They listen to country music here.

They listen to it throughout southern Indiana. And they listen to it in eastern Illinois.

I know this because they advertise it on billboards along the side of the highway. And in case you don't believe the signs, you need only turn on the radio. Nearly every station plays it.

I have nothing against country music. In fact, I have a couple of country CDs in my eclectic collection. But it isn't an every day thing for me. I prefer guitar-based rock. Typically the louder the better. Just ask my co-workers.

And I probably wouldn't have paid attention to the radio today, if it weren't for the question I've been trying to answer: Can music or, more specifically, a song, encompass that feeling of home.

On the outskirts of Cincinnati, the answer from Dustin Adams, 23, was yes. All it takes is the strains of a Led Zeppelin song -- any Zeppelin song -- and he is reminded of his childhood home with his mother. "She always listened to it," he says.

Further down Highway 50, in the small town of Loogootee (pronounced low-goat-ee -- I asked), Ill., Geoff Weeks, 32, tunes in country music. Standing next to his truck, the radio playing Alan Jackson's "USA Today." (I have to ask the artist and title as I'm a little behind on my country musicians.)

Weeks doesn't have a single song that reminds him of home. Rather he says there are specific songs that remind him of life's specific moments. But when pressed for details, he withdraws. "Well," he says, "there are lots of them."

Hours later in Salem, Ind., after passing through towns where the tallest buildings are grain elevators and water towers, 20-year-old Alicia Shreffler quickly comes up with an answer: "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down. The song, she says, reminds her of her husband, an Army National Guard soldier, during his deployment to Iraq. It was played at a family farewell party and it was played again when he returned home.

"I can't listen to that song anymore," she says. "It's too hard now."

You see, she says, her home is with her husband. When he's not there, it doesn't feel right.

Shreffler's colleague, Annie Ritzel, says simply that "music can remind you of anything." "It can remind of something bad that's happened, like a boyfriend breaking up with you," said Ritzel, 23. "And it can remind you of good things."

For her, Amy Grant's Christmas CD always brings back memories of her mother, who died when Ritzel was 15. "My mom always played that CD when we decorated the Christmas tree. So that's what I think of when I hear one of those songs -- me and my mom decorating the Christmas tree," she said.

Perhaps they're all correct-- music is the catalyst for a memory of a time. And maybe that's why I broke out Bon Jovi by late afternoon as I moved on down the road to the tunes of "Who Says You Can't Go Home." After all, it's a song I first heard, well, back home. On the freeway. My road.

___

FRIDAY MORNING:

MILFORD, Ohio (AP) _ Thump, thump, thump.

That's the sound of my tires hitting the seams of the asphalt or cement or whatever makes up Highway 50. And it's getting to me.

My answer has been to turn up the music.

With hours to mull over my thoughts in the car, I find myself going through my eclectic mix of music and picking soothing CDs. (Yes, in this iPod era, I still own CDs. Lots of them.) I first noticed my music-mindedness Thursday outside of Chillicothe when I stopped for gas and picked a 1980s mix that a friend gave me a couple of years ago.

At first ponder, I thought it might be because I'm still fighting a cold, which seems to get the better of me in the afternoons. And I just wanted something to make me feel better. But then I started to think about all the music I had selected over the past few days when I was out of radio-station range (well, out of range of stations I could deal with).

It was all what you might call "comfort music."

Those who know me know Bon Jovi is often in the mix. But on this trip, Bon Jovi has been all but missing. I'm more likely to pick Kina Cosper or Beth Hart. Their songs make me think of family and friends and certain stages of my life, which somehow lead me to thoughts of home.

It became blaringly clear with Hart's "L.A. Song (Out of this town)" -- a song about a woman who can't wait to leave L.A. and then finds out she can't wait to get back. I hit the repeat button and listened to it again, and for a moment I was no longer driving Highway 50. I was in gridlock traffic in Southern California with the window down -- the place I first heard the song, I'm sure. I was, in other words, home.

All of this leads me to a question: Can music or, more specifically, a song, encompass that feeling of home?

The answer interests me more than the music.

Every time I switch on the radio, I have heard one DJ after another in Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio say some variation of "your hometown station playing your music." Sometimes it's rock n' roll, sometimes it's R&B. Once in awhile, although rarely in my car, it's country music.

I know it's an advertising ploy, getting people to identify with a brand. But as I get closer to home, there's a part of me that can't wait to tune in my favorite drive-time station -- STAR 98.7 -- and sit in traffic without the seams of the road to bug me. Thump, thump, thump.

That's the known. Today, I hit the road for more of the unknown -- and hopefully some answers to my music question.

___

THURSDAY EVENING:

MONTEREY, Ohio (AP) _ After West Virginia, the road through Ohio is easy.

The mountains are a memory and I drive along rolling hills past farms and houses. There's lots of open space here. No neighbors living on top of neighbors. Front lawns and porches are decorated with flowers and Americana crafts. There are even a few scarecrows -- something I haven't seen in years.

Is it the walls that make the home? It's a question that builds as I roll through one small town after another -- Athens, Londonderry, Chillicothe, Hillsboro.

It's in Monterey, a small town about 20 miles from Cincinnati, that I stop to ask. (Actually, the stop was prompted by my bladder.)

Doug Miller, 42, stands behind the counter at the Snack Shack, a white hut on the side of the road that offers a drive-through window service. He hands milk, beer, cigarettes, jerky, you name it out the window while he doubles as the cashier for the front counter.

Miller has spent most of his life on the move, he says. He lived in Virginia, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., before returning to Ohio, the place where he was born.

"I was born in Columbus and I just kept migrating south," he says.

I ask Miller to tell me what he considers home.

"Home is where your family is," he says. Since he got married 12 years ago, he says his home is wherever he is with his wife.

A customer jumps in. "Home is where you lay your head at night," says Adam Hudson, 23.

Miller counters. "No. Home is where your favorite football team is."

His team? The Pittsburgh Steelers. And yet he lives near Cincinnati.

"In 1967, I really got into football. Cincinnati didn't have a team until 1969. So I stuck with my team," he says.

With a lull in customers, Miller ponders the question and finally decides that home is where family and friends are located.

"I think," he says, "it's just as important to be comfortable with where you live and who you're with."

___

THURSDAY MORNING:

GRAFTON, W.Va. (AP) _ The road through West Virginia is a slow one. The problem is the mountains. The state is the only one that lies entirely within the Appalachian Mountain region.

In other words, the very thing that makes this place beautiful also makes it a really slow drive on a two-lane highway where speeds top 55 mph only on a straightaway. Typically, it's more like 35 or 40.

They're proud of the mountains here. The peaks and valleys are home to people who view this mountain range as their own. They even advertise it on their license plates: Wild, Wonderful West Virginia.

When I stopped for gas a few miles back, a young woman looked at my New Jersey license plate and asked: "Long way from home?"

"Yes," I told her. "I'm driving Highway 50 across the country."

She gave me a strange look and got in her car with West Virginia plates. She was already home, I guess.

"Be careful," she said. "It's a two-lane road most of the way."

It's a treacherous, twisty road that offers few places to stop and even fewer road signs. At times, I struggle to understand that this is actually a highway. I'm still fighting a head cold, and the never-ending movement of yellow and white lines on the road is giving me a headache.

But I try to concentrate on the beauty. The tree-covered mountains here are a patchwork of gold, burgundy and brown leaves. They are beginning to blanket the road as the weather turns colder.

The mountains have big, ominous sounding names: Tabletop, Mount Storm, Blacktop. But as you wind up and down each mountain, you find small communities that people call home -- home on top of the mountain.

I guess I understand the attraction to a location, the thing that says, "I belong here."

For me, that's the beach. Rather, I should say, it's the soft, sandy stretch of Huntington Beach, Calif., where the smell of sea salt hits you long before you ever see the ocean.

I'm sure there's a smell to the trees -- that forest smell -- in West Virginia. But thanks to the congestion that's accompanied this cold I'm fighting, I just can't smell it.

The answer comes minutes later -- a few hundred yards down the road -- from Terri Hose and Alicia Flynn, sisters-in-law who proudly proclaim they were born and raised in Grafton.

"Can you smell the trees?" I ask. Then quickly I launch into my reason for asking -- the fact that I have a cold and my assignment. They eye me a bit warily.

"Yes. You can smell the trees."

Is that what signals you're home? I ask.

It's not the smell, "it's the curves," says Flynn, 29. "You know when you go around a curve, you're home."

The flat straightaways are foreign to Flynn and Hose, who learned to drive on these windy roads. They begin to joke about out-of-towners who navigate too slowly.

"You know when they are out-of-towners when they drive up to the crest of the hill and slow down because they think they are at the top of a mountain," Hose said. "You wanna tell them, 'That's a hill. I'll show you a mountain.'"

Then, as if they realize I'm one of those out-of-towners, they assure me the worst of the twisty roads is behind me.

They're pretty much right. A few more turns and a few more hills, and I am in Ohio.

___

FOR THE LITTLE-KNOWN FACT FILE: Grafton, W.Va., is home to the Mothers Day Shrine. Local resident Ann Maria Reeves is credited with the idea for a national Mother's Day. At least, that's what they say here.

___

WEDNESDAY EVENING:

CAPON BRIDGE, W.Va. (AP) _ I push on through heavy morning traffic toward West Virginia -- a state I once called home, albeit for a short time, in my travels.

Virginia's suburbs seem to go on forever -- stoplight after stoplight. But the sprawl fades, and soon I am winding up and down mountains, past farmhouses and mountain cabins.

By Wednesday afternoon, I find the comforts of home, made to order, in the blink-and-you'll-miss-it town of Capon Bridge. The red-and-blue sign catches my eye -- "Greg's Restaurant." The sign advertises home cooked meals and tea by the gallon. The parking lot is full -- always a good sign. With a cold making my head feel like it was inflating, I stop.

A wipe-away board advertises chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese for $5.50. If I can't have my mom's chicken soup, maybe I can at least feel a little closer to it.

Behind the counter is the restaurant's namesake, 45-year-old Greg Hockin. The small restaurant is a former McDonald's that he opened two years ago, and it's his home away from home, the place he spends a great deal of time trying to make a success.

Why home-style cooking? "I wanted something for the middle class -- a place you can afford and you can bring your kids," he said, settling down behind one of the handful of white Formica tables that make up the inside of the restaurant. "I wanted the place to feel relaxed, comfortable."

There's that word again. Comfortable.

How do you define comfortable? I ask.

He smiles. "When you're surrounded by people you know."

___

WEDNESDAY MORNING:

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) _ It's one of the longest highways in the United States. It stretches 3,073 miles from Ocean City, Md., to Sacramento, Calif.

More important, this road leads to home. Well, it leads to my Mom's home.

This is Highway 50, also known as Route 50 -- a sometimes two-lane windy, twisty road, a sometimes four lane highway that occasionally overlaps with an interstate. Time magazine once called it the "backbone of America." On Wednesday morning, I'm catching it outside of Fairfax.

It's Day 2 of my cross-country journey, and I'm no closer to finding the answer to my question "What makes a place home?" But with more than 300 miles under my belt -- I was slowed by traffic out of New York City, near Baltimore and then again in Washington D.C. -- I do have a few more questions.

It began during lunch outside Philadelphia with an old high-school friend, Ted McNamara. We grew up together on military bases overseas. As I explained my assignment, he nodded -- that knowing nod that comes when someone understands instinctively what you're talking about.

Like me, Ted has bounced around the country. First with his family. And now with jobs.

"So let me ask you, 'How do you define home?" I asked.

Silence. Then a laugh.

Finally, he offered an explanation that dissected his various moves from childhood to adulthood. He talked about where his family and friends are located. And again, similar to my situation, they are scattered across the country.

At one point during his travels, his family was in Texas. And his friends were in Texas.

"I guess it's Texas. It probably sounds strange to say because I don't have any family there anymore per se," he says.

He's also the first to say he no longer lives in Texas and probably won't anytime soon. In the end, he says, "maybe it is just where you are comfortable."

Loading the car this morning, I'm fighting a cold that makes my head feel like a big bubble and my voice sound tinny. There's a desire to just hole up for the day in a hotel that advertises the comforts of home: TV, refrigerator, microwave and coffee pot.

But the truth is, I don't want to be in the room, which is fine enough. In Ted's words, I'm not "comfortable" here. Where I really want to be is at my Mom's home -- a place where she tells me I'm going to feel better soon, rubs my forehead and makes me chicken soup. It's a place that exists, though, only in my memory. I haven't lived there in years.

So I'm pushing on, heading out through the heavy morning traffic toward West Virginia.

Hopefully I'll feel better there. Maybe I'll even find some answers.

___

TUESDAY NIGHT:

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) _ New York City faded from my rearview mirror, and just like that it was over. Or perhaps, I should say, it was just beginning -- the trip home. MY trip home.

That's a good thing. Because moving sucks. Not the leaving part or the arriving part. It's all the other stuff -- the planning, the packing, the loading, the getting ready to leave. Maybe that's why when people arrive at their destination, they plop down, throw their feet up and say "Thank God. I'm home."

I know because I've done this a half-dozen times during my tenure with the AP, bouncing from one assignment to the next: Charleston, W.Va. Atlanta. New York City (twice). Orange County, Calif.

I guess it was easy to say I was "home," because until recently I didn't really have a home, or at least a hometown. You know -- a place to go back to. I grew up on military bases in Europe -- places that have long since closed. So home became wherever I was living.

For a while, home was wherever my mom and dad were living. Then it was where I was going to college. And then, it was the town where I got my first job. Then, well, wherever the AP sent me.

Six years ago, I went to work in Orange County, Calif., and it happened. I'm not sure when, or even that I knew it had happened until I left two years ago. But I had found home.

For nearly two years, I've waited for this moment to return. I've had a lot of people in recent months ask me, "Why do you want to go back?" It's easy to click off a list of reasons: The weather, the ocean, the open space. Did I mention the weather?

But what makes a place home? Is it the where you live -- the house, the apartment, the walls? Is it the family, the friends? Is it the location -- the mountains or river or ocean -- that you can't live without? Is it a coffee shop or a bar where they know your name and your drink? Is there a universal thread, one thing that everybody can identify?

I wanted to find out. Then came the assignment from my editor, Ted Anthony, who suggested driving across country as part of my move.

Cool, I said.

There's only one rule, he said. No interstates.

What? You're kidding, right? Do you know how long it's going to take me to do that? Oh. My. God.

(Well, that's how I remember it, anyway.)

Then it started to make sense. Today, we live in a world where everything is moving really fast. People my age are moving in record numbers from one place to the next, from one job to the next. And they are all making homes, creating new hometowns.

So the assignment is simple: Make my way across the country on highways and back roads (and an occasional interstate -- my editor agreed to a bit of negotiation), and ask the question, "What makes a place home?" Ask it of those who lived in one place, those who have moved and those who have observed the migration.

It seems odd to talk about home when I don't even have a place yet. In essence, I'm homeless, though not in the way the word's usually used. But that's what this trip is about: discovery and answer-seeking. And for the moment, my home is traveling with me, between the doors of my little Toyota Corolla.

Driving my fully loaded -- yes, loaded -- car out of New Jersey and south through Delaware and Maryland, something struck me: A lot of people are just passing through, driving from one place to the next. Cars and truck with plates from as far away as Texas and Missouri, some loaded to the hilt, like mine, with their belongings.

Some of these people must be like me -- on their way home. Others were once like me -- going someplace new. And they all have stories to tell.

___

Chelsea J. Carter heads up the Los Angeles asap office. That is, if she ever gets there.

___

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