In 1967, Charles Kuralt took a cue from his friend John Steinbeck’s book Travels with Charley and began touring America’s back roads in a motor home, filming stories about anyone or anything he found interesting along the way.  While it started as a mere three month experiment for the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, On the Road with Charles Kuralt became one of the most popular news segments and lasted almost twenty-five years.  Kuralt and his small crew visited all fifty states, clocking over a million miles and going through six motor homes.  In the 1990s, the Travel Channel combined On the Road segments into episodes and this set holds eighteen of those episodes with 77 total segments.
 
Don’t be put off by the “Television’s Norman Rockwell” quote on the cover.  While On the Road is heartwarming, it is neither sickly sweet nor overly sentimental.  Kuralt found real people and real beauty in his travels and introduced them to the rest of America.  He had a way of finding just the right angle for each story and for giving each subject the respect and care it deserved.  While Kuralt clearly took joy in finding everyday heroes like “Bicycle Man,” a retiree who spends his time fixing bikes and giving them to local children to ride, he seemed equally interested in learning all the ways Americans spend their time.  There are segments on stone-skipping, bubble art, and we even visit a pothole festival.  Kuralt was genuinely fascinated by the people he met and watching this set, it’s impossible to not become just as enthralled.  Also, the On the Road segments are deceptively simple because they are glimpses into small pieces of American life that Kuralt quietly uses to remind us how lucky we are to have that life and how much good there is around us.
 
The one problem with this set, and it’s a big one, is that the video is terrible.  There is an astonishing amount of scratches, cloudy images, dirt, and lack of color definition.  While the audio is a bit better, distortion is a problem and there is an occasional distracting hiss.  I wish Acorn had re-mastered the source material because On the Road shows America at its best and this collection is a national treasure and should be treated as such.  The set is also skimpy with special features.  There are three text-only features: A biography of Kuralt, “About On the Road,” and some updates on Road segments.  None of them add much of any value.
 
Each episode ends with Kuralt saying “Well, time to say goodbye until our next trip together. We’ve heard about a story up the road here, but we kind of hope we never get there. With luck we’ll stumble across something more interesting along the way.  I can see the road is bending.  Wonder what’s around the bend.”  With this set, you get to see a lot of what is around every bend and it might make you look at America a little differently.  Though On the Road was filmed long ago, you know there are just as many interesting people around now and they, too, might be just around the bend.
 
Set Contents:
Disc One
Episode 1: Blenheim Ginger Ale, Golden Gate Bridge Workers, Bicycle Man
Episode 2: Super Shoe Salesman, Down-Home Remedies, 80-Year-Old Cook, Unique Mailbox Posts
Episode 3: American Citizen, Blowing Bubbles, Junk-Mail Heat, Simplify
Episode 4: Domino Theory, Old Advertisements, Building Wooden Boats, Roadside Shangri-La
Episode 5: Kentucky Croquet-Playing Field, "Black Diamond" Private Railcar, Twidd, The Circus Bandleader
Episode 6: Whistle-Stop Ride, Toothpick Artist, National Weather Survey
Disc Two
Episode 7: All-Night Library, Life on the Bayou, Living in a Small Town
Episode 8: Lady Mayor, Bullfighter, Wind Symphony/Carousels, Shipbuilders of Maine
Episode 9: Interstate 80, Farming and Fishing in Kansas, Greek Sponge-Fisherman, Bishop of Spokane, Volkswagens
Episode 10: Piney Woods Thoreau, Coffee Cups, Wheat Harvest, Cadillac Ranch, Nebraska: Bountiful Desert
Episode 11: Illinois: Abraham Lincoln's Hometown, Hummingbirds, Maple Sugar, Woman Driver, Mayor of Duncan
Episode 12: Dowset, One-Room Schoolhouse, Brick Maker, Cable Cars, Iowa
Disc Three
Episode 13: Mushrooms, Covered Bridges, Turkey Trot, Kite Man, Montana: Little Big Horn
Episode 14: 104-Year-Old Man, Cymbals Factory, Sleighs, California: The Mission Trail
Episode 15: Chicken Man, Idaho: The River of No Return, Man Who Waves at Traffic
Episode 16: Pauli Murray, Delta Queen, Street Vendor, Colorado Prospectors
Episode 17: Stone Skipping, New Mexico: Atomic Bomb, Pothole Festival, Greenup H.S. Cheerleaders, Crop Artist
Episode 18: Bike Messenger, Lace Making, Cicadas, Capitals of the World, South Dakota: Cowboys of Deadwood