With the horror stories I hear about the Secretary of State driver’s license bureaus, I dreaded my trip Saturday to the office in Bethalto.

My license had expired the day before and I put off the trip until it was absolutely necessary, knowing for sure that I was in for a long wait. I signed in at the counter at 8:33 a.m. and walked into an area that was already crammed full of people, despite the fact that the office had opened only 30 minutes before. If I hadn’t spent five minutes lost and circling the grounds at St. Louis Regional Airport, I might have beaten a few of my competitors.

It had been years since my license was actually replaced. The last time, I got a sticker to simply extend my expiration another four years without actually getting a new license. The photo and a bit of the biographical data were way out of date.

Everything I feared about the alleged inefficiencies of the bureau was dispelled pretty quickly, when they called me to the counter to begin the renewal process only minutes after my arrival.

The clerk asked me a list of check-off questions, all of which I responded to in the negative. Until he got to the height and weight part.

“Still 5-feet-11, 190?” he wanted to know.

I responded: “Uh, you might want to add a few pounds to that.”

“It happens,” he said, without glancing up.

I wanted to tell him it was because I was taller, but he’d never have bought it.

We comprised at 210 (all right, more than just a “few” pounds), and he then asked me to take the vision test. I walked over and craned my neck down to peer through a viewing device.

“Read Line 2,” he said.

“G-F-D, uh, C-D-O-Z,” I read off, not knowing for sure if I was getting them all right but satisfied when I was finished. I stood upright.

“Read the rest of it,” he said patiently.

Puzzled, I peered back in and spotted several more letters that I actually didn’t see the first time. This guy should see me on the road, I thought.

The clerk graciously accepted my effort.

“That will be $10 please, cash or check.”

“Should I write it to Secretary of State?” I asked.

“You can just use SOS,” he said.

How appropriate, I thought.

He sent me to the end of the counter to have my picture taken. That part of the process moved quickly, and I was soon out the door and calling my wife to tell her the entire trip had taken only 16 minutes. We were both amazed.

“I can’t believe how much older I look than my last picture,” I told her.

“Well, that’s because you are older,” she responded.

She doesn’t know it but that kind of sympathy will eventually be repaid.

The highlight of my recent vacation east had to be a visit to the Biltmore House, a palace of excess if ever one existed.

It’s also a landmark that has grown from America’s largest private residence to one of America’s greatest tourist attractions.

Located in Asheville, N.C., just across the Great Smoky Mountains from Tennessee, the estate was completed in 1895. It’s a statement of elegance and opulence — most of the Seven Deadly Sins all in one package.

The home was ordered built by George Vanderbilt, son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the magnate who launched a shipping and railroad empire that gave rise to multiple generations of multimillionaires. Had the Vanderbilts done in 2008 what they did more than 100 years ago, they would be equal in worth to the likes of billionaires Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

At the time of the construction George was said to be in bad straits with the rest of his family for wasting so much money on a home. And what a home! A 250-room French Renaissance chateau, whose name is a combination of Bilt, for Vanderbilt, and “moor,” a synonym for estate. Its worth today is inestimable, according to several tour guides I asked.

It might as well be called “Built More” because it goes on and on. It’s situated on 8,000 acres, including many hundreds of acres of the most beautifully sculpted gardens I’ve ever seen.

The home contains collections of paintings, murals, tapestries, porcelains and bronzes from around the world. George Vanderbilt was one of the most well-read and traveled men of his time, a fancier of fine things and not quite as industrious as his forebears.

Here is a description I borrowed from the Biltmore’s main Web site:

“Inside, artworks by Renoir, Sargent, Whistler, Pellegrini and Boldini adorn the walls and, in one case, the ceiling. The furniture includes designs by Sheraton and Chippendale. A chess set and gaming table, which belonged to Napoleon when he was in exile at St. Helena, are on display in the salon, and Chinese goldfish bowls from the Ming Dynasty can be admired in the library. Eight 16th century Flemish tapestries hang in the Banquet Hall and Tapestry Gallery. Fifty Persian and Oriental rugs cover marble and oak floors.”

There are 34 bedrooms (which housed family, guests and servants), an equal number of bathrooms (with indoor plumbing), a library with 10,000 volumes, a banquet hall with a 70-foot ceiling, 65 fireplaces and multiple music and sitting rooms.

For crying out loud, there’s even an indoor swimming pool, a gym and a bowling alley, all built in the style of the late 1890s.

On the surrounding estate there is an inn where people can stay, a winery, a farm and a former stable converted to a restaurant.

One of the largest, ongoing preservation efforts in America is keeping up the castle’s appearances, coordinated by Bill Cecil, the president and chief executive officer of The Biltmore Company and the great-grandson of the Vanderbilt who founded the estate.

It’s all very eye-popping and I pity the person who has to dust it all.

TO GET THERE: Biltmore House is located near the intersection of Interstates 26 and 40. The entrance is just north of I-40 Exit 50 or 50B. The estate is open daily from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact The Biltmore Company, 1 Approach Road, Asheville, NC 28803, or phone (828) 225-1333 or 1 (877) 324-5866, or visit www.biltmore.com online.

Four-dollar gasoline may be thwarting some adventurers, but not the travelers who rode my bumper all the way to the Great Smoky Mountains and back. The hills were alive with the sound of mufflers.

That was among many observations I made this month during a 1,600-mile journey through Tennessee and North Carolina. From Edwardsville to Gatlinburg and back, I saw no sign of fewer drivers on the highway.

In fact I marveled at how much fun people were having even as the price of their trip increased with each emission of their exhaust.

In the spirit of good journalism, I logged the price of gasoline as I went.

– I filled up on July 5 at the Westland Travel Center in St. Louis at $3.95 cents a gallon.

– On July 6 I stopped at the Corner Grocery in Silver Point, Tenn., where I spent $4.07.

– At the Dudley Creek Market in Gatlinburg, Tenn., on July 9, I spent $4.04.

– On July 12, at Clark’s Pump and Shop in Richmond, Ky., the price was $4.11.

– Upon returning to the QuikTrip on Troy Road in Edwardsville on July 13, the cost was $4.18.

The price was never a surprise: Every time I turned on CNN that week, the barrel cost of oil was among the lead stories.

I hear a lot about motorists cutting back, but I saw no evidence of it this month.

Our U.S. senators, Dick Durbin and Barack Obama, could do the free press a favor by pushing a federal shield law for reporters.

Such a law would allow a reporter to protect sources without being subjected to potentially harsh criminal penalties for failing to do so. One need only Google the subject to find hundreds of cases where media representatives have been jailed for refusing to divulge where they got their information.

Reporters carry an awesome burden — the responsibility to report information without reservations about whether they might go to jail for doing their job. Most states have shield laws (Illinois does), but the lack of a federal law to clearly spell out guidelines means that reporters who write locally but report on national subjects have no clear protections. In addition, state laws vary so widely as to be nonsensical in minimum standards of protections.

The Illinois Press Association has been championing the federal shield law for some time. Following is a press release they sent me this week.

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The Illinois Press Association thanks Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan for her support of the Free Flow of Information Act (S. 2035), a federal shield law for reporters.

Madigan joined 40 attorneys general throughout the United States in signing a letter by the National Association of Attorneys General, which urges Senate leaders to join the U.S. House of Representatives in passing the bill.

The Free Flow of Information Act would create a federal reporter’s privilege law to coincide with the laws of 49 states and the District of Columbia. Illinois has such a law.

“The Reporter’s Privilege Act in Illinois is a critical First Amendment law,” explained David L. Bennett, executive director of the IPA. “It protects the independence of the press so reporters are not forced to act as agents of the government. Such protection is needed at the federal level for broader protection of the same rights.”

The IPA has been a leader in First Amendment education through the not-for-profit Illinois First Amendment Center. The IFAC provides free educational materials to schools nationwide.

“The First Amendment is as important as it is underappreciated,” Bennett said. “Our forefathers intended the press to be free. More than 230 years later, we’re still trying to perfect that.”

“I think anybody who’s been involved in this issue for any length of time can tell you that there are more censorship conflicts today than at any other time,” Mark Goodman, Knight chair in scholastic journalism at Kent State University, told the Chicago Tribune in May.

The Free Flow of Information Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives 398–21 in October 2007. It cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee with a vote of 15–4. It has yet to be brought to the Senate floor for a vote
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“We hope the support from the Attorneys General will demonstrate to the Senate that his bill is not just a media bill,” Bennett said. He noted that several Illinois legislators have signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation and said that the IPA appreciates their support as well.

In the Senate, Sen. Barack Obama signed on in April. On the House side, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez and Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky were co-sponsors.

“By exposing confidences protected under state law to discovery in federal courts, the lack of a corresponding federal reporter’s privilege law frustrates the purposes of the state-recognized privileges and undercuts the benefit to the public that the states have sought to bestow through their shield laws,” the Attorneys General wrote in their letter to Senate leaders.

Led by Attorneys General Douglas Gansler from Maryland and Rob McKenna from Washington, the letter was signed by Attorneys General from the following states, and will be sent to Senate leaders on July 8 when Congress returns from summer recess: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.

The Illinois Press Association is the largest state newspaper association in the country with more than 600 daily and weekly newspaper members.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan weighed in on the subject.

“The reporter’s privilege is based on the fundamental premises that informed citizens, the right to gather news, and the preservation of news information sources are critical to our democracy. Illinois law already recognizes this privilege. Along with my colleagues, I have weighed in to urge Congress to recognize this privilege on the federal level,” Madigan said.