Roads To Quoz - Andrew M.

 Roads To Quoz

The excerpt of the text, Roads To Quoz, is made up of a very interesting writing style. The excerpt starts with the characters arriving at Joe’s Country Store. The writer describes Joe’s Country Store, “It had the look of an old village-grocery.” A village grocery store is an older, more simple and cozy style of grocery store. The writer described Joe’s Country Store this way to introduce the visual image of this location into the imaginations of the audience. The writer says that these kinds of stores are “diminishing” to make the audience realize that finding a store like this is an uncommon experience. The writer goes on to describe the inside of the store that contains a “meat-and-cheese-counter” where a “Bert” or ”Betty” could assemble a sandwich or other food items. While describing the counter, the author goes into depth about the miniscule details. By describing how the meat and cheese counter works, the reader can relate the experience the characters are going through to a similar type of scenario like going to Subway or another restaurant where a worker constructs food for you. 

The writer talks about the sandwich that he is going to get and how the sandwich goes by many different names like “zeppelin”, “hoagie”, “bomber”, and a “grinder”. The writer included this little portion about the different names of the sandwich to help the audience, no matter where they are from in the country, understand exactly what he is going to eat. After talking about what he is going to eat, the author compares a big brand’s sandwich to a village grocery store’s sandwich. He says, “a franchise sub is to a well-filled grinder from a grocery as shaken milk is to a milk shake.” He compares sandwiches to milk because shaken milk has nothing to do with the creation of a milkshake which shows that a sandwich from a big brand is nowhere near how good a sandwich from a grocery is.

To start the second paragraph off, the writer starts listing the intricate assortment of ingredients that he puts on his sandwich like “banana peppers”, “sliced tomatoes”, etc. The reason why he listed this is to further the audience’s imagination about the taste of the sandwich, whether the audience thinks that these ingredients are a good or bad mix. He doesn’t only explain the ingredients to the reader, he also gives “commentary” about his sandwich to the “Betty” helping him out. This commentary leads into a conversation with the Betty about the “irruption the Susquehanna made through Lanesboro”. This “irruption” that most likely destroyed some of the city could be a metaphor for the destruction of the smaller grocery stores that are being “diminished”.

The same Betty hands him a pamphlet, news clippings, and snapshots of tourist attractions to visit while they are in town. However, these items are old and “yellowed”. Because these are so old, it shows how few visitors come to the grocery store and why these types of stores are going out of business. The Betty instructs her daughter, Sarah, to run and get her computer to show the characters more information about the town.

Sarah comes back after the characters finish eating to show them a video. The writer describes the content of the video as “Old Man Susquehanna” being destructive. The way he described the person is very interesting because the “person” is actually the Susquehanna River. He is basically personifying the river and comparing its destruction and rampage to a man “with neither invitation nor a wiping of his feet, slipping into parlours to leave behind mud and stink.” If a person did these actions, it would bother and enrage a lot of people. This is the exact reason the author personified the river to show how the “irruption” affected lives by destroying the “historic hotel”, “houses”, etc.

Overall this text was very interesting and effective at getting the point and message across. The way it was written, chronologically, made the story easier to understand. The detail in it was very helpful to envision the scene.