Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

I didn't have the ambition to be a broadcaster. I was going to be a newspaper reporter the rest of my life, but that opportunity came along.

You can't travel the back roads very long without discovering a multitude of gentle people doing good for others with no expectation of gain or recognition. The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines. Some people out there spend their whole lives selflessly.

For a while there, I was a stringer. The expression comes from the old habit of stringing together the column inches that you had written. They'd measure it and pay you 10 cents an inch for your printed copy.

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.

I think the feature reporter often walks a very thin line between a truly human story and one that slops over into mushiness or sentimentality.