An eventful day, but not as eventful as yesterday, when we stood in front of a kitschy knick-knack shop in the Arkansas hills and watched as dark mammaries formed and reformed, deadly killers on their way to take out towns and murder people in Arkansas, Missouri and Georgia. Just staying on the road in the attendant winds was a chore. We were glad to end the day at a decommissioned chain motel in Jackson, Tenn. , where we joined hundreds of African-Americans and their lively kids at a "home-cooked" all-you-can-eat buffet, celebrating Mother's Day with ham, collards, sweet potatoes and other Southern savories. Yum-yum. We all three awoke at 4 a.m., because, "Clementine" told me, "You stopped snoring."
Ah well, it was enough to get us on the road early and we hauled across the mighty Mississippi, dodging trucks and commuter traffic in Memphis. Then we streaked across Arkansas and didn't hit much more kamikaze craziness until Oklahoma City, where they again did their level best to murder us. West of O City, the winds picked up again and many of the four-combined-pickup-truck-sized American flags they seem to so favor around here stood straight out in the the dust-laden 50 mph gale. Good to finally stop, out here in a little dell in the plains. Tomorrow: The prairie and giant wind farms, the arroyos and canyons begin and we should see the Sangre de Cristos. Home sweet home!
2 comments:
I'm 'memberin a place outsida Okie City where a man could get a 48 oz. steak for free iffin he could eat the hole thang....I never wuz man anuff to do it tho.
"This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains...For myself, I'll take Moab, Utah. I don't mean the town itself, of course, but the country which surrounds it - the canyonlands. The slickrock desert. The red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky - all that which lies beyond the end of the roads."
(Edward Abbey, "Desert Solitaire")
"The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World."
(Thoreau)
Enjoy the Wildness!!!
We are! This wind is terrific, though, churning through about 40 mph and blowing the little car sideways.
I have yet to see a tumbleweed, but we did see our first pumpjack, an elderly cowboy with a 15-gallon hat and handlebar mustache, and a couple of our tribal friends with feathers in baseball caps.
Now I feel at home.
bb
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