Franorama World

Nov. 1, 2012

The fifth installment in my epic move home from Fresno to Connecticut — accompanied by my most gracious co-pilot, Alexis — found us traveling through three states in a day. Clearly, we were getting somewhere — say, at least halfway across the country — but we were getting antsy to get home.

For Going Home: The Prequel: Loose Ends, click here.

For Going Home, Day 1, 8/13/12: Leaving Fresno. Not., click here.

For Going Home, Day 2, 8/14/12: Sharing Needles, or Not Even out of California Yet, click here.

For Going Home, Day 3, 8/15/12: The Wrong Toins at Albuquoique, click here.

For the entire Going Home series, click here.

Just as was the case the first night in Needles, we couldn’t get out of Albuquerque fast enough. Too bad, because it’s a nice-looking city, and I’m certain that, had we had ample time, and had we been able to find a motel parking lot big enough to accommodate us in some place that wasn’t fleabag, then we’d probably have dug the hell out of it. Oh, well, if I ever get the chance to motor west again — not likely at this point — I’m sure I’ll give it a second chance.

No time for what-ifs, though. We made our way out of the city under cover of darkness once again, sometime between 3 and 4. (And again, time starts to meld and twist when you’re doing a lot of traveling all at once.)

The Tom mixdisc

Once on the highway, we were doing some serious mountain climbing. I couldn’t tell in the dark just how high we were heading, but judging from the steady grade of the road and the extra strain on the engine, I’d say we were a few thousand feet up again — not quite as high as the Continental Divide, but still, pretty far up.

I stopped the truck on the shoulder at a rest area filled with trucks just as it was starting to get light, and we caught a bathroom break and a very brief nap. It was definitely on the chilly side, and we felt the dew beneath us as we walked from the ladies’ room across the grass and back to the truck.

Alexis went back to sleep as I pulled the truck back onto the highway. A short while later, with the sun barely up, I saw another of those cool urban ruins-type

attractions along the side of what had been Route 66. It was another of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments — I glanced over to Alexis, and behind her I saw a ghost town. A long-abandoned church front and center among a group of tiny cottages, all arrayed in a grid pattern.

What was the name of the town? What was the name of the church? Who lived there? What were the inhabitants like? How long has the town been abandoned and what drove all the people from this little town? Lots of questions at once, for which I would never receive an answer. A scene both cool and sad at once.

Alexis awoke a short time later, with the sun now firmly entrenched in the morning sky, and I excitedly told her about what she had missed. She said something along the lines of “That’s gonna happen on a trip this long.” True. But I wish she could’ve shared it — and I could’ve reacted quickly enough to have taken a photo.

And then the morning took a sour turn. She received a text from one of her best friends, whom she had known since high school. He told her he had had a recurrence of colon cancer.  It was his third go-round. And this time it seemed to be too much to overcome. I shut up and let her tell me about him. I felt terribly for her, and him, but I realize there’s not much anyone can say when something terrible such as this happens that isn’t gonna sound pithy at best, downright stupid or insensitive at worst. The best — only — thing to do is to just shut up, to just be, and to just be there for your friend when she needs to talk.

A short while later, she popped in another CD at random from my case. The first song was the “Mickey Mouse March.”

My mouth dropped open.

“Holy shit!” I smiled.”How did you know?”

“What?” she asked.

I had looked at the map before we started out from Albuquerque. The first city of any size would be Tucumcari. The next would be in Texas — Amarillo. I had hoped we would be there by breakfast. As in “Amarillo by Morning” by George Strait. That was one of the songs that my friend and former Fresno Bee entertainment editor and cubicle neighbor, Tom Becker, chose on an early-December afternoon in 2009. Tom, who was laid off with me that March, was dying of stomach cancer — diagnosed that June as stage 4 — and asked me to come over and help him gather the music for his memorial for when the time came, which was about four months later.

In all, we put together 25 songs for that day. And the first song on the mixdisc was the “Mickey Mouse March.”

I don’t care what you think; these things are not accidental. Whether the reason is religious, spiritual or just plain psychic, there may be coincidences in life, but things such as this are not among them. So I told her about Tom and how she had pulled out the disc from his memorial.

Way too much about friends and cancer that morning. And as we barreled through eastern New Mexico, and the mesas began to flatten out the closer we got to the Texas panhandle, the Strait song came up. And the sky was a beautiful shade of blue and seemingly infinite, with sharply contrasting bundles of clouds, as I said to myself liltingly, “Oh, Tom …” as I had said to him so many times in the newsroom.

And I pictured his beaming face as he said in his folksy, East Bay-by-way-of-his-parents’-Oklahoma way, “Hello, Fran!’ And my imaginary conversation (or was it really imaginary?) continued: “I’m going home, baby!” To which he said, “Yeah, so I see! It’s good that you’re going home to be with your parents. And you’ll get that job. You deserve it.”

And, conscious hallucination or not, it put me at ease. And put a smile on my face as I knocked a few more miles off the to-do list.

Since I had to pull over to sleep earlier, we weren’t gonna make Amarillo by morning, as I had hoped. Maybe by noon, since we had to stop soon.

It was about 8:30 when we pulled in to pit and have breakfast. We stopped at a Denny’s at the Flying J along U.S. 54 in Tucumcari, about 45 miles from the Texas border. And I needed to find a mailbox and a stamp. There weren’t many of those in our travels. And I was carrying around a credit card payment that I needed to make by the 22nd that was going to L.A.

We had a leisurely breakfast, and since there was wifi, we both caught up on messages.

One thing I noticed at our stops as we were traversing the Southwest was how the truck-driver demographic was changing. Still lots of white guys in their 30s through 60s, but now they’ve been joined by a lot of Hispanic and black guys, many in their late 20s and 30s.

It’s a rough job, as I was experiencing firsthand in a slightly smaller-scale truck in a handful of days on the road (and with no formal training), but lets face it — even in a horrible economy, trucks are the main lifelines of commerce, and there’s always gonna be a need for new blood, especially as the economy slowly starts to come back (which you’d have to prove by me) and older drivers are forced off the road by age or health problems. And it’s not a healthy life in the least — you’re sitting for hours at a stretch, you’re constantly at stress on the road, not knowing where the next hazard is coming from, and you’re eating in shitty truck stops where quality food is often hard to come by. Plus, unless you’re like some of the indie guys whose wives travel with them, the solitude has to wear on you. So there will always be openings — and this line of work, from what I see as an amateur, is opening to a broader spectrum of people.

Anyway, I didn’t see a mailbox at the Flying J, and I needed to mail off that credit card payment. But there was one at the Love’s across the street, so we took a walk over.

She found a falsa blanket — the same one I had bought from the Navajo Shell station the day before. I paid $16. Here, it was $5. Oh, well — I hope the money went into some Navajo pockets.

And then I stopped at the counter to buy stamps. A pack of two 45-cent stamps for the incredibly low price of $2.25. That doesn’t seem like Love to me, and I told the clerk that. The price of cardboard sleeves must have risen or something. But the important thing is that I dropped the bill in the box and hoped it would get from East Nowhere to L.A. sometime this lifetime.

Amarillo, and how to pass in Texas when you’re trans

It hit me as I was driving through New Mexico — like Arizona behind us and Texas just ahead, a state where the speed limit was 75 — that it was a good thing that I was stuck driving at 55 in the truck, maybe in the low 60s on some stretches: It was preparing me for home. After eight years in a state where the freeway speed limit was often 65, sometimes 70, and driving in the mid-70s was the norm, I would have to get used to a state where the speed limit is still mainly 55 and the cops specialize in revenue enhancement. So I didn’t bitch

too much about my forced reduced speed limit — except it was keeping us from getting home faster.

Shortly after 11, Alexis flipped to the next state in the atlas. Our stay in Texas would be much shorter than the three previous states, as it’s only 171 miles from New Mexico to Oklahoma across the Panhandle on I-40.

And by the time we reached Texas, the landscape had morphed, almost imperceptibly, into grassy, rolling hills — but there were still traces of the desert landscapes we left back in the sideviews, albeit with a Texas twist. Alexis saw this one but I didn’t — a mesa with a huge cross painted on it. Yep, we were in Texas.

And later on in our short stay there, we drove past a church out along the highway in East Godforsaken that had at least a hundred-foot cross. Yes, we realize you guys love Jesus — probably in some twisted, intolerant form, anyway — but wouldn’t it be better to celebrate his life than his death? This having-the-biggest-swingin’-cross stuff fetishizes his method of execution. Wouldn’t it be better to have someone paint an image of some sort incorporating a living Jesus? Y’all really need to rethink this dead-man-hanging-off-slabs-of-wood thing …

Another thing struck me funny as we rolled through rolling green farmlands and a semi-cloud cover: We were passed by an SUV from the Border Patrol. In north Texas. About 400 miles from the Rio Grande. What, are they afraid some Okies are gonna jump the wall? Jeez …

The clouds had disappeared by the time we reached Amarillo around 12:30. Lots of restaurants, stores and some motels, but not much to write home about. It was most people’s lunchtime, except that we had just had a good breakfast and were making good time and feeling Oklahoma.

By this time, on Thursday afternoon, we were getting antsy to get home, for different reasons. I just wanted the trip to be over and see my family and friends back home and plop down on the bed in my parents’ guest room and not wake up for a few days. Besides just plain missing Matt, Alexis had a specific time element — she needed to be back by Sunday because she had a friend’s 90th-birthday party to attend. I was planning originally to be home on Friday. That wasn’t happening with us still in Texas and at least two days from Connecticut. I was shooting for Saturday afternoon or evening at this point.

We started looking for a place to pit about an hour out of Amarillo. I found a

Shell station in the town of McLean with a huge dirt parking lot. It wasn’t a truck stop, but it had a bathroom.

And here’s a little fashion tip for my fellow transgirls: You want to pass in Texas? Wear something football-related. Forget the makeup-and-big-hair thang — throw on some football gear. Pro, college — doesn’t matter. This is the real official state religion.

It was another T-shirt-and-shorts day on the road, and this day, I was wearing my New York Giants Super Bowl 42 T-shirt. (For the uninitiated: I have two favorite NFL teams: the Giants, since I was a 9-year-old in 1970; and the Saints, since my first visit to New Orleans in ’86.) And as I walked in the door

of the gas station, a guy was walking out — trim, dark-haired, early-to-mid-30s, slight sideburns, plaid work shirt, jeans, boots. And he looked back at me.

Uh-oh. The transgirl’s reflexive moment of anxiety — especially in a strange place.

And then he spoke.

“Are you really a fan of the New York Giants?” he drawled.

“Oh, yeah!” I said with a smile.

“Alright!”

We shared a high-five. I went inside. That was easy.

Chopped barbecue and fried pie

A short while later, we needed another pit, and this time, I saw a sign for a Chevron station at the Shamrock bypass in the eastern Panhandle. We got to the bottom of the hill past the exit — the station was out of business. Shit.

So we got to travel on another segment of the old 66. Shamrock is one of the many towns and cities that were bypassed when I-40 was built. And there are still some pieces of classic architecture to be found along the old stretches of 66. Such as the one at the northeast corner of 12th Street (on which we were driving) and Main Street (U.S. 83).

It was a seemingly closed gas station — or was it a restaurant or coffee shop? — called the Tower Cafe. It was classic, elaborate Art Deco straight out of the ’30s. And while I had seen it in Route 66 books over the years, only later did I learn it was pretty iconic, an architecturally iconic building. It was originally the U-Drop-Inn, a Conoco station and restaurant. And it’s been repurposed in a wonderful way — since I’ve never seen the Cars films, I didn’t know that the building now has a second life in the CGI world as Ramone’s body shop. And we were sitting diagonally across from it.

It was yet another reason we wished we could see the U.S.A. in something besides a 26-foot International truck. But we had to get going, as we needed to pit and eat.

Alexis saw the sign as we were entering Oklahoma — the Windmill Restaurant,

a barbecue place.

“You have to stop here,” she said. “All I want this whole trip is to stop and eat at one restaurant with homemade food.”

I gladly obliged; besides, I was getting a little hungry myself. So I pulled off at Exit 1 in Texola and into the massive gravel parking lot. It was 3 in the afternoon, and the place was nearly deserted; one pickup was parked directly out front. Since there was at least one vehicle there, we decided to go in.

The restaurant was the size of a barn, or at least a dancehall. Scattered throughout were metal signs from several decades and all sorts of ephemera —

some of it actual vintage appliances and tools and household goods from the early-to-mid-20th century, some of it junk from the ’80s and ’90s. But it was clearly a folksy, down-home restaurant, complete with a linoleum floor and vintage tables from various decades. And, of course, country music — or whatever passes for “country” these days — blared from the radio.

The waitress seated us by the cash register, at a ’50s-vintage table with red patterened Formica top and rounded corners and aluminum trim. It was just her and the cook, a burly, graying-bearded man. And the menu was just one BBQ delight after another. And Alexis lit up — not over the entrees, but the fried pie. I didn’t know she was a foodie, and that she was big on BBQ, and she loved fried pie, a Southern thang.

We both ordered chopped beef; I chose fried okra and cole slaw as my sides, with a chocolate milk (which I hadn’t had in years) to wash it down. I think she had the okra and fries as sides. And the food was delicious — definitely classic fall-apart-in-your-mouth. These people knew what they were doing. As we sat, I could imagine the place filled up on a Friday or Saturday night, or after church on a Sunday, as opposed to the two strangers from another planet on a weekday midafternoon.

And once she picked up the fried pies at the counter — I didn’t want to lay on the desserts beyond my endless supply of Mentos — I understood what she was

talking about and why she was so thrilled. For those of us in the industrialized, corporate-food universe, they’re the origin Hostess Fruit Pies — pie dough with fruit, folded over and deep-fried, only without the sugar glaze. She bought one peach, one apricot, and along the drive, she gave me a bite of the apricot pie. And I got it. And I regretted not buying one for the road myself.

We finally dragged ourselves out the door an hour later and back into the blinding sunshine. Not that we’ll ever see Texola again, but if you have a plan to motor west, remember the Windmill if you’re hungry.

That romantic Mother Road

Oklahoma would not only be the midway point geographically, but a turning point literally; once we got to Oklahoma City, we’d veer northwest on I-44, through Tulsa and into Missouri. It would be a northwestern trajectory until we reached I-80 in eastern Ohio; after the trip through hell that usually is 80 eastbound (westbound, too, for that matter) through much of Pennsylvania, we’d head northeast into the Poconos until we reached 84 in Scranton, which would get us home.

Alexis had suggested in our pre-trip planning that I drive as much as possible the first two days of the trip because my enthusiasm would start to wane at that point. Hardly. The more progress we were making getting across the country, the more ground I wanted to cover. The more I wanted to get us home. And I wanted to see if I could hold up long enough to get us through the Sooner State before bedtime.

We had enough fuel to get us about an hour and a quarter into Oklahoma. Exit 71 in Clinton, another Love’s. (And in Oklahoma, they’re all over the place.) Custer City Road, a short left turn off the exit ramp and across the street from the Cherokee Trading Post.

And another let-it-go moment. As I mentioned in a previous post, fueling up at a truck stop usually isn’t a quick-gas-up-and-go proposition if you have a truck. And as the truck ahead of me filled up, I was waiting with the engine off while Alexis went inside. The truck ahead of me pulled out, I turned the key and put my truck in drive —

And was cut off by an asshole in a pickup truck — huge white Chevy stepside with double wheels on the rear — who pulled right in front of me. I was too astounded to hit the horn. He ignored me and got out.

You’d swear he was from Massachusetts or New York or Jersey or Connecticut. That was such a Northeast move. But no, this was an Okie. In his 20s, shaved sidewalls, goatee, no neck, a body as wide as his truck. And in the bed was a huge metal shaft the length of the bed and as thick as the trunk of a 10-year-old tree. It was a drill bit. So this is what a roughneck looks like.

The boy in me would’ve yelled or something. Even though I couldn’t take him in a fight, I would’ve said something. The girl in me said to let it go. So I did — in the hope karma would come around to him someday.

We left the truck stop and immediately got ourselves into another woolly adventure.

I made a goof trying to get back onto I-40. I was used to straight, conventional on-off at that point, with a left turn back onto the on-ramp. Instead, the entrance was on the right side and curled beneath the overpass. And I took a left turn onto … a two-lane road.

It was a segment of the old 66 running parallel to the interstate. And my anxiety level shot up about 150 points.

There had been segments of 66 in New Mexico and especially Texas that went on for a mile or two and then dead-ended. Meaning, since I couldn’t back up and turn around, that we would be a hundred ways to screwed. I just had to keep driving and hope it would come out to the interstate at some point.

A couple miles down, a car drove past us in the opposite direction on the narrow two-lane, so that put me at ease. And then another car passed me, so I knew we weren’t being sucked into a black hole.

But the road just kept on going and going and going and … and did I tell you it was an endless series of bumps? We were only going about 35, and it was one constant ba-DUMP ba-DUMP ba-DUMP! And all I could think of were whether the contents of the truck were gonna survive, how the car on the back was faring — and the shooting pains rising up from my tailbone.

And finally!!! an exit up ahead. Nine fucking miles between exits. And a sigh of relief as we got back onto I-40.

“I think I’ve lost my romance with the Mother Road,” I told her.

I’ve never met a motel I didn’t like — when I desperately need sleep

After that little adventure, it was straight on through to Oklahoma City — or, as people now call it, thanks to the NBA’s Seattle Sonics in Exile, OKC — which we reached somewhere around 7:30. The pavement wasn’t smooth as we entered the city, meaning an extra grip on the wheel, but what was cool was that the DOT painted highway markers on the lanes as we approached downtown so we would know the right lanes for our exits. I’d never seen that before; pretty cool and innovative.

And I got in the correct lane. And from there, we finally left I-40 behind — a psychological boost, meaning we were that much closer to home — and after gingerly navigating an older ramp with a tight curve and rough surface, merged into I-44, which also, for the most part, paralleled Route 66.

Shortly after Oklahoma City, the highway became a toll road, the Will Rogers Turnpike. Meaning not only did we have to pay, but exits were fewer and farther between, and there were very few of the usual gas, food and lodging options we had on the free highway (I feel weird using the term “freeway” outside of California). But as the sun set and darkness settled in during the 50 miles to Tulsa, I was starting to feel the weariness surfacing. Despite our experience in Albuquerque, I decided to get off the highway as we headed into Tulsa and see if we could find a place.

No luck. The chain places didn’t have parking big enough for our beast. We drove by several motels during our brief foray off the interstate, and finally I said screw it. We made our way back onto 44 — which seemed to take up 20 lanes as it swept through downtown — and forged northwestward. Dammit, we were gonna find a place. And a decent one.

It had to be about 10:30 when my body said “No mas.” I had Alexis consult the atlas, as I figured Route 66 — and actually, in that part of the state, it truly was Route 66, now a state highway — ran parallel on one side of 44. Indeed, it did. And I settled on exiting at the town of Claremore, about 15 miles north of Tulsa. I had to take another very sharp and narrow curve on the off-ramp to Route 266, then a right onto 66.

Unlike the previous stretches of 66, this one, a four-lane highway, wasn’t derelict; it was vital, with its complements of chain stores and restaurants and motels. And about two miles down, we hit paydirt — a Comfort Inn. And it looked as if it might be able to accommodate a truck. Woo hoo!

I pulled in and slowly made my way around the rear parking lot, looking for a space large enough. I finally found it on the far side of the building — big enough to get in, enough clearance to get out. Yes!

And then I gingerly descended the steps of the cab and walked into the lobby. Outside, two college-age dudes were hanging out and talking.

And the woman at the desk said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but we don’t have any more vacancies.”

I gave her a look of desperation as if someone shot my puppy — provided I ever had one, which I didn’t.

“Nooooo!” I pleaded. Don’t tell me that! We left Albuquerque at 3:30 this morning and we’re shot!”

“I saw your truck pull in and I felt bad for you.”

“Do you know any place at all around here that might have an opening and a spot big enough for the truck?”

“Well there’s the Will Rogers Inn,” about a mile down the road, said the clerk, whose name, I believe, was Carol. “Get off on the frontage road and it’ll be on your right. Tell them I sent you there.”

I thanked her and reluctantly trudged back to the truck to tell Alexis the bad news. And we headed down to the Will Rogers Inn — named, as we found out later, for its most famous native son.

I overshot the motel, as I didn’t see a parking space right away. So I went down a little and made enough right turns to double back. I parked the truck on the shoulder, across the street. And once again, we descended.

The girl at the desk said yes, they did have a room. With the Triple-A discount, it was $65. I handed over my card with a great sense of relief. I asked her if it was okay to park where I did; she said yes. So Alexis brought her bag down to the room and I pulled my belongings out as well.

And as I looked out the door again, I saw flashing blue LEDs making a lazy circuit out front.

I had a feeling they had something to do with the truck. I walked out front, and sure enough, it was a local cop.

“Good evening,” said the officer — late 20s, head shaved, stocky.

“Hi.”

“There’s no parking on the street.” No rancor or hostility to his voice — even-tempered with just a slight drawl.

“That’s weird,” I told him. “I asked the girl at the desk and she said it was okay to park there.” And then I asked — not quite pleadingly but close, “Is there any place I can park it? We left Albuquerque at 3:30 this morning and we really need to get some sleep. I’m halfway into a move from Fresno to Connecticut.”

He had run my plates before I arrived.

“You can park it right in front of the building,” he said. I hadn’t parked directly in front because it didn’t seem as if there would be enough room — I’d either jut into the motel parking lot or the adjacent 66 Restaurant, where, on a Thursday night, lots of young men and women were getting their drink on. But at that point, my depth perception was slightly off.

The cop told me where to turn — I could make a big swing in a store parking lot and come back down. So I got in the truck and did just that.

And he followed me.

Okay — here I am, after 11 at night, a transwoman who could feel the faintest coarseness of stubble on her face, in a strange town about 1,400 miles from home, being tailed by a cop. And I was a little worried, to say the least.

And I gently pulled the truck alongside the front of the motel, being careful not to pull up too far.

The cop drove up along my side.

“I didn’t want you to think I was tailing you,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you got in safely.” And you know, it didn’t sound like bullshit. He seemed like a stand-up guy. And I wasn’t being one of his problem children. I’m sure he was much more concerned with the dudes and dudettes coming out of the place next door later on.

“How am I?”

“You’re fine. You have a good night.”

“Thanks. You, too.”

I went in, soaked my feet — which, like my ankles, were swollen to elephant proportions from all the days of sitting — brushed my teeth, plugged in my CPAP and filled its water tank, and then, finally, bedtime. It was about 12:30 when all was said and done. Screw leaving before dawn. I set the alarm for 6:30.

UPDATE 11/12/12: About that ghost town: Got an email this morning from my friend and former Bee colleague Heather Thomas, now in Sacramento. She has a fascination for ghost towns and sent me a link to a site on Route 66 ghost towns. I didn’t find it there, but thusly inspired, I went Googling for towns west of Tucumcari, and I’m pretty sure this is it — the town of Cuervo, which is not quite totally abandoned, apparently, but you’d have to prove it by me. Thanks, Heather!

Tags: Amarillo, Amarillo by Morning, Art Deco, barbecue, BBQ, Cars movie, Claremore Oklahoma, Fran Fried, Franorama World, George Strait, Interstate 40, Mickey Mouse March, moving home, New Mexico, Oklahoma City, Ramone, Shamrock Texas, Texas, Texas Panhandle, Texola Oklahoma, Tucumcari, Tulsa, U-Drop-Inn, Will Rogers, Will Rogers Inn, Windmill Restaurant

This entry was posted on November 12, 2012 at 11:22 am and is filed under Connecticut life, Fresno life, Gender, Going Home, Unemployment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.