, home of the famed, Jamestown, Williamsburg, Yorktown, Appomattox, on history's path.

Washington, Jefferson, Wilson, even Sam Houston, claimed Virginia birth. "Carry Me Back" to Smithfield hams, to Shenandoah apples, to the Trail of the Lonesome Pine. See again old Blue Ridge, or bustling Hampton Roads in Navy blue. WASHINGTON: Evergreen gem of the Northwest, whose Olympic Mountains scan Puget Sound as Rainier stands icily aloof. Seattle, doorstep to the Orient, Spokane, welcome mat to Inland Empire. Wenatchee and Yakima Valleys give apples a day for all, the Columbia yields salmon to top tall tales. Grand coulee, "biggest job on earth", dwarfs even the Pyramids of ancient Egypt.

WEST VIRGINIA: Bituminous to the core, favored by nature on its surface. Border lines wrinkled as a prune, fixed to neighbors by twin panhandles. Harpers Ferry, by the mingled Potaomac and Shenandoah, recalls zealot John Brown, beautiful Kanawha lures industry, Green brier at White Sulphur Springs calls elite. IN the hills a motto: "Mountaineers are always free." WISCONSIN: Progressive testing ground, land of ideas and action. Dairyland of America, leader in milk, maker of half a nation's cheese. Milwaukee, brewing beside Lake Michigan, Green Bay, whose packers are huge. Dotted with lakes, 4,000 on maps alone, led by Geneva, blue as Galilee, Mendota where the capitol stands, and Winnebago, site of Oshkosh, by gosh. WYOMING: No lyrics capture Yellowstone, home of geysers - Faithful and erratic - where bears hungrily eye tourists, but know their place. Nor are words enough for Grand Teton and Jackson Lake, awesome in beauty.

Bronco riders at Cheyenne and Laramie are poetry in motion, and everywhere - Powder, Medicine Bow, Big Horn - the frontier is always close in nostalgia. Origin: Women's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Volume 1. Shared by: Sharon Stevens, Oct/94.

Submitted By SHARON STEVENS On 10-31-94

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