California Trip, Part II
Owned big, says the Marrier? Sins of a past life, says he? Arrr, matey! Oops....
To paraphrase another Gamecock, a '95 Altima is too small for a republic, and wayy too small for an argument. Anyway, I like my revenge served cold.
I thought Missouri's evangelists were right obliging. Everywhere along I-44 where an adult video store or strip club had popped up, the evangelists had thoughtfully supplied a large billboard proclaiming the evils of pornography. I guess we can pass lightly over the semantics as they apply to strip clubs, but it does strike me that ogling nude dancing women, although graphic, isn't graphy. It was a nice bit of symbiosis. The evangelists can look like they are standing up for virtue, and the billboards ensure the otherwise remote smutmeisters of a steady clientele.
So, apart from truckers, who is the audience? To start with, one of the biggest employers in that part of the world is Fort Leonard Wood, known as "Fort Lost-in-the-Woods" to the army of my generation. Where the military is, there also is prurience. That goes back at least to Solomon, and I don't think the religiously afflicted can do much about it. The less prominent audience is summed up by this:
"Jews don't recognise the divinity of Jesus, Protestants don't recognise the authority of the Pope, and Baptists don't recognise each other in the local adult video store."
Of more lasting interest is that along I-44 we got our first glimpses of Route 66. Except where the historic highway signs appear, the road is an elusive palimpsest. In many places, I-44 and I-70 have obliterated the Mother Road. Through much of Missouri, it parallels the Interstate. In some places, you find restored stretches in good condition. In others, you can tell the remnants only by a certain distinction of siting from more ordinary country roads, which in Missouri go by letter, not number, identities. It was a sign of progress, an a touch of sanity, to meet up with this ghostly highway that would accompany us until the last few hours of the trip.
Oklahoma City provided us with the first serious traffic jam of the trip and a decent dinner. The advantage of doing the planning is that I chose the motel for its proximity to a well-reviewed ribs place. That worked out better than I'd planned, since motel and restaurant had adjoining parking lots. Life looked better after a platter of Oklahoma brisket and Shiner Bock. (Christine went for the catfish.)
Other peoples' bad weather always seems worse. I'm not fond of tornadoes, and crossing Tornado Alley in May had always seemed like a weak point in the programme. The local TV, though, was full of fascinated coverage of the New England northeaster.
It was also full of stories about the unseasonable heat in Arizona and the Mojave, and unseasonable heat in those parts is something to contemplate with awe. (When residents of Needles, CA, complain about the heat, you had damn well better listen!) Reluctantly, we scrapped plans for our "easy" Tuesday and the lazy Albuquerque stopover. Instead, we would blow through Albuquerque, getting a late lunch with a retired friend of my wife's, and get as far west as we could, to make a very early start for the final leg.
One of the bemusing moments in Oklahoma was discovering the existence of the (so help me) Port of Catoosa, near Tulsa. They seem very serious about it. This Marbleheader was made skeptical by the weeds growing in the waterway as we crossed it: must be a seasonal thing.
To paraphrase another Gamecock, a '95 Altima is too small for a republic, and wayy too small for an argument. Anyway, I like my revenge served cold.
I thought Missouri's evangelists were right obliging. Everywhere along I-44 where an adult video store or strip club had popped up, the evangelists had thoughtfully supplied a large billboard proclaiming the evils of pornography. I guess we can pass lightly over the semantics as they apply to strip clubs, but it does strike me that ogling nude dancing women, although graphic, isn't graphy. It was a nice bit of symbiosis. The evangelists can look like they are standing up for virtue, and the billboards ensure the otherwise remote smutmeisters of a steady clientele.
So, apart from truckers, who is the audience? To start with, one of the biggest employers in that part of the world is Fort Leonard Wood, known as "Fort Lost-in-the-Woods" to the army of my generation. Where the military is, there also is prurience. That goes back at least to Solomon, and I don't think the religiously afflicted can do much about it. The less prominent audience is summed up by this:
"Jews don't recognise the divinity of Jesus, Protestants don't recognise the authority of the Pope, and Baptists don't recognise each other in the local adult video store."
Of more lasting interest is that along I-44 we got our first glimpses of Route 66. Except where the historic highway signs appear, the road is an elusive palimpsest. In many places, I-44 and I-70 have obliterated the Mother Road. Through much of Missouri, it parallels the Interstate. In some places, you find restored stretches in good condition. In others, you can tell the remnants only by a certain distinction of siting from more ordinary country roads, which in Missouri go by letter, not number, identities. It was a sign of progress, an a touch of sanity, to meet up with this ghostly highway that would accompany us until the last few hours of the trip.
Oklahoma City provided us with the first serious traffic jam of the trip and a decent dinner. The advantage of doing the planning is that I chose the motel for its proximity to a well-reviewed ribs place. That worked out better than I'd planned, since motel and restaurant had adjoining parking lots. Life looked better after a platter of Oklahoma brisket and Shiner Bock. (Christine went for the catfish.)
Other peoples' bad weather always seems worse. I'm not fond of tornadoes, and crossing Tornado Alley in May had always seemed like a weak point in the programme. The local TV, though, was full of fascinated coverage of the New England northeaster.
It was also full of stories about the unseasonable heat in Arizona and the Mojave, and unseasonable heat in those parts is something to contemplate with awe. (When residents of Needles, CA, complain about the heat, you had damn well better listen!) Reluctantly, we scrapped plans for our "easy" Tuesday and the lazy Albuquerque stopover. Instead, we would blow through Albuquerque, getting a late lunch with a retired friend of my wife's, and get as far west as we could, to make a very early start for the final leg.
One of the bemusing moments in Oklahoma was discovering the existence of the (so help me) Port of Catoosa, near Tulsa. They seem very serious about it. This Marbleheader was made skeptical by the weeds growing in the waterway as we crossed it: must be a seasonal thing.
posted by Uncle | 23:38
2 Comments:
Ah, Oklahoma, where coincidentally I was born, is a desolate and strange, and very wide state, at least at the top.
Do the Interstate signs still tease with the white buffalo, see the white buffalo, take the next exit for the white buffalo? Just over 26 years ago, my 7-month-pregnant wife and I moved my mother from Pittsburgh to Santa Fe. She loved the former and was forced by a variety of not-in-her-control circumstances to move to the latter long before she wanted.
She followed in her car, while we drove the U-Haul with everything she owned. Oklahoma was a tedious embarrassment, particularly after the lush verdancy of Illinois. Dreary stretches of America at its most industrially hideous on each side of I-40 had the sound track of Blondie's Heart of Glass as though the local stations only had one record.
We began seeing the white buffalo signs before Oklahoma City. I took the exit on the pistol end of the state, more to reward myself than anything else. At the pathetic little zoo and gift shop, which in fact featured a dusty creature that likely qualified as advertised, we leapt out. (Actually Cindy in her state, more plopped out.)
My dispossessed mom was as red as the buffalo was pale. "What are doing," she asked with her best maternal disdain. She was neither amused nor diverted.
We didn't stock up on white buffalo key chains.
No white buffalo: I think they must have sold out to a casino. When the next volume goes up, you'll see their ilk is alive and in business elsewhere.
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