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from Brubaker's Introduction
I first met Louis through a group of friends at a bar in 1969. It was a couple of weeks after the moon landing, and he was going on about how the image of Neil Armstrong bouncing on the moon was the most American thing he had ever seen. He was drinking black coffee and his breath was completely free of the bitter scent of alcohol. As he spoke of the moon and Neil Armstrong's footprint, I noticed how he measured every word.
"The man didn't walk on the moon, he wobbled across it, afraid with every bounce that gravity might forsake him," Louis said, pausing between phrases to consider what came next. He was methodical to a fault. The only other indication in this first meeting that Louis was different from other men came when he told me that he would love to make a map of the moon.
When Louis told me, in the fall of 1974, that he was going to make a new map of the United States, my first instinct was to ask him why. His explanation was very similar to the introduction he wrote for the finished map. I didn't exactly understand why it was something that he felt he needed to do, but, as with every project he took on, I was excited to see the results. In the half decade I'd known Louis, I was never disappointed in any of his completed projects. Be it an impressionistic map of Puget Sound shared over coffee or a cubist rendering of my condominium's floor plan, framed and given as a Christmas gift, all of Louis's projects were exquisite representations of the man's singular point of view. So why is this project different? Why is it even a text worthy of our time and study? The simple fact that Louis's American map is so shrouded in mystery is enough to give us pause and force inquiry into the circumstances behind the project's genesis and prolonged gestation.
from Streitmatter's Notes
A Tooth...
In Vermont, I stumbled upon a tooth embedded in a patch of grass between two old buildings. There was no way to determine the origin of the tooth. Its roots had been worn down to soft bumps and both of the buildings were long abandoned. The integrity of the tooth's crown was impeccable. I recalled the story of Ethan Allen's trip to visit his dentist friend, and having a tooth removed to convince another patient to have her own, aching tooth pulled. I held the tooth between my fingers and tried to imagine its mouth, its face, its frame. It was certainly a man's, but appeared far too fresh and round to be Allen's. To test my doubt, I examined the two empty structures between which the tooth was located. One appeared to be an old tavern, the other nothing more than a house. I chose to survey the area, and map it for inclusion as the spiritual home of Ethan Allen's tooth.
As I measured one of the buildings, a homeless man stumbled out of the back door. He stood with his back to me and pissed on the grass. Then he turned his head and spit. He noticed me, pen and notebook in hand, peeking out from the corner of the building. He finished and turned toward me, spitting a gob of thick red phlegm to the ground, dribbling saliva in his beard. He stared at me, then reached into his mouth, wiggled a tooth back and forth, and ripped it from his gums. He pinched the tooth between his fingers then flicked it toward me, grinning a wide, jack-o-lantern's grin. I waited until he went inside before examining it. It was almost identical to the one I had found and placed in my pocket. Returning to where I found the first tooth, I drove a stake into the ground, set the tooth beside it, and marked it on my map with this description: A Tooth, belonging spiritually to Ethan Allen, but in actuality to a homeless man living in an abandoned historic building.
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