Friday, September 18, 2009

Day 7: Elk City, Oklahoma to Amarillo/Canyon, Texas.

16 September. Canyon, Texas. Midnight.

[Note: Again no wi-fi; apologies for the many belated entries that will post at once...]
Executive Summary: 9:30 start; 7pm finish; 175 miles through Sayre, Erick, Texola, Shamrock, McLean, Groom, and Amarillo. Rising tension over skipped Route 66 iconic experience alleviated by breathtaking natural beauty and time with friends.

We closed the camper door last night against chill evening air, though I reflected that in a very short time we likely will be longing for some cooler climes, as we continue southwest into the arid desert regions. Footage in yesterday’s museum movies reminded us of how drastically the scenery is about to change as we leave the grassy plains for mountains and then "the terrible desert" before continuing eventually to the California coast.

I think we all slept fairly well in the calm backyard, wakening feeling fresh and refreshed. We had just finished reviewing together yesterday’s journal entry when Steve and Cindy came walking outside to see how our night had been; all of us trooped out (prompting Steve to observe that "people just keep coming out of there!" with the camper resembling a clown car) and joined them inside for tea, coffee, and conversation, which was lively and fascinating. We traded stories about what the "adults" did for a living before they each retired, and Steve shared various amazing stories about friends of his: he knows a broad array of the most interesting people! LJS pilot Too soon, he had to leave for work and we had to hit the road west, wondering whether and when we would see them again.

Our first stops were in Sayre, first for gas; then to mail postcards at the art deco post office with its 1930s "land run" mural, then to circle the stately Beckham County Courthouse that was shown in the movie Grapes of Wrath – and which I was tickled to recognize from many of the pleadings I have drafted for Steve over the years, most of which have been filed there. We couldn’t find the abandoned bridge over the North Fork of the Red River on our way out of town, but further along we were mesmerized by the ghostly, abandoned original lanes of old Route 66, which for me evoked perfectly the nostalgic mood created by the museum movies yesterday, of wistfulness for a lost time. Approaching Erick, hometown of Sheb Wooley and Roger Miller, I merrily piped portions of their respective songs, "Purple People Eater" and "King of the Road" over the walkie talkie. We were underwhelmed by Texola, unsure whether we had reached it until we were past it (and the Will Rogers marker west of town) and already crossing the Texas border.

Without a river or some continental rift, border crossings between states usually pass without notice – but not here. Almost immediately after entering Texas, the land changed, almost as if someone looked carefully at this place and decided, without regard for political interests, that the state line just naturally belonged right there. Leaving the rolling, wooded hills of Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle opened like an immense natural stage. In the space of a few miles the land became flatter, more angular, and a little threatening purely by virtue of its endlessness. This would not have been a good place to have a horse pull up lame if you were a line-rider, nor to have your clapped-out old truck throw a rod if you were an Okie family trying gamely with your little ones to reach California. Not a gentle place at all. But a place magnificent, like the sea, in its sheer, endless expanse. And in the way the land challenges you to open yourself to it, to take it all in – or to scuttle quickly across to an easier region. Even our day would determine which type of people we were.

One of the guidebooks provided this introduction to Texas: "Few places in America scrape at primitive human emotions the way Texas does. People who live on this land are afflicted either with the fierce loyalty known only to those to have learned to hold adversity lightly in their hands – or the equally burning desire to get the hell out of here.

Even the remnant of old Route 66 has a hunkered-down look as it climbs toward the breaks just west of Alanreed. Beyond these crumbling bluffs, the high plains begin in earnest. A few miles more and the tumbled character of the land disappears almost completely, surrendering to a vast, treeless plain that flattens the entire horizon all the way into New Mexico. Windy, dry, appearing virtually limitless, even to the 65-mile-an-hour eye, the distances seem endless. So convinced were the earliest travelers that they were in imminent danger of simply becoming lost to death out here that they drove stakes into even the slightest rise to point the way. Coming upon these frail markers, riders from the south named this region Llano Estacado – the Staked Plain.

As you cross this land now with relative ease, imagine yourself out here alone, in an earlier time. Stakes or no, could you have walked this two-hundred-mile stretch in search of something better than you had back home? Would you have done that? Interesting to notice what a tight grasp old Demon Comfort can have on us, isn’t it?"

The wind communicates perfectly what no words or other medium could convey about what earlier passers-through must have felt here on this land, as they stood facing into a wind older than the plain itself. Even today that same wind blows almost incessantly, reminding us of what it means to be out here. In Texas.

Ironically, Texas – the largest of the lower 48 states – hosts the second-shortest alignment of Route 66, with only about 150 miles remaining of the original 178 across the panhandle. Our first stop, 13 miles in, was Shamrock, offering numerous remnants of old motels, cafes, and stations – and featuring the famous U-Drop Inn/Tower Conoco, an art deco masterpiece built in 1936 that now houses the welcoming local Chamber of Commerce and featured as Romano’s in the movie Cars. Seeing Tom’s car, they fell all over themselves to welcome us, chatting, offering water and coffee, and urging us to relax awhile over lunch at the restored U-Drop Inn diner – described in the literature as "one of the finest examples of art deco architecture on all of old Route 66." They have done a great job restoring it; the building looked brand-new despite its 1930s facade. Inside, they’re doing a marvelous job utilizing the space, using the back areas as offices, with interim kitchen and workspaces between there and the tourist area. The old diner has been cleaned up and restored in a simple style; just booths, tables, counterspace, and chairs, without frills – yet superior to roadside picnic areas at other welcome stations merely by virtue of this spot being located in such an atmospheric place; how many welcome centers can host picnickers inside a 1930s diner, not only out of the wind, but in a part of history, no less?! I thought it was an ingenuous idea, and it should be a great draw for the town and its passing tourists. Other tourists stopping through were eager to photograph the icon with Tom’s car in the picture; I was glad I had insisted on his parking it right in front, knowing it would add to the character of the place for as long as we were there.

Thinking Mom probably was getting hungry (it was approaching noon, and she’s pretty particular about wanting to eat on a regular schedule; nobody is really a fan of my "travel-Nazi" ways!), and thrilled at the thought of truly experiencing this Route 66 icon in such an authentic way (dining at a diner restored to a simpler version of its former glory, adapted for welcome center purposes as a delightful indoor picnic area), I was eager to take the elderly docent up on her invitation to enjoy our lunch there – at my questioning look, she gestured and repeated her instructions, making sure that we understood where to go inside, since it wasn’t obvious (we all had been simply peering into the plate-glass windows of the restored diner; she repeated that we could go inside through the double doors) – but I was outvoted 4-1, with the rest of the group insisting on hurrying off despite my imploring attempts to persuade them to relax awhile and soak up the ambience. (We would have had the place all to ourselves other than the docents, who probably were about to take their own lunch break there as well and might have joined us). But the more urgently I pleaded, the more the rest of the group seemed to want to rush away – no doubt hurting the feelings of the Chamber of Commerce folks, who seemed to be desperately trying to persuade folks to "stop and set a spell."

I didn’t want to make a scene in front of these kind people, so I resisted the urge to shout an exasperated lecture to our entire group. One of the workers, eager to discuss Tom’s car, came out to stand with us around it, seeming eager to talk to us and share stories about the town and its history – I was sure he would have loved to have us join them for lunch in the diner! But Mom somehow had gotten it into her head that we were going to be committing some kind of felony if we did something as radical as using the welcome center’s tables as... tables, and somehow seemed to have convinced the rest of the group that this would indeed be construed by the town (maybe even the great State of Texas) as some kind of terrorist activity. Truly not comprehending this kind of petulant refusal or inability to reason, I quietly but urgently suggested, "Okay, then why don’t we just ask again – ask this guy – he can tell you again that it’s perfectly fine to use the tables as tables." She looked at me as if I had suggested urinating in the town square by even considering asking such a question, chastising, "You can’t do that!" and gesturing as if she were the one dealing with an irrational child. Dad saw this and told me to "leave your Mother alone," hustling all of us out of there, and the uncles went along.

This might have been acceptable if we were hell-bent-for-election trying to maintain some kind of breakneck schedule, late for an appointment, or... whatever. But I was incensed when the group decided almost immediately that we had to stop and eat as soon as possible and we wound up pulling off to the side of the road at the first wayside area we came to, a drab field beside the road where the wind whipped everything and dust was in the air (as opposed to later stops, one just half a mile up the road at a charming restored cottage gas station; another a few miles farther along at a majestic lookout with a view for miles – no, we had to stop at the first tables we saw that were not the iconic ones back at the U-Drop Inn). I was enraged and perplexed: I couldn’t begin to comprehend why anyone – much less a group supposedly trying to explore the Mother Road and absorb its history – would rush away and forego a prime opportunity to experience a Route 66 icon like the U-Drop Inn, in favor of hunkering against the wind at a picnic table in a nondescript pull-off alongside a dusty road. I’m just not wired that way.

When we stopped, I was still too upset to even speak (I didn’t trust myself not to say something rude and hurtful, expressing my frustration), so I decided to walk on up the road and check out downtown McLean, the last town in Texas to have been bypassed by the interstate. I passed the "devil’s rope" barbed wire display at the former brassiere factory at the east end of town and found a number of interesting murals adorning a ghostly-quiet "downtown." Sadly, the McLean/Alanreed Area Museum (which apparently includes information about the WWII prison camp for German POWs nearby), in which I had been most interested, was closed for lunch.

At least my short walk around the all-but-deserted town provided a micro-glimpse into what it must have been like to have walked this prairie, alone with the wind, perhaps bitter about far more weighty matters than where to have lunch, while crossing the vast west in search of a better life. Tom and I did stop to check out the beautifully-restored Phillips 66 gas station and matching tanker truck, the first of its kind in Texas, and the first to be restored anywhere along Route 66, and the newly-refurbished Cactus Inn with its cool green cactus sign.

We encountered some navigational difficulty and troublesome dirt roads around Alanreed and Jericho (no doubt in part because I was still sulking over having missed out on dining at the U-Drop Inn back in Shamrock – Marilyn will understand completely when I describe the situation as being akin to Skagen in that we came all this way, had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience something memorable... and wound up skipping it for no logical reason that I could discern).

We resumed our westward progress and some great long-distance views from the narrow ridge line before Jericho. In short order we spotted the "leaning tower of Groom" (a crooked Britten USA water tower marking a former truck stop that was built that way intentionally in order to attract attention – it succeeded!) and the 190-foot-tall "Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," an enormous white cross erected in 1995 and billed as the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. Everything’s big in Texas – even religious symbols.

Next was the "Bug Ranch," an ironic satire of the upcoming Cadillac Ranch, with VW bugs instead of Cadillacs buried nose-down in the dirt. We skirted Conway, passing its pair of tall white grain elevators guarding the silence of the past, in an area where the speed limit jumped to 70mph – the only place in Texas where one can legally drive that fast on Old 66, on a long, straight, lonesome stretch that provided an isolated feel like none other.

Approaching Amarillo, we detoured to see the pavement end at the fence of the airport that cut right through 2-lane 66 decades ago before veering north slightly to join Amarillo Boulevard, following 66 again until up 6th Avenue, watching for painted fiberglass ponies and a place to have an ice cream treat. We spied Furrbies almost right away, parked, walked in, and sat awhile enjoying ice cream sundaes and coffee (the adults) and a 32-ounce house specialty cherry limeade for me – wonderfully refreshing! Continuing a short way on 6th Avenue through the "One Mile Shopping" district and the San Jacinto Neighborhood (where I noticed a minature San Jac monument, easily recognizable because of its likeness to the real one south of Houston).

At this point we left Route 66 for a rest-of-the-afternoon detour recommended by the books as well as by me: Palo Duro Canyon. The Route 66 guidebook recommended detouring to the canyon, calling it "one of the most beautiful areas to be found anywhere in the Southwest," and I’ve heard it described as "the Grand Canyon of Texas," which, although perhaps an exaggeration, does begin to describe how amazing it is, located out in the middle of all this endless flatland prairie. Our next homestay was directly on the way to it, so we drove there first, leaving the truck/camper rig at the farm of Larry & Jere, a high school friend of Bernie’s, while Tom drove the 5 of us in the Skyliner to see the canyon. Jere came outside to greet us when we pulled in, along with Ranger, their gentle-giant white Great Pyrennes, who immediately made the rounds to seek pets and to slobber on all of us. He’s a sweetheart; it’s really too bad that he drools so profusely; otherwise it would be so much easier to love on him!

Reaching the state park’s fee station, we were greeted with the best line yet, a Texas-drawled, "Well, I’m quite certain y’all must have violated some state law that would enable me to confiscate that vehicle." Dad roared with laughter, and we all agreed that that was the best line yet. Tom stopped to put the top down before we continued into the park, which was a great idea; we all enjoyed the wide-open views throughout our little driving tour. We stopped a few times for photographs of low-water crossings, cactus blooms, and the RLS trail in which my late, great friend Red Spicer took a lead role in building. It was fun to hear the appreciative exclamations from the rest of the group over this place that has been special to me for so many years precisely because of Red’s friendship. Palo Duro’s colors, in haunting desert tinges, and the unexpected formations in the canyon are unique, with well-laid-out hiking and running trails and miles of scenic drives. I was quiet all the way back, not least because we ran over a poor little box turtle as we were driving out of the canyon.

Returning to Larry & Jere’s, we walked around out back to see the livestock, and I delighted in playing with four frisky calves who were aggressive about nudging me with their heads and sucking on my fingers, shorts, and sleeves when they weren’t licking my legs. The kids will be so disappointed at missing out when they see the pictures later!

We all left shortly for the Big Texan, another Route 66 icon (albeit kitchy) in Amarillo, where the group had decided we wanted to dine, if only for the experience of hoping to witness someone trying to earn a free meal by consuming a 72-ounce steak (complete with side dishes) within one hour. We were in luck: while we were there, one such young man declared himself up to the challenge, and he was seated at a table alone, up on a platform in the center of the dining room for all to see. A waiter earnestly explained the rules to him and allowed him to sample and approve his steak before starting a big time clock at the end of the table, with everyone in the place cheering heartily. When we left, he had about half an hour to go but looked like he was seriously losing momentum, with barely half the meat – and none of the side dishes – put away. We opted not to wait out the remaining half-hour to see whether he made it – but that was some great entertainment! :)

Back at the ranch, Larry invited us to join them for a bonfire, which we did, following him and Jere through a gap between box cars that opened onto an outdoor fire pit and charming bricked patio area overlooking the pastures beneath a starry velvet night sky. We sat until a couple of batches of logs had burned a good way through, fascinated by Jeres many colorful and hilarious stories arising from her many endeavors; she always seems to have about a thousand varied projects underway, from doing grocery store demos to cleaning out foreclosed homes to distributing treats to collecting scrap metal for sale to creating tack sheds and various other ingenuous items from wooden Bell Helicopter box crates, to her newest thing, weaning and raising heifers to the point of being able to be grain-fed. She never ceases to surprise me with some interesting undertaking! She and Larry both are hardworking, resourceful, determined folks who could survive any test or trial – and they probably will survive the current economic downturn better than most, willing and able as they both are to utilize every asset and skill available. Larry is a wholesome, sincerely friendly man with a cheery smile and a merry twinkle in his eyes; they both were gracious hosts eager to get us set up for the night, either in the house or in our camper when we insisted again on staying out there... although I think I may take Jere up on her urging to try out the bed in their 5th-wheel, parking adjacent to my parents’. They use it as a backup, backup bedroom/apartment/crash pad, and she just made it up with fresh linens. I’m sitting in that trailer now, taking advantage of its electricity in order (for once) not to be disrupting the others’ sleep with light, movement, and the noise of page-turning and keyboard-clicking as I write this long after they’ve all gone to sleep.

We have reservations tomorrow night at the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, a vintage place highly recommended by every guidebook and other resource as oozing character and being another can’t-miss Route 66 icon. I’m almost as excited about it as I am about the Wigwam teepee Motel a few nights farther down the road!

I’m still sulking about the Shamrock incident, feeling slighted and frustrated by the sense that the group not only paid no heed to my suggestions, but actively dismissed them as outright wrong – while being too stubborn to even discuss them. I suppose part of that is just my stubbornly thinking I’m always right. But part is that I think that, in general I’m pretty careful (I already have used three equivocations in this sentence) to clarify when I am and am not certain about something – so that when I state something as unequivocal fact (like "it’s okay for us to eat lunch here"), there should be absolutely no reason to question the accuracy of that fact – and then I really can’t comprehend being so stubborn, or paranoid, or whatever, as to refuse to clarify something that isn’t clear: would it have killed anyone to follow my urging to ask again, if we were so concerned about doing something wrong? And what if we were really in a situation where I didn’t know the answer and we had to ask for clarification – would the world really have ended if we were told "no"?! Was that risk worth bypassing a Route 66 icon, on a trip intended to experience the Mother Road?! It didn’t bother me so much not to do what I thought we should do – what bothered me was reaching that decision based on a misperception – and it mostly seriously bothered me anytime someone flatly refuses to so much as discuss something to sort it out.

I do realize that part of today’s tension arises simply from our all spending so much time together – we have been on the road together now for one week, eating, breathing, and sleeping together in very close quarters; such uninterrupted time inevitably causes friction between even the fastest friends and family members...

I suppose I could look at it this way: perhaps today’s incident, albeit a low point, actually added to our Route 66 experience. Leaving home and hearth – however humble – behind, I can’t imagine that the early travelers had a picnic from one end of the road to the other. I can imagine families like the Joads piling all their worldly possessions onto rattletrap vehicles, saying goodbye to friends, families, and communities – everything familiar in the world that they knew – and setting out into the unknown in search of something better. They had to have had mixed emotions, likely even with some family members who either didn’t care about, or were adamantly opposed, to heading off into the unknown wild west. There were bound to be many moments of friction, and even some knock-down, drag-out fights among friends and family members along the way, with disagreements arising over where to stop, what to cook (or try to catch?!) for dinner, or where to settle, or... all manner of things – perhaps even some as petty as whether to use the tables as tables at a highway visitors’ center. So maybe our own such experiences actually are helping us to more fully experience the Route 66 experience, after all.

In any event, I know I need to let it go; tomorrow is another day.

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