Mother and Son Going to Buffalo, NY – Day 2

Texas Sunrise

It was 1:00 a.m. last night when I signed off. Somehow, my snoring didn’t make an impact; I will try harder tonight. The alarm rings before sunrise at 5:45, and just 45 minutes later, we are underway. It feels crazy that we are supposed to drive from Texas all the way to Minnesota today, but that’s our goal. I’m tired as I pull out of the parking lot; Mom is sleeping 5 minutes later.

Texas

We’re on Highway 54 through Texhoma, Oklahoma, while Mom sleeps quietly on my right. This is a great time of day as she’s not talking about food.

Oklahoma

Mom sleeps for another hour and a half, only waking briefly as we cross the Oklahoma Stateline.

Kansas

Mom opens an eye as we enter Kansas. This time, she stays awake as she’s hungry and wants breakfast. What kind of weird reality have I volunteered myself for? Driving through Liberal, Kansas, still on the 54, which is called Pancake Blvd here. As we drive through town, we see signs for Dorothy’s House and the Land of Oz, and just across the street is a Pancake House. Mom says, perfect. The Swedish pancakes are a kind of Kansanian interpretation but are still yummy. We leave, agreeing we could both go for a couple more of those lace-like pancakes.

Rolling hills, corn, and grasses punctuated by grain elevators are the major sights along our road. We have been driving northeast until reaching Pratt where we curve more northerly in order to catch the 135. Small towns, grain elevators, and rising humidity are drawing us toward Nebraska. Still in Kansas and approaching Salina, Caroline over in Arizona recommends we stop for lunch today at a BBQ in town. We nearly walked out after Mom saw the buffet appearance of the place, but she finally agreed to try it as Caroline’s recommendations haven’t failed me yet. We don’t regret our meal, another winner.

Nebraska

In Nebraska, 90 minutes later, the grain silos are replaced with corn silos. Wind pushes the humidity around, but it’s still just as hot and maybe more humid. There appear to be more trees in Nebraska than in Kansas, but it’s difficult to be certain. Mom is astonished that the land is not flatter than it is, pleasantly surprised even. Not surprising is the mosquito population. I will only afford these pests this quick bitter grumble.

Nebraska

Needing to drive more than 800 miles today, we have no time to stop for the sights; we pass barns, small towns, and dead raccoons by the dozen.

South Dakota

We are making good time on this bolt across half of America. As we arrive at the South Dakota Stateline, we are already more than 1,300 miles away from Phoenix, which we left just yesterday.

South Dakota

We are nearing sunset as we turn east to dip into a corner of Iowa. Not only had Mom not visited Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, or Minnesota but she had never stepped foot in Iowa. She now has bragging rights of having added four states she’d never visited today. Passing yet more farms and cornfields, I witnessed for the first time in my life one of the most enchanting sights I have yet seen: fireflies. Fireflies appear as fleeting glimmers of light rising off of the earth as though elves were popping in and out of the physical realm from the spiritual world. They wisp along the edge of the corn, are more abundant near tall grass, and when seen with a backdrop of trees, they look like miniature fireworks.

Iowa Sunset

A quick left and now northbound, the car brings us to Luverne, Minnesota, and the fifth new state for my mother on this trip. This is our stop for the evening. A nice little hotel called the Cozy Rest costs us $46 for the evening, and conveniently, there is a Smoky Bears Pizza place next door that serves up a decent meal. Thanks for feeding us.

It’s almost 11:15 p.m., and I’m about to quit taking these notes. The clock is set for 6:15. Tomorrow; we have a much shorter drive scheduled, which should allow for some serious experiences besides suffering the exhaustion I fought most of the day as we drove through seven states, likely a personal record.

Mother and Son Going to Buffalo, NY – Day 1

New Mexico

This series of 15 blog entries that will follow me and my mother on a cross-country road trip was long neglected and not published for too many years. My mother would have argued that this was my modus operandi regarding her. You see, she was aware that by 2005, my mother-in-law Jutta Engelhardt had been to America nearly half a dozen times and that on each visit, Caroline and I would take her out to see a new corner of the United States. Yet in the ten years since we’d moved from Frankfurt, Germany, to Phoenix, Arizona, we did very little with my own mother. The truth is she could be a difficult person to spend time with and was the reason we started traveling out of state every Thanksgiving to avoid the inevitable drama that would unfold at those dinners.

I’d carved time out to take Auntie and Grandpa to Florida back in March, and by mid-May, Jutta was returning to America for her longest visit yet of two months. With my mom strong-arming me into taking her to Buffalo, New York, for what she was telling me could be her last visit ever to the place of our birth, I reluctantly acquiesced. It turned out that the timing was going to work in Caroline’s and my favor as my mom wanted to leave before Caroline’s mom was set to return to Germany, and this would mean that Caroline wouldn’t have to be in a car with my mother and me for two weeks nor would she have to sacrifice any more valuable vacation time for a trip we both had reservations of making.

This would end up being the only vacation my mother and I would ever make together. In March 2018, my mother passed away after suffering a stroke in October 2017, and this trip to Buffalo was indeed her last time in New York. The difficult nature of our relationship will likely unfold over the course of these blog entries. I’m telling you this upfront as it is nearly 2020 now that I finally sit down to commit the two weeks on the road with her using the notes I took during that trip, which are far from comprehensive. I’ll be taking a look back with the help of the 11,585 words that I did write back during those days but there are giant gaps in the record that I’ll be trying to write to. It is due to my mother’s and my at times, cantankerous relationship that my focus on not wanting to remember what should have been important impressions were being intentionally neglected. So, through the filter of time and with no small amount of bias, I’ll do my best to convey my perspective, which will likely display a certain animus. I will chronicle the dysfunctional relationship between a mother and her firstborn because that’s the way it was. The following two paragraphs are from my original notes and are nearly verbatim; after this, that line will blur.

Texas Sunset

I depart once more as a guide across America, but this time it’s with my own mother, Karen Goff, formerly Wise, formerly Kurchoff. The absurdity that we might get through two weeks together is not lost on anyone who knows us. I’m starting to feel I should adopt the nom de guerre “road-sherpa.” Once out on the road, my mom remembers that she had forgotten a bag of food on the counter at home she wanted to bring along. An hour later, she’s thinking about lunch. Fifteen minutes later we are talking about what we’ll be eating in Buffalo. Moments later, the conversation turns to dreaming about eating Walleye. My mom thinks about food a lot, all the time, according to her. Besides our conversation about things gastronomical, the rest of the day is uneventful. By the time we are in Albuquerque, we call On-Star-O-Line (Caroline, who earned that title while helping me with online services back in March during the Florida trip) for help finding us some New Mexican cuisine. She directs us to Sadie’s – a winner.

Onwards, the road becomes our drive into a grim terror. Blue skies give way to heavy looming gloom that pushes Mom into hallucinating her worst fears. No, not a lack of restaurants on the road ahead. Not earthquakes, either. She thinks she is seeing three simultaneous tornados falling from the sky. Wake up, Chicken Little, they are clouds; that is Virga. Return to thinking about ice cream, Mom.

For a few hours, we drive through intermittent rain and lots of lightning before the real storm hits. Just outside of Dalhart, Texas, Mom accuses me of the impolite act pertaining to particular bowel issues. I insist that there’s no deluge in my pants and even demand of her, “How dare you accuse me of that?” To prove it to her, I roll down the windows, which overwhelms the interior of the car with a powerful stench that simultaneously temporarily blinds her and brings her to retching. These are the farmlands where America’s cattle are fattened up before slaughter. On nice warm and humid nights like tonight, the fog we were seeing is actually the visualized effluvium of beef fattening madness. Take a big lungful, Mom, and please don’t attribute that to your son again. Through tears of laughter, she says she’s certain she is gonna vomit if I don’t immediately put up the windows and leave this godforsaken corner of Texas. In Stratford, hopefully, far from the cow stink after having driven 765 miles, we grab a $38-a-night motel with an air conditioner mom wants to believe will mask my snoring. Get ready to feel the pain; your ears ain’t heard nothing yet.

Pioneer Cafe in Palisade, Nebraska – Day 3

Out in the flat part of Nebraska

Disclaimer: This post was updated in November 2022, as the original only included 1 photo. The bigger details were written back then, although a few things needed to be figured out.

This was the real reason for bringing my mother-in-law to the middle of America: the Great Plains.

Wheat in Nebraska

Golden waves of grain, living up to the American vision of things being beautiful and bountiful.

Abandoned farm vehicle in Nebraska

A spry 80-year-old widowed farmer feeding her cows crawled up over a nearby fence to chat with us and talk to us about her life out this way. She also told us about her favorite cafe not too far off.

Entering Palisade, Nebraska

That little old lady pointed us to Palisade and just over the railroad tracks on Main Street for breakfast. Love them grain silos.

At the Pioneer Cafe in Palisade, Nebraska with Jutta Engelhardt

We had a great breakfast at the Pioneer Cafe in Palisade, Nebraska. Ashley, the girl with the yellow shirt, was in training as this was her first day, and we were her first customers. The ladies at the Pioneer Cafe left a great impression on my mother-in-law, who thoroughly enjoyed their hospitality. If ever you find yourself near Palisade, Nebraska, you should stop in at 104 Main St for some great food, great service, and incredibly low prices.

Jutta Engelhardt at the Kansas Stateline

Kansas, you have the best Stateline sign for taking photos of people with the sunflower crowning them.

Grain silos in Monument, Kansas

Traveling on Kansas Highway 25 out in the middle of nowhere, we make a very short detour east as I see a capital specimen of a grain silo with an invitation to drop into the El Ranchito Mexican Cafe.

Jutta Engelhardt and John Wise in Moscow, Kansas

Caroline and I passed through here on our very first cross-country trip just five years before this.

Jutta Engelhardt at the Oklahoma Stateline

In keeping with the souvenir hunt of photos of my mother-in-law in front of as many Stateline signs as I can capture, I present Jutta Engelhardt visiting Oklahoma.

Jutta Engelhardt driving in Oklahoma with John Wise

The look on my face is explained by the fact that this is the first time Jutta has driven a car in more than 20 years. After some practice, I let her drive all the way across the panhandle of Oklahoma from the Kansas border to Texas. Aside from my hamming it up for the camera, my mother-in-law just loved this opportunity.

Jutta Engelhardt at the Texas Stateline

Back on terra firma, Jutta had to touch something solid and unmoving: Hello, Texas.

John Wise in Dumas, Texas

This selfie was taken for Caroline because while some might pronounce this in the French style as “Doo-maa,” Texas pronounces it “Dew-mus,” and of course, I go for “Dumb-ass.”

Jutta Engelhardt and a turtle in Texas

Saving turtles in Texas, as that’s what one does when barreling down the highway. Next stop: still somewhere in Texas because it’s a really big state.

Auntie and Grandpa Going to Florida – Day 14

Roadside in Texas 2005

Everything is aging, and it’s all getting old. Nothing is new, and even when it is, it’s still getting older. There was a day when things were new and could stay new longer, but we killed that by always having to flaunt the next best new thing. With electronic media, nothing has been able to survive the onslaught, and it will destroy everything. Who cares about some city hall in a random town in Texas when there’s a new high-rise in New York City? Who cares about New York City when Dubai builds the tallest skyscraper on Earth? Who cares about a glass and steel building when Kim Kardashian’s ass is the most celebrated object in our galaxy?

[If you recognize that this blog entry is dated 2005, be aware that it wasn’t until the end of 2019 that I got around to writing the text for Days 13, 14, and 15 of this trip]

Roadside in Texas 2005

Out, where there’s nearly nothing, there is everything. Potential lives in the void where we are hard-pressed to find the value of things we can easily consume. By filling the gaps where there was nothing, a building where there used to be trees, damming our rivers, and fouling the sky, we erase the physical world. In the space between frequencies unseen, we shovel porn, shopping, and soap operas into the bandwidth while celebrating our ingenuity. After doing our best to wreck tranquility, we are now hellbent on wrecking civility and any social aspects of our cities by bringing fear of the other into the space we had once enjoyed as safe. It is as though we are afraid of that which is empty, as maybe it could be a reflection of who we are.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Just imagine driving down this Farm-to-Market road 60 years ago in a car with out-of-state plates and the person pumping your gas would likely have picked your brain about where you’re from and asked what you were doing out this way. Today there’s a good chance there’s a meth-addicted homeless person squatting in the place watching “Two Girls One Cup” on their smartphone and could give a shit about someone outside taking photos.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Apparently, this gas station was already closed about 15 to 20 years ago by the time I peered inside. Looking at what I captured here I’m curious about the strange time warp where I’m seeing printed maps on a cigarette machine that sells a pack of smokes for $2.00. Cigarettes are currently $6 – $8 a pack, depending on where you are in America, and I can honestly say that I don’t know if any gas station in the United States still sells printed road maps.

Roadside in Texas 2005

There’s no tombstone marking what this dead business once was. No date of birth, no internet entry about Eureka something or other in rural Texas municipality down the road from the defunct filling station. This may as well be any of us. At one time, it was alive and vibrant, serving a purpose and now it’s shuttered, quiet, without function. It is anonymous and nearly forgotten. Should I ever be so lucky to stumble upon this road again, the building will likely have been broken into, its roof missing, and maybe even its walls. It, too, will disappear with nobody caring that it ever was someone else’s dream come true. This is the sad nature of our lives.

Roadside in Texas 2005

I don’t mean to be pessimistic; it’s just reality writ large in my eyes. Do you see that point way out there? That’s death waiting for you. At the end of your road, it’s but a speck that you can go a lifetime without ever catching a glimpse of. And when it’s approaching, it could deceive you, looking like a mirage over the highway on a summer day where you can’t believe that the apparition with a scythe has risen up out of nothing to claim your existence, but that’s what is happening. Didn’t I say I don’t want to be pessimistic? This isn’t about death waiting to capture us within its clutch; this is about us smiling all the way there. It’s about living with the knowledge that you are running out of time and wasting one more second of it once you’ve begun to understand the fragility of it all and that doing nothing about it, well, that may as well be death itself.

Roadside in Texas 2005

In your 90’s your teeth are probably no longer pearly white. You have difficulties finding warmth and even more trouble moving your bowels. Concentration left you long ago. You’ve outlived everyone you grew up with, and you know you must be one of the next to go. But still, you wave a friendly hello, offer a smile, and are happy to have the map in front of you so you can read the names of the places you’ve been and wonder about the places that are still ahead of you. Living requires optimism with dreams of discovering the unknown while entertaining hopes of being enchanted. What might be considered simple and unadorned is a whole lot better than being locked in the darkness of a mind that is no longer part of the living.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Do horses dream of electric sheep? Blink, and maybe the ungulates were never more than part of the stage set that was only part of your reality. Once you are gone, you’ll never know if the horses ever were or if they continued after your existence came to an end. Of course, you can take it for granted that they are out there waiting by the fence and posing for people such as myself to snap a photo of them, proving to you that it’s obvious that horses are alive and well out there somewhere. But have you ever had a horse smell your face and exhale with those giant horse lungs, emptying warm, equine-scented air that wraps around your head in a kind of horse hug? What are you waiting for? While you wait for life to arrive, we’ll be out there living your share.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Life beyond your door, be it the door of your home or the doors of your perception, must be opened, and you must find yourself on the other side. Do not languish behind either. The paint will chip away; the wallpaper will turn brittle and crack, leaving you in a decrepit shell; your mind is no different. How will you redecorate the home of your mind? Do you really believe that neglect and weathering won’t have a negative impact on your mind, even though you know full well that this is exactly what will happen to the house you live in? How many people make the investment to paint the walls, lay new carpet, repair the roof, buy new furniture, upgrade a TV, and yet don’t read books, travel more than 50 miles away from home, or bring on new hobbies doing things they have no previous skills with?

Roadside in Texas 2005

Somebody sat here in what at one time might have been the lap of luxury. Their 21-inch state-of-the-art TV from 1966 would receive two or three channels even if they were snowy due to bad reception of the aerial out on the roof, but that didn’t matter as they were witnessing a black-and-white reality that one day would be their own. Instead, they likely just grew old and never moved from the Barcalounger, where they had planted their behinds. Around them, the world and their mind decayed, but that was okay because nirvana in the afterlife was promised to them by those who traded dollars for salvation. The only salvation of mind and soul, from my perspective, is found in feeding the imagination with travel, conversation, books, music, and experiences that challenge us out of the funk of isolation.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Don’t waste your time stockpiling your dreams, ambitions, hopes, aspirations, and best of intentions. The silo of what you might like to accomplish in your lifetime is useless if you store it all away. These things cannot bring you value if they are not within your grasp; they must be worked and reworked as though you were kneading bread.

Roadside in Texas 2005

This is your life and a nearly empty horizon. The soil is fertile and ready for planting. Rain will arrive and germinate the seeds, but you must plant things. What if I told you that the building on the far left, that tiny splotch of pixels just peaking over the red soil way over there in the background, was your life so far? That’s how I see my life at 56 years old as I race to learn, do, explore, postulate, create, break, find, love, destroy, and rebuild all that dares obscure my perfect view of the clouds.

Roadside in Texas 2005

You finally decide that getting along and moving down the road might be the thing to do, and all of a sudden, you find yourself in the sprawling metropolis of Tokio. Where are the bright lights and sushi shops might be your first thought? Baby steps, because you are not in Japan yet, this is Tokio, Texas. The effort to go far requires momentum.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Fuel can be pumped out of the earth to propel our cars and planes, but the fuel of the mind is knowledge. Without constant energy found in evolving brains, it all comes to a halt. Like this pumpjack operating on electricity to siphon crude oil from below, there is an order of things that create the system. People create the electricity that is delivered across the arid landscape to this location. The pumpjack pulls oil up from deep below and feeds it into a pipeline in order to collect the crude in a central location. From a tank, it will be transferred to a refinery, where it will be distilled into gasoline and various byproducts. From this point, it can be used to take your car from Crawford to Tokio or from Houston to Tokyo.

Knowledge is deep below the surface of things. Reading and exploring are the pumpjacks that siphon the crude thoughts out of history and into our consciousness. This is our refinery, where we make valuable byproducts. With insight and invention, we are ready to venture out to explore the points between what we are starting to understand and the still incomprehensible.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Had only our obsession with entertainment to the exclusion of personal responsibility come with this kind of warning; maybe we would have turned off the football game, 24-hour news, videogame, or other indulgences that were risking a better future. Instead, we opted for the poison of mediocrity by taking the road that was easy. How is it we were so ready to accept the marketing that convinced the majority that convenience and lack of effort were ever going to bring to us what every generation before us toiled to reach?

Roadside in New Mexico 2005

Oh no! We’ve reached another state, but the weather is turning gray. I thought the premise was that if we ventured out beyond our borders, the gilded path would deliver us to perfection. There are no guarantees that what we put into the system is going to deliver on our expectations. The best we can do is manage our expectations with mantras that work to affirm that whatever the results of our efforts are, doing something far exceeds that of doing nothing.

Roadside in New Mexico 2005

Are we home yet? Who broke out the windows of our house? And why is the garage toppled? Oh, this is not our home; this is nobody’s home. I’m done looking for more metonymy as after more than 1,900 words put down in this entry where I thought I’d have trouble finding 100; I’m reaching the end of wanting to go further.

Roadside in New Mexico 2005

Right about now, I could go for an alien abduction that would pull me into the spacecraft for a good anal probe because, as someone who’s never been rectally examined by an alien species, this would definitely qualify as a new experience. How could I know beforehand that a device or finger made in another dimension doesn’t come with instant enlightenment? So should any beings from other worlds happen to be telepathically reading my blog, you can rest confident that if you suck me off this planet into your ship, I won’t be bad talking you in the press after my reaming.

Roadside in New Mexico 2005

This stretch of the story is almost over. A few more curves may be ahead, but with only a couple of photos and one more day left to deal with, I can finally let this part of my past join its brethren in the trunk of memories.

Roadside in New Mexico 2005

That darkness is from the heavy clouds forming in my head, obscuring the words to finish this. I’m searching for the wit to bring an elegant close to my writing, but it’s hard to see a way forward. Maybe some new windshield wipers or turning on the high beams will light or clear the way? No chance; I just have to accept that I’ve taken this as far as I’m going to.

Roadside in New Mexico 2005

And with that, the golden light of the late day setting sun illuminates the horizon while the god rays of hope pull me forward. I’m absolved of adding another word and can rest assured that another day is just around the corner.

Auntie and Grandpa Going to Florida – Day 13

Roadside in Louisiana 2005

Natchitoches, Louisiana, and the end of notes from the trip. There’s nothing else I wrote about, so here I am nearly 15 years after I made this journey with Aunt Eleanor and Grandpa Herbert, both of whom have since passed away, and I need to come up with some kind of narrative that might flow with the previous 12 days that had copious notes.

To be honest, there’s not a lot left in my head about this leg, and what I posted in those other entries didn’t trigger some deep memories that I can harvest to fill this space. We were on the way home, but there were so many photos I wanted to share as we were obviously not rushing back to Phoenix. So now what?

Roadside in Louisiana 2005

Kind of like a traffic signal in the middle of nowhere; death shows up, and we come to a stop. Ten months after this trip across America’s southern states, my maternal grandfather passed away. He was the last surviving grandparent I had, and then a few years after that, in 2009, my great-aunt Eleanor died at the age of 97. Eleanor was Herbie’s older sister.

Roadside in Louisiana 2005

The memories of family that have moved on can, at times, be like a body of water in that they are there, but they might be somewhere just below the surface. Over time, much of that water will evaporate, and while it can fall back to earth, there is little likelihood that you’ll ever see it again. Like with water, there are places where memories run deeper, but without the proper craft, we may not know how to reach them.

This simile is how I feel I can best express myself today as I look inward, trying to remember who my relatives were during this time in their lives. The existential nature of being on a path to learning who we are doesn’t leave a lot of bandwidth for trying to know who others were and how they got there. They were more like fixtures of fully-formed selves that I simply couldn’t comprehend thinking they already had arrived at who they were – or did they? How often do we consider that the elderly are still becoming?

Roadside in Louisiana 2005

It’s simultaneously funny and tragic that the folly of our ignorance doesn’t allow us to see that the elderly, too, might be on a never-ending path of becoming and that curiosity could still be introducing them to things they don’t know. Instead of greater sharing across generations, we operate in distinct and separate universes where the age of experience draws a line between us while our youth or advanced age suggests there’s no chance the other could begin to relate to us.

Time is the road, we are the vehicle, and our evolving memories are the passengers. The paths we travel are ever-present, be they dirt traces that deliver the traders of goods, invisible skyways that fly people overhead, or trails that lead us on canyon hikes. What is not so easy to see or find are the memories of others who seem to rarely encounter each other at random intersections.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Our photos can act as great signposts that show us where we’ve been but it is only the words we commit to a surface of things that can exist beyond their otherwise short lives in our heads. Once written, they might allow others to know something about who we were and how we came to perceive things the way we did.

This idea speaks volumes to what we do and don’t do to exist beyond the time when our exhausted bodies cease being the vehicles that are responsible for allowing others to meet us on the highway of life. Trinkets, photos, pieces of old clothing, wedding bands, or various possessions cannot share the person we were or knew. Just as we have taken to leaving these mementos to those who have loved us, we fail to give them an intrinsic gift of that look within us while we are still breathing.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Telling of these travels in life and where our road into our own infinity was taking us is the only trail of crumbs we might be able to offer. An exercise of writing about how we got to the places we arrived at should be part of our everyday life, just as sleeping and eating are. I’m not saying just our literal travels and explorations of places we visited but telling the story of how we came to be who we are emotionally and intellectually when wandering in our minds.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Sadly, I feel that too many of us are long defunct after having abandoned the processes where we serve a human function aside from feeding the machine of commerce, parenthood, and the expectations of others who require our affirmation of their bland conformity. Only a few of us are out here to encounter the extraordinary and rare sights that bridge eras, epochs, cultures, and the very act of trying to know anything about something.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Does it matter that you might have but one more cow among the many grazing in the meadow? Who of us raises our head out of the tightly packed herd to say, here I am? It will be the cow that constructed a monument to bovine-ness, using its cloven hoof to sculpt an object of beauty that leaves us astonished at its feat we thought impossible.

We have to leave our story to others so they might be witnesses to the monument to ourselves, allowing them to better understand who and what we were. We focus on the geniuses, celebrities, and those ordained by taste-makers to be our cultural representatives, but that tells little of the ordinary and unexceptional cogs in the machine that goes about a life living in a pasture called the city.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Have you ever left your own pasture? Did you take the uncomfortable and bumpy road where your expectations of particular creature comforts failed to meet your desires? Trying new foods, sleeping in strange beds, adapting to different weather, and talking with others who seem to speak a foreign language due to their different frames of reference can be a challenge for almost everybody. But consider the risk of being the flea on the ass of the beast next to you in the field you have always lived in before asking in your later years if you experienced anything resembling real freedom?

Roadside in Texas 2005

The contentedness of staying in place is for cattle. We are humans meant to explore not just the physical world but the options of what we want to know and believe as we encounter those who might lend affirmation to a life of intellectual uncertainty. My family without me appreciating it when I was younger, were nomads having left Germany, moving around upstate New York, heading to Florida for a while, and finally ending up in Arizona. They weren’t afraid to wander. Then, in their 80s and 90s, they wanted to see America from a different perspective, as prior to this trip, they stayed on major highways or flew to their destinations. Being out on a journey over back roads with me was an adventure that presented many new experiences to these retirees that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to take or endure.

Roadside in Texas 2005

When I say they had to “endure” this trip, don’t think for a minute that it was always easy for them to travel so far. Sitting in place for long periods when they might want to stretch their legs. Being too hot, too cold, hungry, thirsty, or needing a bathroom in the next 10 seconds had them making compromises with creature comforts that are readily available at home. Their remaining paths in life didn’t have a long time left to travel (my grandfather had less than 12 months to go). Herbie was an inspiration to me for many a year. Ever since I was a small boy I was fascinated by him, from his work as a painter and woodworker to piloting his yacht on the Niagara River and Lake Erie. He was a giant who did stuff. In the 1970s, he had open-heart surgery, but for the next 30 years, he never slowed down. He was always up for making the sacrifices that took him out and into the new.

Roadside in Texas 2005

My Aunt Eleanor was a rock to me. She was my mother when my own 16-year-old mom couldn’t meet my demands as a teenager. Not only did Auntie care for my sister and me, but she was also caring for her own mom, my great-grandmother Josephine. As a 5-year-old boy, I could have never comprehended that my aunt loved me as much as her own mom. Auntie gave selflessly of herself and never seemed unhappy. While she didn’t marry until she was nearly 70 years old and lost her husband after only about 15 years of marriage, my great-aunt had one of the greatest dispositions of anyone I might ever know in my lifetime.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Those two are now like the trees over there on the other side of the fence; they are out of reach but not fully out of view. They live on in my heart and memories, and if I’m lucky and ever pass this way again, I hope to catch a glimpse of them. How much of who they were and precisely what they instilled in who I’ve become cannot be separated from the totality of me, but I know that there is goodness they carried that spilled into me in some small or hopefully big way. Time will tell.

Roadside in Texas 2005

Late in the day, we were driving into the sunset just as everyone does every day, but while we were closing in on dinner and a hotel, little did any of us have in mind that the last one was always on the horizon. While our time on earth allows us to perceive hints of what infinity might be, we will not be afforded the opportunity to be witness to even a fraction of what that means. Knowing the rarity of our time here, walking under such beautiful skies should never be taken for granted. Leave your routine people, and even when you can’t leave home, you can still leave the well-trodden paths in your mind and venture into the unknown. Books are a great first start if you’ve forgotten the way to see into the realms of possibility.

Roadside in Texas 2005

It’ll be dark soon enough, and when you can never see the light or find your mind illuminated by the fire of existence again, there will be no time for regrets. The story will be done, and your chapter will be finished. While we might be able to jam 100 days of experience into a single day, we cannot stuff a lifetime of existence into the final 10 minutes before we die. So, how’s your own story going?

Auntie and Grandpa Going to Florida – Day 2

Texas Sunrise

I sat up and stayed awake until I could hear the unmistakable sound of breathing from someone asleep. It was 4:30 before I was asleep again. It’s 6:30, and everyone is awake. It’s going to be a hard day.

Hard bagel, not really so much a bagel, but a chewy piece of dry bread that cream cheese will try to camouflage. Some fake orange juice water to wash it down, and we’ll call this breakfast. The dessert for this breakfast, or proverbial icing on the cake, is getting pulled over shortly afterward to be questioned if I was the culprit who kept Van Horn awake the evening of March 1st, 2005. No, it wasn’t me; I swear it was the freight train.

That would have been interesting getting pulled over for that, but I have to get pulled over for doing 6 miles an hour over the speed limit. I told the officer, sure, I know I was doing 81, maybe 82 in a 75 zone, but….? “Well, here in Texas, you can get pulled over for doing 1 mile an hour over the limit.”

I was asked to step out of the vehicle so as not to influence what came next. This officer asked my aunt and grandfather if they were being moved across Texas against their will. Are you f’ing kidding me? Does this guy really think I might be involved with human trafficking?

Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on a moped, a mile an hour was all that it would take, and then it’s considered that maybe I’m selling old people on the black market. But it was my lucky day as Eleanor and Herbert covered for me, and I was let off with a warning. I’ll just set the cruise control at 2 miles an hour under the limit for the rest of the day. Wouldn’t you know it, everyone starts passing me by.

How Texas law enforcement gets away with it, I’ll never know. Maybe it’s my out-of-state license plate influencing things? What is up with all these police in Texas anyway? I see them passing me in unmarked pickup trucks with red-blue lights under the cattle pusher mounted over the grill. They cruise by in sedans of various colors, primarily white, black, and grey. Squad cars line the roads next to and behind trees, on the other side of hills, and around corners; all of them with a driver just watching the traffic go by, looking for human traffickers pimping the elderly.

Later in the day, at a gas station, I asked someone filling his tank how he could live in Texas with so many police lying in wait around every corner. He laughed and said, “Good luck; you are up against three agencies vying for your tourism money-lined pocket.” There are state troopers, highway patrolmen, and local police all waiting to mop up some state revenue. I guess it costs a lot of money to fry so many folks on death row here in Texas.

Texas roadside

Oops, now anyone reading this will know I am a liberal. Nah, I’m just an American with a view. The guy at the gas station leaves me with a description of his favorite new t-shirt, “One Nation Under Surveillance.” And I thought all the kooks lived in Arizona, New Mexico, California, Oregon, and the other 45 states; now I know that Texas is kooky too.

We left the 10 Freeway at exit number 307 to see another side of Texas and also to avoid seeing so many law enforcement agencies on the prowl. The 190 going east through Iraan, Menard, and Mason is a great introduction to the hills of the Pecos region and the beginning of Texas Hill Country.

Texas roadside

Badgers, wild turkeys, owls, sheep, goats, cattle, and oil pumps are some of the wildlife we see on either side of the car. Dead wildlife populates this rural stretch of road, too. Skunk, raccoon, deer, feathers in clumps, and random fur make up the deceased roadside buffet, a veritable smorgasbord.

Texas roadside

The drive today ran into its first snag: Auntie’s legs weren’t feeling well. She props them up, covers them, and tries to do some minor exercises but has warned us that if they don’t feel better soon, we may be turning around early.

Texas roadside

The marquee at the old Odeon Theatre in Mason, Texas, couldn’t have been more appropriate with the title, Are We There Yet showing. With my fellow travelers getting a bit grumpy at the long rural drive, we head south here on the 87 to find the 290 so we can get to Austin as soon as possible and check into our motel for the night.

Texas roadside

The weather is dour which is okay as it fits the mood in the car. We just keep driving because Texas, being the giant state that it is, requires us to just keep going.

Texas roadside

A rest stop beckons, which, I should point out, features a star. Everything in Texas has a star on it, the symbol that represents the entire idea behind the Lone Star State.

After arriving in Austin, I checked in with a Gujarati guy who I quickly learned will someday soon be releasing his first music CD. Without time for small talk, I unload the car, bring Auntie to her room, and then do the same with my room. Yep, my room; Grandpa needs sleep, which he is certain he wouldn’t get any if he were to continue sharing a room with me. So, he and Auntie are sharing a room that, if I am not mistaken, will be 114 degrees before they fall asleep – if they fall asleep.

Before indulging in their hotel sauna/sweat lodge, we attempted to get some Chinese food delivered. They only deliver before 1:00. Okay, but it’s only 7:00 now. That’s 1:00 in the afternoon. Oh My God, Texas, let me guess, the police are on a late afternoon patrol for illegal Mexican Chinese food delivery people who are doing 40.5 in the 40 zones, so restaurants only deliver until the police wander out of the doughnut shops?

Bad thoughts make for bad times: this is a new proverb for Texas, I’m coining. I drive 3 miles south past a large freeway construction zone, make a U-turn, and follow the frontage road looking for ‘the’ street with the Chinese restaurant. Somehow, I miss it and am soon north of downtown Austin, approaching the airport, certainly an omen.

I call Caroline to be my eyes on the internet. I learned that I was on the wrong side of town. I make a U-turn and get back on the freeway to go back across town. I get off the freeway a mile from our hotel to fetch our aging dinner. That fast-food idea required an hour to order, drive to, wait, and drive back before we sat down to eat.

In the hour I was gone, Auntie and Grandpa managed to heat the room to a point where the nylon fibers in the cheap curtains were dripping into pools of plastic on the floor. I was able to endure the inferno long enough to wolf down my dinner. My beef and scallops had originally been a spicy dish, by the last fork fulls, it became Twice Cooked Beef and Rubber.

Out of their door, I stood looking like the Old Faithful geyser from Yellowstone due to the steam rising out of my clothes. Naked with white rice clinging to my beard, I return to my room in order to practice snoring loud enough that I’ll keep Grandpa awake, even if he is eight doors away around the corner. Honestly, though, I wouldn’t change a thing. If you could have seen my aunt’s face smelling the wildflowers, anyone would have changed places with me in an instant. I look forward to the coming days and wish my aunt good health so that we may be able to continue my first cross-country road trip with these two great relatives of mine.