{"id":10125,"date":"2026-10-15T12:55:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/?p=10125"},"modified":"2026-10-15T14:30:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:30:21","slug":"taking-a-journey-along-the-great-wagon-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/golf\/personalities\/10125\/taking-a-journey-along-the-great-wagon-road","title":{"rendered":"Taking a Journey Along the Great Wagon Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>[Oct. 15, 2026]–<\/em>Famed golf writer James Dodson is returning to the Brattleboro Literary Festival<\/a> for this, its 25th year. Dodson will kick things off Friday evening at 7:30 at 118 Elliot, talking about his book The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim\u2019s Journey on the Great Wagon Road<\/em>. I\u2019m happy to be introducing him and his book, a rarity for him in that it\u2019s not about golf.<\/p>\n

Dodson joined us in 2017 to speak about his The Range Bucket List<\/em>, alongside Tom Callahan who had just published Arnie: The Life of Arnold Palmer<\/em>. A felicitous pairing, since Dodson had earlier helped Palmer write his memoir, A Golfer\u2019s Life<\/em>. He secured that assignment because of his debut volume, Final Rounds<\/em>, arguably one of the most poignant golf books ever written, about a trip to the great courses of England and Scotland with his terminally ill father. Final Rounds<\/em> marks its 30th anniversary this year, still in print.<\/p>\n

Golf makes a few brief appearances in Dodson\u2019s latest\u2014the Brattleboro Country Club<\/a> course even gets a mention, as does a round of Woodrow Wilson\u2019s, who once dragged an aging U.S. Grant out to a course as a spectator, much to the former President\u2019s bafflement. (After Wilson whiffed on a swing Grant supposedly conceded the game might lend itself to exercise but wondered, \u201cWhat is the ball for?\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But The Road That Made America<\/em> is a road trip of a different order, a journey along a byway critical in American history, especially as it pertained to early settlers from abroad moving south and west. The Great Wagon Road began near Philadelphia and wended its way down through to Georgia.<\/p>\n

Since his teens Dodson had wanted to follow what remained of the road because his ancestors had done the same\u2014different strands of the family taking the Wagon Road to, eventually, North Carolina, where Dodson now lives.<\/p>\n

It takes him close to six years of repeated journeys to complete the task, but it was clearly worth it. Dodson\u2019s report is wondrously stuffed with tasty historical morsels particularly from pre-Revolutionary days through the Civil War years, the cast including William Penn, Daniel Boone, George Washington. James Buchanan, Thaddeus Stevens, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and many other lesser-known lights who had passed along or lived on the road.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s Dodson\u2019s meetings, many planned, others random and serendipitous, that bring the book to further life. He runs into historians, museum directors, librarians, docents, war reenactors, hobbyists, collectors, mayors and ministers, poets and painters, a Thomas Jefferson descendant and just plain folks with an interest in the old highway.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll history is personal to someone,\u201d Dodson tells one historian who asks him what he\u2019s learned from his pilgrimage. And what is personal, almost spiritual in the journey for him, he\u2019s generous enough to share with readers.<\/p>\n

Hope to see you at this year\u2019s festival, all events free and open to the public, as always. The full schedule is available at the link above.<\/p>\n\"\"<\/a>\n

First published on my Substack, Tom’s Bedellicatessan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Oct. 15, 2026]–Famed golf writer James Dodson is returning to the Brattleboro Literary Festival for this, its 25th year. Dodson… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":10126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[670,100586,7],"tags":[633,668,410,514842,1016481,1016544,1046090],"class_list":["post-10125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rummaging-around-in-the-bag","category-the-bookshelf","category-personalities","tag-vermont","tag-brattleboro","tag-arnold-palmer","tag-james-dodson","tag-tom-callahan","tag-brattleboro-literary-festival","tag-the-road-that-made-america"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2026\/10\/unnamed-file.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10125"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10135,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10125\/revisions\/10135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}