Money is such a treat. It takes up so little space. It takes no more ink for the bank to print $9,998 than to print $1,001. It flows, electronically; it does not gather dust. Like water, it (dis)solves everything. Oceanic, it is yet as lucid as a mountain pool; the depositor can see clear to the sandy bottom. It is ubiquitous and under pressure, yet pennies don't drip from faucets. Money is so tidy, so neat. It is freedom in action: when you give a twenty-buck bill to the cabbie, you don't tell him how to spend it. He can blow it on coke, for all you care. All you care about is your change. No wonder the ex-Communists are dizzy. In the old Soviet Union there was nothing to buy, nothing to spend. It was freedom of a kind, but not our kind. We need money, the dull electric thrill when the automatic teller spits out the disposable receipt. Two railroads crossed here, making the depot hot property for an army that could take it. Grant won out, and rode the rails to Vicksburg. The little city now, uncoveted by any side, reposes in the hope of Shiloh's bloody glamour rubbing off as peaceful golddust-tourist traffic. This veranda knew the boots of Beauregard and of Ulysses, too. What epic times when bayonet and cannonball dispersed the souls of country boys in gray and blue! An iron lozenge forged to fit the wheels that roll east-west and north-south marks the spot a throng died for. I stood there all alone.
		Excerpted from Americana by John Updike. Copyright © 2001 by John Updike. Excerpted by permission of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.