The sky was turning dark with clouds as they drove north. She put her foot on the brake and veered left onto the turnoff toward Lake Wobegone. The turnoff is just before a sharp bend in the highway and when you brake for the turn, you think of the speeding truck that might leap from the bend and roll you flat as a pancake. This turn might be your last. You brake and at the last moment you hit the gas and swerve left, as if crossing a forbidden border. Where the county road leaves the highway, there’s a dip in the road and a bump that lets you know you’re back in the land of where you come from. You hit the bump and see George Washington’s face on the schoolroom wall and hear the Nicene Creed, “I believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible,” and smell tunafish casserole.

Leaving Home, by Garrison Keillor, (1987), p. 23