Joplin, MO to Tulsa, OK
On the way out of the motel this morning a big burly guy around 60 walks in front of the car, stops, and gives me a long hard stare. I’m in the habit of yielding to traffic and pedestrians at stop signs, intersections, the side of the road, wherever when I’m in Cherry because there’s no point in being right wrecked. Call it heightened defensive driving. Anyway I wave this guy across but he won't budge, he just stands there. So I roll forward and he starts yelling. My hackles are raised and I’m ready for a fight; I roll down the window.
“Whut yarr’s dat?” he yells (more like grows).
“’66,” I tell him.
“Had muh’65 whun aysuh boy.”
“I'm heading down the old road,” I volunteer with a little jolt of pride.
“Inna Springfield? You gimme a ride?” he asks.
That’s his game. Got it. Now as much as I love the local color I’m not into picking up hitchhikers—at least not the predator candidates, prey may be a different story ;)—and use my most polished Minnesota polite excuse about running late, I've got to stop along the way, it'll inconvence him. He persists.
“Don’t mind we can go this-a-way.”
I go direct, “Look I don’t know you from Adam and I’m not taking a hitchhiker in this car.”
“That’s cool, bruther, people does it here allda time. See ya.”
Off the hook, I figure that picking up a hitchhiker is an excellent way to get myself involved in a stabbing. Now I’m neither naïve nor suspicious by nature and I’d have liked to talk with the guy in a more comfortable setting. So it's not that he was a threat himself but rather the context was not right. The more I reflect as I tool down the road the clearer my attributions become: close squinty eyes, rough voice, pushy; and the programming from CHiPs reruns and Ted Bundy documentaries tells me unconsciously that hitchhikers are threats. Even a big guy like me will be in trouble when a pen knife is stuck in his ribs. And fighting that off gets you cut. So I miss out on a little local color because the price of the risk was a little high.
Some McDonalds along the interstate offer free wireless internet with any purchase (an experiment to draw in truckers to log trips and get wired motorists to hole up for a while I expect). Across from the hotel I find one and pull in to buy a perfunctory coffee to get access for an hour. While I’m not traversing this grand country with a GPS I’m hardly a Luddite. I don’t mind getting online now and then…I just find that being disconnected allows me a sort of contemplative advantage along the drive. It’s very meditative. Having a Garmin or a Cobra radar detector disrupt my attention every few minutes hardly contributes introspective depth perception. And as a matter of personal taste I find I don’t care for the public isolation that cell phones and iPods encourage. When I’m around people, I like being around people. They fascinate me. Even the people I don’t much like.
The idea of patronizing McDonalds, Super 8 motels, and chain travel stops in general gets me thinking. I don’t feel I’m being somehow betraying the spirit of the Route by taking the freeway when it’s convenient, skipping sketchy motels, and enjoying simple conveniences where I see fit. The Route is evolutionary: it started as the only way across the country, then grew into the main drag, then obsolesced in the wake of the Eisenhower interstate; during its boom Phillips and Standard Oil made the driving experience consistent, so if Subway and Love’s (a trucker travel plaza and filling station) see fit to make the road suit their needs, so be it. That said I can’t bring myself to actually eat any food McDonalds serves…I’m in it for the coffee and the wifi. That said, I'm making an effort to patronize the survivors along the way because I appreciate what they're up to and hope they can make a go of it.
As I walk into the McDonalds I pass a teenage employee at the side door smoking.
“Nice car,” she compliments.
“Thanks darling. And I’m not one to lecture but at some point you might want to give that up. You got lots of life to spend now but later on…I’m just saying.”
“Don’t much matter,” she notes. “Already got bronchitis and asthma. I’m not gonna live forever.”
“True. Maybe it’s not about duration. Could be about quality.”
She smiles and nods and I walk in. With my coffee and my connection I can’t help but to overhear the chatter at the table across the way.
“My arm’s killin’ me.”
“Eighty percent o’ mah vision’s gone but the glasses help some.”
“Gonna halfta move if you wanna get offuh that respirator.”
It’s as though being damaged medically is some form of bragging right…and making recreational prognoses a kind of social bonding ritual. Then a Vietnam vet, retirement age enthusiastically advises the overweight employee on how to improve her shooting accuracy.
“Next time that happens,” he comments on what I assume is her poor aim, “take three deep breaths before you squeeze.”
I know how that jolt of buck fever feels so the advice is sound. And apparently in western Missouri it’s a relevant topic for McDonalds conversation. Failing health, Jesus, and guns as routine fast food conversation. Hard to imagine quite the same conversation at the Golden Arches in downtown Chicago, you know? God’s love shines differently on the heartland.
Missouri has a few twists and turns and they put the car to a test. For those not familiar with “body roll” let me explain. Old cars were usually designed in a hurry using metal that flexes under stress. The extra few bucks car companies might have spent on reinforcement and padding the dashboard were pumped into advertising and lawsuits; furthermore, rack and pinion steering and independent suspension were technologies under development and disc brakes came at a premium. So an old Mustang suffers from a phenomenon called body roll, where taking a corner distorts the shape of the car. Cornering at 50 MPH can give you the feeling that the car will tip, roll over, and explode in flames. Great for thrill seekers but not for regular driving. Getting on and off the exit ramp should not feel like a life or death decision.
At about 10:00AM I pull into “downtown” Joplin to the AutoZone to get a new speedometer cable. I notice something odd; as I cross over to the main intersection the feel shifts from dilapidated used tire stores and gigantic praying hands to a Target/Michaels/Bed Bath & Beyond mall complex that could be quite literally any suburban development in the country. The same beige brick tone, same Home Depot chic, same massive parking complex. It occurs to me that on the old route Phillips 66 and Standard Oil standardized the oil experience. The road-weary traveler knew precisely what to expect. Now some forty years later the Target/Michaels/Bed Bath & Beyond mall complex standardizes the slightly upscale craft and staple shopping experience (of course Wal-Mart standardizes the basic cheap shit consumption experience…they even have a U.S. map of every Wal-Mart in every town in America for the camper trailer traveler, reasoning that an RV family that pitches camp for the night is likely to walk in and buy fresh underwear and a gross of Ho-Ho’s—hardly the roughing it did at the KOA campground as a kid). Not a lament for the “good old days.” I don’t think the old days were any better. It’s just progress…and who knows? Maybe economies of scale will fracture as consumer tastes change and new mom and pop operations will fill a niche. Just like mom and pop shops that sprung up to service travelers down the old route.
Frustrated I start out of the AutoZone and spot a green flamed ’66 Mustang in the parking lot and a huge kid walking into the store. “That your car?” I ask and he tells me it is. I introduce myself and we fell to talking about cars and careers and life and whatever. Turns out Brett rebuild and repainted his Mustang as a father-son project (familiar?) and needed to hang some new plates. We compare notes: what features each has (“Power steering?!? Whoa!”) and what hidden flaws. Reminds me of the sick people at the McDonalds disclosing their hidden ills: owners can share the hidden flaws with other insiders. To the outside world she’s a beaut’ but if you really look close… As we bullshit about failing parts I explain that the reason I’m at the AutoZone in the first place is to deal with the speedometer cable and damn if they don’t stock the parts I need. Then Brett gets excited. “You know there’s a shop, Missouri Mustang, not ten miles from here. Let’s give ‘em a call and see if they got what you need in stock!” Hells yeah! If I can find an actual parts dealer I’m in business! We grab the phone book and look them up. They may have what we need, not sure: bring the cable in and let’s look.
Houston, we have a solution.
We pile into our cars and hit the road, Brett leading the way and me bringing up the rear. Brett’s a reliable leader—navigates us from memory, a few wrong turns and a few direction questions, and twenty minutes later we pull into Missouri Mustang where they have the parts I need and the time to chat with a fellow enthusiast. We putz around in the garage for a while and talk about front disc conversions and convertible restores and generally test one another (all of us have various levels of restoration experience so it’s fun to do a little ball busting and see who really knows their stuff). I leave with my speedo cable in hand and head back to AutoZone one more time for some lubricant to makes sure I don’t have to replace it yet again on the trip back. A speedometer cable can break like any mechanical part but it’s hardly a disposable part of the car. Should not wear them out even at the speed I’m going.
Brett guides me back to town and gets on his way. What a genuine guy, I thought, to go out of his way like this for a stranger-turned-friend. Of course it’s easier to get to “really know” someone when you have something in common. It greases the skids of conversation, and by comparing notes you can test what they have going on inside—what they know or think or value; what they’ve experienced in the world. And it’s amazing what you can find out if you ask gently. Take Brett—I learned he’s a part-time waiter, part-time undeclared-but-maybe-psychology student (I took him out of his English literature class for the afternoon which made me feel kind of bad and him feel kind of good), part time singer/songwriter, really really genuine guy. Tells me his mother is a social worker and he’s thought about doing similar, but the things she’s seen (think incest, alcoholism, graphic violence—very inhumane stuff) have given cause for pause. Knowing what little I do about professional social work it occurred to me it would take an iron stomach to be able to accept the fact that one human could treat another like so much trash. And yet just as a person can adapt to the extremes of poverty or wealth or overstimulation (think of the dustbowl and downtown Tokyo) so after the shock of contrast wears off I suspect, for better or worse, adjustment starts to occur. Even if you never actually get used to it, might the novelty wear off? In fact the cognitive psychology research tells us that for about 95% novelty does wear off. The face of evil is disturbingly banal.
Something about these repairs troubles me. I don’t mind the maintenance, in fact I expect that. It’s what I’ve had to repair: the window I repaired before the trip was something I fixed once before (I could tell because the old regulator still had an aftermarket order sticker on it). I replace the speedometer cable and transmission gear when I first bought the car. I made a few other repairs myself: changed the points in the distributor cap to an electric system when the points started to go in Spokane, WA driving it home when I bought her. And I relocated the battery to the trunk, a harmless modification. Two of my repairs failed on me. Do I detect a pattern?!?
AutoZone can order it for tomorrow if I can wait. Somehow that doesn’t sound like such a hot plan. As much as AutoZone is becoming my second home I think I’d rather pick a local as a pace car and make it to the next town up the road…maybe Kansas or Oklahoma has one in stock I figure. All day for a $20 part does not appeal to me.
I love this country. I simply can’t capture the sense of space I feel in the middle of these corn fields and soy rows in pictures or words. No fish-eye turn of phrase can get this feeling across. It goes on forever and independent of me, or of any of us. The family farm that has seen three generations of Hatfields tend to it goes on even when Jeb dies. Or it doesn’t and it gets developed. Time and space are different here…they are relentless and they go on regardless of my opinion of it. Looking at all this farmed space it strikes me just how proficient we humans are at modifying the material world to suit our needs. Corn rows don’t just spring up, Virginia, they need the special magic of attentive care and feeding. Without that attention they go fallow and return to a state of decay. Just like the little burrows that spring up off the route when the realignment shifts traffic up the road a pace or when the interstate bypasses the gas station and café entirely. Shift your attention and nature doesn’t mind…she adapts.
So the old road in the old car suffers from lack of modern convenience. Sort of. Back in the day there would be a Phillips 66 station every few dozen miles in boom towns that sprung up to service road weary travelers. Some towns I’m told had four or five service stations within a mile (in case you wanted to fuel up on the left or right side of the road I guess). Reminds me of camping with my sisters and my dad. I mean roughing it where we packed every every everything: all our cold provisions in an ice-packed cooler and all our solid food in cans and bags to cook up on the campfire. Now McDonalds, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and Love’s pervade the entire journey. Not just on the route, I mean on every interstate across the country everywhere. My trunk is full and I feel thoroughly overpacked…I could pick up whatever I need whenever I need it. To that point I grabbed toothpaste, a toothbrush and floss from the Walgreens outside my motel this morning (2 for 1 on the toothbrush). Clearly I’m hardly frontier pioneer roughing it. With a suitable charge card I could live off the “fat of the land” for…well, for the rest of my life. Now if I spend recklessly that defeats the purpose. I budgeted carefully and don’t want to fall into another gumption trap.
It’s hard not to notice that the middle of Missouri advertises the hell out of Jesus. Like people traveling through the middle of Missouri might have missed the fact that they’re all destined to go to hell if they don’t repent. Now. Not that I it shocks me all that much—it’s just very hard to miss.
{Side note: for every two “Jesus Save” billboards there’s an advertisement for and adult bookstore. War between flesh and spirit I suppose but it begs the question: did the churches arise to save the populace from its pervasive sexual deviance or did the sexual deviance arise to save the population from the churches?}
Kansas is uneventful. Nothing personal, Kansas; I mean I did witness some beautiful moments where the rainclouds parted and it was as if God were smiling on some remote farmhouse. But you only got 15 miles of the route and a quaint little bridge all your own. Not much to brag about. Right across the Missouri-Kansas border there’s a little roadside convenience store that has half the building devoted to Route 66 paraphernalia and I find a “Here It Is!” map set like I went looking for in downtown Chicago. Figures that you have to be halfway done with the trip to find the navigational guide required to start it. I found a little row of folded storefronts on Military Street and 12th in Baxter Springs and to get a clear photograph I ask a woman in an SUV to back up just a bit. With my picture complete I cross the street and apologize, explaining I’m hardly entitled to tell local residents where to park and thanks for her help. “Oh, not at all!” she forgives and introduces herself as Charlene. We get to talking about the strip.
“It’s a bit of a shame to see so many empty stores. Looks like this place was thriving,” I observe.
“Used to be. Then Wal-Mart came to town. You know the Wal-Mart effect? This is where it started.”
“Really? That place looks bustling,” I point to a retro hamburger and soda shop that looks entirely 90210. “And the antique store…”
“And the hardware store. I run that,” she chin-points across the street. “Hardware can stand up to ‘em. But the little mom and pops, they all went down.”
Baxter Springs. That rings a bell for some reason. Later I get online and find that Baxter Springs is the hometown of Lee Scott, Chairman and CEO of Wal-Mart. No wonder he cannibalized this town…it was close to home.
Charlene then tells me the town is petitioning to build a casino because all the nearby reservations have them—meaning lost revenue for the town. If they do, and she notes that she hopes they do, then Wal-Mart plan to build a supercenter, which she notes that she hopes they don’t do. I almost want to shout “The market will sort it out!” and she beats me to the punch.“I don’t fault Wal-Mart for running a business. It’s just a shame we don’t have a better way to keep small shops going.” I’m left saddened by her comment yet heartened by her complete awareness of the game she plays. After a few more pleasantries and some well wishes for her hardware store I shake her hand (I almost avoid explaining I’m greasy from my maintenance battle with the speedometer cable and she says, “Sugar, I run a hardware store. You ain’t no dirtier than I’ve been all day!”).
With a fill up and a quick bite I decide to push through into Oklahoma. With a wrong turn I find myself on one of those side streets where every third house is a transmission “shop” (“Jimbo’s Tranmission” hand painted and missspelled) and lawn ads for lawn mower races this Saturday. What I notice along with the poverty is the color: white. White, white, white. Well, burned-red and white. Not a single visible black, Asian, Indian, or native person from one end of Missouri through Oklahoma. Not a statistically significant survey I grant, just an observation.
Mower races for Christ's sake.
Passing through the Tulsa strip at night I find it lit in a curious mix of nostalgic and modern signage that gives Osaka's Bladerunner neon a run for its money.
What’s with Will Rogers by the way? Everything in sight is Will Rogers-this, Will Rogers-that. It’s like being in Madison where we had Badger Milk and Badger Gas and Badger Waste Removal, because calling it Acme would have left the townfolk alienated and confused.
Around midnight I find myself driving exhausted down the Will Rogers Turnpike between Tulsa and Oklahoma City turnpike I’m quite clearly aware of the inefficiency of my trip. Recall my brilliantly detailed trip plan:
interest. Write what I notice. Then come home.
Well, I'm deviating from the route a little—the turnpike seemed quicker but now I sure as hell feel like stopping. As my lids grow heavy and my vision blurs occurs to me that I don’t have a place to crash and the turnpike is bare of motels. This ain’t like the relatively dense historic areas. I decide it’s best to pull off on a wayside rest and spend the night in the car. Pushing exhaustion at 80 MPH gets you the results you deserve.
For what it’s worth I figure part of the thrill of the trip is precisely not about being efficient. It’s about allowing some room for a little waste. I didn’t set out to thoroughly document the details of the route; I’m not writing a guidebook; I don’t have a deadline or a place to reach by a certain time. I’d prefer not to waste too much time fucking around with maintenance and administration and hassle that don’t inform the trip. But my preference is simply a preference, and if I get worked up about the intrinsic fact that being alive requires a certain amount of maintenance and administration and hassle then I might as well bail on this life and get started on the next one. It’s all sense of adventure without too much sense of frustration. A very liberating feeling which if you ever get the chance to experience I highly, highly recommend. At least once per lifetime.
Daydream fading and attention back on road thanks to the insanely fast and loud semis on my tail I turn off into some anonymous McSubKFC rest stop and roll past a sign that reads “No Overnight Parking” which prompts me calculate that the worst they can do would be to harass me and make me move along. Even a short nap will recharge my dwindling batteries…
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