The Lost Bryson

I've just finished reading Bill Bryson's "The Lost Continent - Travels in Small-town America." I'm tempted to call him a self-satisfied, middle-class lardbucket who enjoys laughing at those less brainy and fortunate than himself. However he was smart enough to spot when the 'F' word would come into common parlance, and you have to give it to him, he is funny.
He has recently been appointed Chancellor of Durham University, my old alma mater, so I guess I should show some respect. Handy if you fancy free Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pud when on Wear-side, some compensation for listening to the drones of the Senior Common Room, but too high a price to pay in my view.
Here is Bryson on Route 66:
"I left Santa Fe and drove west along Interstate 40. This used to be Route 66. Everybody loved Route 66. People used to write songs about it. But it was only two lanes wide, not at all suitable for the space age, hopelessly inadequate for people in motor homes, and every fifty miles or so it would pass through a little town where
you might encounter a stop sign or a traffic light - what a drag! - so they buried it under the desert and built a new superhighway that shoots across the landscape like a four-lane laser and doesn't stop for anything, even mountains. So something else that was nice and pleasant is gone forever because it wasn't practical - like passenger trains and milk in bottles and corner shops and Burma Shave signs."