No Man’s Land

I leave Oklahoma City on a four-lane highway. The far right lane sign says it will close in 500 feet. Five hundred feet later, the far left lane sign warns that it will also close. I stay in the middle left bumper-to-bumper lane. Cars speed by in the far left and right lanes and disappear. Eventually, I realize that the road signs lied, and drivers have been speeding past and forcibly pulling in front of other cars. Now, all lanes are packed.

I ride the bumper of the car ahead, a white Chevy pick-up pulling a Sportsman Camper. It sports a window sticker that says, “Be a Flirt. Raise your shirt.” I consider it. My car temperature gauge is 104 f. A half hour later, left and right lanes open. I see a small town ahead. A sign warns, “One hundred miles to the next McDonald’s.” I enter No Man’s Land.

I see my 14th “Route 66 Museum at the Next Exit,” and the signs: Amarillo, 71 miles. Amarillo, 64 miles. I count 36 electric poles between House A and House B. Amarillo, 50 miles. Welcome to Gray County. It is raining. Near Groom, Texas, an ugly, cluttered little town, is an ugly, plain cross billed as “The Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere.” A monstrosity, really, with the biggest gift shop I’ve seen in long while. Nearby is a water tower labeled as Britten, USA, that leans like the Tower of Piza. “Where am I?” I wonder.

Amarillo, 40 miles. Amarillo 35 miles. 79 electric poles between homes. Cows huddle in patches of shade. The smell of horses and cattle lingers from Oklahoma. Amarillo begins to feel like a lost civilization, a strange thing to say about a city in north Texas. The longer I’m in Oklahoma and Texas, the stranger things seem to get. At a gas station is a twenty-something woman dressed like Alice in Wonderland buying cigarettes at the counter from a man who looks like Mr. Clean with a nose ring. Two men at the gas pump wear belt buckles the size of hubcaps. After a while, my perspective becomes Oklatexed and I’m thinking: Somewhere in this world, the great grandson of Count Dracula prefers to drink a cold can of diet blood.

I know I need to get out of Texas and Oklahoma. Oklahoma City is too much like Kafka’s description of it. Everywhere I stop for a break in Texas, locals at the tables talking about God always seem to be conforming to each other: “Being good won’t get you into Heaven. Being nice won’t get you into Heaven. Being compassionate won’t get you into Heaven. Being respectful won’t get you into Heaven. Being tolerant won’t get you into Heaven.” I’m thinking, if Heaven isn’t filled with the good, nice, compassionate, respectful and tolerant, who’d want to go there? Why not just stay in northern Texas?”

Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

I arrive in Oklahoma City at 1:00 a.m. I’m beyond exhaustion and can’t find a hotel room. There’s a coaches conference. There must be 20,000 coaches, every public school’s head coaches, assistant coaches, special coaches, coaches for baseball, basketball, cross country, football, soccer, swimming, tennis, track, volleyball and wrestling, middle school, high school, community college, university.

Next morning I go to nearby Denny’s for breakfast. They could have been holding the conference there. You can’t miss them. Stout shoulders, military haircut, developing pouches, school colors, enormously muscled calves, loud voices and lots of eggs. Most have had broken noses, sport a facial scar, and throb their jaws like John McCain.

On the return trip, I stop in Oklahoma City again. There isn’t anywhere else to stop. Again, I search for a room. A police conference and a horse convention are in town. In Denny’s, they all look like coaches. Except the horsemen wear spurs on their boots to keep people waiting in line behind them from standing too close.

As I travel, I realize that I’ve watched too much of Jeopardy, Password, Wheel of Fortune & other game shows. I’m full of esoteric knowledge. It’s as if my life has been a pursuit of trivia. But I figure it will come in handy someday. When St. Pete meets me at the Gate & tells me I have good references but must pass a quiz to get in, I’ll be ready. Who Invented the Cotton Gin? George Washington Carver is most famous for which invention? How many times a month does a snake crawl out of its skin? I’ll know the answers.

The Tired Hand

On a recent car trip through New Mexico, I stopped near Alamogordo for lunch at a cafe called “The Hired Hand.” It had lots of ambiance. On one dining room wall was a sign, “I’m on a thirty-day diet. So far I’ve lost 15 days.” Last weekend, their ice cream scoop was missing They believe a ghost hangs out in the kitchen and took it.

In three more days, “The Hired Hand” will feed no more mouths. The friendly waitress, with plain blue tattoos on both wrists, has worked here for 18 months, and never missed a day. No one else lasted more than a month, she says. Elton John is singing, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on the radio. Above the urinal in the mens room is a hand-sewn notice: “I aim to keep this bathroom clean. Your aim would help.”

When I first entered Alamogordo, just past Holloman Air Force Base, the first business I saw was an adult video store, its parking lot filled with pick-ups. It’s probably located as close to the base as zoning allows. This area appeals to a lot of retired veterans.

It may be that in a military retirement area, an adult video store will always attract more customers than a cafe with a ghost in the kitchen, but I think “The Hired Hand” closed because of its name. This is just my psychological view. I’m not a Jung man. I saw the adult video store first, and was probably thinking unconsciously about it when I arrived at the cafe, and looked up at the sign. Instead of seeing, “The Hired Hand,” I misread it as “The Tired Hand.” My reading was, no doubt,a Freudian slip, but I no longer had an appetite for a sandwich you eat from your hands.