Rolling out of this Rest Area at 7:47 local time, the Blackwater Draw Rest Area, next to the Blackwater Draw museum, next to Greyhound Stadium, football venue for Eastern New Mexico University. A few miles up here to Clovis, then head east, instead of on 70, well I'll go on 50 and 70 a little bit, but uh, there's a state highway 86 in Texas that looks like it goes through some scenic sections; it parallels 60, and will take me into the area of the Texas-Oklahoma border country, north of Wichita Falls. That's what, um, with any luck, by tonight I'll be in Arkansas.
[Texas]
Well I'm out on the road in north Texas now. The houses look kinda like the houses up in Nova Sco... - the French houses in Nova Scotia - with no landscaping around.
And a big old pheasant just flew across the road right in front of me - good thing THAT bird didn't hit my windshield - would've been messy.
Uh-oh - I feel moved to sing again. There goes the morning... - see JESUS ON THE MAIN LINE.
And that's probably enough songs for this day, which we are now at, what? Monday morning, the 13th of October. Heading across Tex-ass. Briefly. The aliens have been here - mutilated cattle by the side of the road. Eew.
I don't think I mentioned my stop back there in Clovis, New Mexico. [cough] Pulled up for fuel, cheap fuel, and there's a whole fleet of people with Ontario, Canada licence plates all fueling up at the same time. I guess it was a convoy. Then I went driving through town, looking for an inexpensive place to eat - saw a likely greasy-spoon, pulled in, and yeah, it was inexpensive: 99-cent special, two eggs and all that - hash-browns. And a cast of characters: one old cracker, and one VietNam-vet-age cracker with hair like mine and fatigues; and two young crackers, long-haired crackers, uh cooking, service. Everybody's smoking and everybody's relaxed and shooting various kinds of shit. Yah. Yup, that was homey, all right.
The old cracker admitted as to how he towed cars and trucks and stuff every now and then, and dropped what he was towing every now and then; and I asked if he ever checked the lugnuts no what he was towing, and he said that no, that wasn't his job; and I mentioned Maureen's accident, caused by someone who hadn't checked the lugnuts of his towed load; and he kinda grumped and shut up. The dork...
Eastern New Mexico here is really, spiritually, Texas. Here, everyone is required to smoke at all times, especially in restaurants.
O yeah, and the city limits sign back there in Clovis had the population, elevation, and the local amateur radio repeater frequency.
Um, passing by corn-fields here, I can detect BIG crop-circles, uh, boy-howdy, them aliens are just *everywhere*. O yeah, from my vantage point it looked like, not just crop-circles, but *concentric* crop-circles. Like, bull's-eye - guess they're targeting us, eh? Then there's that jewelry we saw awhile back, that had uh, crop-circle patterns from around the world inscribed in enameled ear-rings and bracelets and the like. Cute.
No wonder there were frost crystals on the Jeep's roof this morning - the overnight low last night and tonight: 33. The high up here today, 60; 74 tomorrow, but by tomorrow, I'll be elsewhere. Ah, chilly up here. What else was I gonna say? O yeah, I'm now on the scenic route up here, the Texas Plains Trail. OK. So, it's more scenic... plains... that's nice.
Somebody back there was growing vines, had trellisses set up - boy they were pretty uh, optimistic, considering what the growing season out here is like. I mean, I think this is still west of the 100th meridian, this is high dry country. Well, it *is* bright and sunny and clear, uh... [end of side]
[country music in background]
Silverton Texas, along the scenic Texas Plains Trail, the heart of Briscoe County. Looks like Silverton, the county seat here, isn't even an incorporated town, just a wide spot in the road with a courthouse. The courthouse is sorta traditional/scenic; the plaza in front of it looks a bit dessiccated; this highway seems to be the only paved road around.
[music off]
OK, now it gets scenic. Just past Silverton or the next village over, uh, the agriculture seems to stop now, it looks like High Plains. I see juniper and mesquite all over the palce, and cacti at the fencelines. I'm in a rest area right next to Caprock Canyons State Park, and here, yeah, I can see the caprock, you can see the canyons, you can see all the erosion, lots of grasshoppers too. The sun is warm, the strong breeze is mild, the scents of deserts and plains and pastures and gullies whip on by, dry, quiet, a little nasal buzz, a little aural buzz, and still some blooms on the weedrows and in the grasses. And off to the, what direction would that be? south? umm, no, actually that's north, north and east, I can see the land falling away. I'm just about to go down a steep grade into the next part of Texas, I guess. Looks like dropping off the edge of a dry continent, hitting the wetter continental shelf below, splashing through the sun-lit asphalt.
[road noise] Well hush my puppies! Here I am, approaching Turkey Texas, hometown of Bob Wills. And they got a nice little wrought-iron sign with, to that effect, at the edge of town, eith uh silhouettes of people with fiddles and guitars and the like. Nice. They got the town all tricked-out for tourists, but I don't see a heck of a lot of tourists, just a lotta cardboard cutouts of cowboys, leaning against everything. Interesting. And then there's the Bob Wills Museum, and, yeah.
All the streets here have nice wrought-iron signs too, with the quant street name and more silhouettes, but not that many houses around, no people; the whole population of Turkey Texas is embodied in solid, stationary, two-dimensional forms, for display only, a town of the frozen dead.
[Oklahoma 1]
Crossing the state line, the Red River of the South below Davidson Oklahoma, it's a nice sunny day here - I shimmieded down the side road, under the bridge, sprawled out on the flood ledge, rolled in sand and grass just like Jake the Dog would, tried to nap but the fatigue quotient just ain't optimal.
OK I'm through Ardmore Oklahoma. South-central Oklahoma here looks pretty nice, at least down in the lowlands. Up on the highlands it's a little tedious at times, but down low it's pretty. Now as I get further east there's more trees, uh, oaks and pines. A big bright, almost a full moon up over the eastern horizon - I am heading east. Uh, as the sun goes down behind me, it is in the west, reminding me that it isn't going to be any fun driving late on the way back.
Meanwhile, I just talked to Barbi, I actually managed to get through to her. So she's EX-pecting me [OOH, bumps] uh, Thursday night or Friday. Uh, I left a message for Maureen at the office, I couldn't get hold of her there, just her answering machine. Umm, I know there was something else I was going to say, but I don't know what it was... [fatique devours me...] O yeh, now that I've been driving in a fog all day, I almost feel somewhat energized, and who knows how much longer I can keep goin' tonight. Um, Arkansas is an achievable goal. Maybe.
Not having driven here before, I have to say that Oklahoma roads are, different. They look like a cross between eastern and western roads, whereas the north Texas freeways look very eastern, uh, at least the ones I was on, which wasn't really very many. Uh, the Oklahoma ones are this mix, and the more major highways are done as these really wide turnpikes, uh, the kind of space that just couldn't be wasted in California because any land that a highway uses there is something that could otherwise be used for housing. Here, the housing isn't quite as concentrated like that.
B'deah, b'deah, b'deah, b'deah...
Off to the horizon, the road rolls, bumps on, uh, rise after rise after rise of woodes, uh, not really hills, just bumps. Uh, they just keep on going. I wonder when I'll start seeing the Ouachita Mountains?
Hint: it'll be awhile.
