A One-Year Slice of Americana

They’re the pillars, large and small, that serve as the foundation of American culture: OK, overalls, the hamburger, Scrabble, Crackerjacks, the electric guitar, the recliner, Gumby and “The Grapes of Wrath.” And they’re all so familiar, it seems as if they’ve always been here.

But “Present at the Creation,” a yearlong series from National Public Radio, travels to the time before each of these existed and examines how they came to be.

The series airs every Monday, during the half-hour of “Morning Edition” that begins at 3:30, 5:30 and 7:30 a.m. on KCRW-FM (89.9) and KPCC-FM (89.3).

“All these things we take for granted, but where did they come from? You never get to go back and talk about the beginnings of something,” said NPR reporter Renee Montagne, whose segment about Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” airs Monday.

Kerouac’s frenetic travelogue of cross-country meanderings that included Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and the migrant fields of the San Joaquin Valley, which served as the book of genesis for American counterculture and youth rebellion, is one of several topics with California connections. Others, upcoming or already covered, include “California Dreamin’,” the surfboard, “The Grapes of Wrath” and, close to Election Day to coincide with the L.A. secession issue, a piece on the Hollywood sign.

“Of course the Hollywood sign began the way L.A. began, as a housing development, and it was put up there for that reason,” Montagne said, laughing.

“Present at the Creation” grew out of the success of the NPR 100, a series the network ran in 2000 chronicling the most important American musical works of the 20th century.

This time NPR polled a panel of cultural critics--George Holt of the North Carolina Museum of Art; playwright Naomi Iizuka; Spin magazine senior editor Will Hermes; Lolis Elie, a columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune; and L.A.-based fashion designer Trina Turk--and asked them to winnow a list of American cultural icons worth dissecting.

The choices had to be significant and immediately recognizable. And the results were “the designs, sounds, images and writings that helped shape American culture,” according to an NPR release, spanning culture both high and low, from Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” to “Animal House.”

“If there wasn’t more to it than ‘This is just a cool painting’ or ‘This is a cool saying,’ we would have dropped it,” said Ellen McDonnell, “Morning Edition” executive producer.

Elizabeth Blair, supervising producer of “Present at the Creation,” called the segments “love stories about the creative process.”

“It’s about the constellation of events that make something happen. These stories are about looking at the thing’s origins and how and why it’s embraced,” she said.

For example, the piece on surfboards is “not a story about the plank. It’s about how Hawaiians made it a spiritual experience.”

And “California Dreamin’,” McDonnell said, “was not just about the Mamas and the Papas. It was about the time, it was about the musical landscape.”

The lyrics of wistful longing and the search for comfort resonated with many when the song was released in 1965, said NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg, who reported the piece.

“ ‘I’d be safe and warm,’ ” she said, quoting the song, “and it was certainly a time people were looking for that.”

NPR reporters clamored for the chance to dive into these stories, even though the work had to be squeezed into their regular duties.

“When you looked at the list, there were all these interesting things to do,” said Montagne, who in addition to the reports on Kerouac and the Hollywood sign did a story on the French Quarter. “For a lot of people, it was like being a kid in a candy store. There was a lot of, ‘Wait a minute. That one’s gone!’ ”

“This is so much fun. You dig really deep into these stories, because they’re history,” she said.

The downside is that each piece is limited to 6 1/2 or 8 1/2 minutes.

“You get this treasure trove, and you have to toss stuff out right and left,” Montagne said, noting that among the things she had to cut out was audio of Kerouac and his traveling companion, Neal Casady.

But for each of the stories, many of the leftovers are available on NPR’s Web site, www.npr.org, along with the segments themselves. The series began in January and will run through December.

“I think these pieces really do have a shelf life,” Blair said.

NPR spokeswoman Jenny Lawhorn said the “Present at the Creation” stories, once they appear on the Web site, are among the most popular items that listeners e-mail to others about.

“If you listened to all of these,” she said, “you’d be armed for every cocktail party you ever went to in your life.”