The Two-Hundred and Fiftieth Fourth
My wife’s baba used to say, “Better lucky than to have a nose.” I am not sure I totally get that, and the saying supposedly rhymes in Serbian, which doesn’t make it all that more understandable to me. Justifiable, maybe. And, of course, it all depends on how much “luck” we are talking about. WE talking Powerball luck?
In any event, that saying came to mind as my wife and I recently finished a trip cross-country. This is the fifth time we’ve done the trip from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles. We’ve taken different routes. One from Yosemite headed west on 80 through the great Salt Lake area, pretty dismal on its surface; Nebraska, the stop at Applebee’s with the local little team having dinner was very memorable; and through Iowa, crossing the Missouri river on the one end, the Mississippi on the other end and nothing but flatlands and crops in between. Another taking the southern route, across the 10 with a notable stop in Hatch, New Mexico for chiles, and passing through Tucson. (In a Beatles lyric.) But primarily, we take US 40 which parallels the Old Route 66 and provides easy access to some cool, kitschy Americana side trips.
Why lucky?
For starters, the weather was superb. Secondarily, the low tire pressure warning we got in Gallup, New Mexico was a system glitch and not a tire glitch. And finally, and we really hadn’t thought about this when we planned this trip—the logic for a cross-country drive was that we hadn’t done it in a while, all our kids are in California, we have a dog and, if we want to stay any length of time, we have to drive—but we’d be driving across the United States during the two-hundred and fifty year celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hadn’t thought of it that way until we started out. But a lucky, agood idea, nonetheless.
I don’t know about you, but I think there is a lot of division, uneasiness, rancor, acrimony, fear going on in the United States right now and that’s a well-founded thought. Just a lot of crap. Iran, extremism, inflation, AI, political corruption, cultural warfare, violence, and on and on. Kind of a drag for a big birthday celebration if you ask me. Can’t we just celebrate? At least this time?
With that as backdrop, here’s what we experienced as we drove the United States:
1) Five city skylines, some big some small—Wheeling, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Los Angeles.
2) Wild Things Park, Lucas Oil Field, Busch Stadium and numerous other high school fields.
3) Five major rivers—the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Arkansas, the Rio Grande, the Colorado.
4) Several major mountain ranges—the Appalachians (smooth and tame), the Ozarks (jagged , the San Francisco Mountains (you’re waaay up there), the San Bernardino mountains (on either side of the desert) and the San Gabriel mountains. Most of them you drive amongst the beasts. In the SGM’s they dwarf the road that winds between the range. Truly awesome.
5) We ate great smoked pork and tater tots at The Tater Patch on Old 66 in Rolla, Missouri. Buddy was invited to dine with us. (Thank you, Melissa.)
6) We went from shuttered steel businesses; through corn fields, with a little soy thrown in, as far as the eye can see in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; to the oil patch in Oklahoma; to wind and cattle farms in Texas; to the pine forests and chalets of Flagstaff; to the nothingness of the Mojave desert; to the bumper to bumper of the 15 in California. (And eight dollar gas.)
7) We stayed at El Rancho on Old Route 66 in Gallup, a hotel designed but the brother of D.W. Griffith, the film director and stayed in the Joseph Cotton room.
8) …and had a great chimichanga, dip trio, rice, beans and margarita there.
9) We saw Sky City, the homes of the Acoma built into the sandstone cliffs in New Mexico, near Grants.
10) We ate burgers at Steak and Shake (somewhere in Ohio; a town not in a song lyric) and Sonic (in Tucumcari, New Mexico; in a song lyric), the latter in our car. In ninety-seven degrees, no less. It’s a dry heat. And white bean soup and a fruit/veggie/herb “healing” drink at The Healthy Bar in the surprisingly upscale and developed town of Kingman, AZ on Old Route 66.
11) We didn’t make it to Winslow, Arizona. (In a song lyric.) I am told it’s such a fine sight to see.
12) We saw oaks and maples and pines and cottonwoods and yucca. No redwoods or saguaros this time.
13) We saw a grass fire break-out in Weatherford, Oklahoma and men and women trying to put it out; and the smoke from the Arizona and Colorado fires while traveling through Flagstaff.
14) We went to bed when it was 96 degrees out and woke up to 48. (This is what messed with our tire gauge.)
15) We saw stretches of Old 66 left behind when the new US 40 was built.
16) We met many people from all walks of life and all different ethnicities. With all kinds of accents. “Perty dawg you have thar, mister.”
17) Most people were nice; only one or two not—they were at the end of their shift; so, ok--a couple of swindlers; and a guy with a Prescott, Arizona T-Shirt on, who claimed he was a millionaire, smoked too much pot, had 63 dogs, and got married that morning. (He was right about one thing.)
That’s just some of the experience. Can’t begin todo justice to the enormous beauty and diversity of this great old lady of a country we have. Every once in a while, we’d turn on CNN and see what was going on. As I alluded to above, it’s kind of a drag.
So, we’d put on the bluegrass channel or classic rock or nothing and looked out the windows at the two-hundred and fifty years going by and admired how great a land we live in. And despite our politicians’ best efforts to screw it up, when you take it all in in three and a half days, because that’s all you have to do when you are driving coast to coast, you realize they can’t. They can’t destroy the natural beauty, the kindness and diversity of its people and the fundamental freedoms that underly it all.
As I said, better lucky than to have a nose. But then Americans aren’t lucky. They are blessed.
Show A Little Faith.