( 10/18/2007 06:12:00 AM ) Bill S.
THE WAY WEST - II: (Some Scattered Observations from Our Days on the Great Highway That Is America)
- With the present cost of gas, moving yerself in a rental truck isn't necessarily any savings. Cost me fifty to seventy-five bucks each time I stopped to refill the truck something I had to do an average of twice a day. Add to the cost of the rental, and you've already over the asking price of transport services - minus the aches & bruises of actually hauling all those heavy boxes. Not for me again, nosirree.
- Travel this land with a car radio, and you'll hear that most every area has a radio station built around a uni-named personality. In Central Illinois, it's "Bob;' Missouri also has a "Bob;" in Oklahoma, it's "Ed;" further south, it's "Mike' (or mebbe I got two of these names reversed.) Bob/Ed/Mike/et al have an eclectic taste in radio pop, but after a while, hearing the same announcing voice describe how "eccentric" the putative station owner is can get old.
- In the Texas panhandle, I see a billboard advertising the Western Hemisphere's Largest Cross. It's big alright, but as I barrel past it, the edifice looks just as large as a big ol' cross I used to regularly pass in Effingham, Illinois. Same design, too.
- Noting the town of Anadarko outside of Oklahoma City, both Becky and wonder if it was the inspiration for the surname of Saving Grace's title heroine. If so, it was an inspired swipe.
- Looking for a gas station in Oklahoma, we take an exit which promises a service station but doesn't deliver: a dead-end town called McLean on old Route 66 that reminds of the small burg in Cars. I count three skeletal stations along this dismal slice of 66. When I was a pre-teen, I remember riding on fabled Route 66 when my dad drove us all to visit relatives in California. Don't recall any of it looking as grim as this, tho . . .
And then we're in Safford, Arizona!
(To Be Continued)
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