(no subject)
May. 5th, 2003 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aslantthe big road trip
after seven days of driving, and aching back, a cramped gas pedal leg, one replacement transmission, and a forty-eight hour delay in wheeler, tx, i'm back in massachusetts.
we stayed in levelland for a couple days, at k's parents' house. in the garage there were two-day-old puppies. seven of them. ohmygod they were so tiny. shuteyed, mewing, squirmy little creatures that shuddered a little if you ran one finger down their back. i could not stop going out to look at them. wake up, gaze at puppies, eat breakfast, gaze at puppies. at least a dozen times before lunch.
also in levelland, k's brother let me drive a huge tractor plow for part of a field. i still have red earth dust on my sneakers. that was cool. and his mother becky gave me a hand-crocheted blanket in the shape of a huge many-pointed star.
*
we left tuesday, and after about six hours i gunned it to pass two semi trucks, when suddenly everything sounded wrong and the gas pedal stopped responding. the transmission shut down or blew up or something. i freaked out (truck horns blaring at us angrily) and we pulled over, barely out of the way of the three semis that were barrelling past us at 80mph. k was pretty calm although i was a little hysterical, and he kept telling me it wasn't my fault (there really was little reason for it to break, although the RPMs had been a little high). after an hour we were towed a half-hour to wheeler, texas. miraculously, it had a chevy dealer, who fixed the car eventually, but for two days we were in this tiny town with one stoplight, one tiny motel called the honey inn, and two restaurants. and one antique shop, which we didn't find until the last afternoon. i bought an antique rolling pin, a big white enameled tin bowl with a red rim, and a purple depression glass jar.
apparently, k's great-grandmother made underwear for all her girls out of empty flour sacks. flour sacks are the softest thing imaginable, an unbelievably fine weave. there are pillowcases made from them at k's house. when his mom told me about flour sack underwear, i think i became a little obsessed. i looked & looked, but unfortunately there were no flour sacks at the little antique shop. they did have almost everything else, though. you could outfit an entire kitchen there. & so cheap! ah. i wanted to buy so much more. i want to go back. i am going to ask becky to look for more flour sacks for me.
so we got a loaner car from the dealer, spent time in the tiny little park, watched lots of the history channel, drove around in circles as if more of the town would appear. cows stood in the road sometimes. we saw one child the whole time we were there, although there seemed to be a regional school at the edge of town.
thursday we left around 2 pm, some $1600 poorer. we drove until sevenish, but then we had to stop for the night in salishaw, oklahoma, because there were tornados all over the counties we were driving through. the skies were strange---we had out the big atlas to track the counties we were in against the warnings on the radio. i was driving then, but i've never seen a tornado before, so i wasn't that scared. k was very quiet and watchful. he told me how you can watch it appear, a dark low bank of cloud suddenly sucked under a high white cold ceiling of clouds, and then the funnel just twists down into the ground, ripping everything. at the motel a sweet old lady gave us a 'tornado discount' because the sirens had gone off a half-hour before, and she had just come out of the storm shelter a few minutes before we'd arrived.
(thursday was when we were supposed to be in ohio visiting m, but apparently it was not meant to be. we were never even close! even driving eleven hours a day we only barely made it back by six pm last night.)
*
friday: from oklahoma city through little rock, memphis, and nashville, to cookeville tennessee. all through tennessee there were dense patches of poppies on the meridian. purple flowers & white flowers, too. oh endless color. i wanted to stop but we pushed through a full ten hours to cookeville, tennessee. my favorite part of the day was that golden time after six in the evening, when it would stay light forever, and all the horses and cows on the hills looked so peaceful. so it must have been after the birth of the simple light / in the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm / out of the whinnying green stable / onto the fields of praise.
*
saturday: through knoxville, tennessee, through the appalachian mountains & the smokey mountains, into virginia & the shenandoah river valley. i kept singing that old song. oh shenandoah, i long to hear you, and see your rolling river. oh shenandoah, i long to see you. away, i'm bound away across the wide missouri. this was the most beautiful day. we drove another eleven hours, into the little finger of west virginia that curls over the top of virginia, and stopped there in martinsburg.
*
sunday: yesterday, although it is surreal to think about it, we drove nine hours north, west virginia through pennsylvania, through maryland, a piece of new york, all of connecticut, and then finally into massachusetts.
*
these are just the vague outlines. i can't really put into words the rest of it. like the part about not having to say goodbye anymore. the part about being able to go see him whenever i want. the part about not paying long-distance telephone bills, about not pressing the phone to my ear every single night. the part about feeling like we are getting away with a massive scam, and someone will call our bluff & we'll have to go back to our separate states, separate realities. giggling kids with stolen candy.
right now he is at home in my bed (in my bed!), about to get up and go sign a lease and get a key and unpack the little red car. i have photos of the puppies that i will post sometime soon. we didn't take many photos at all. we just drove.
i have been at work for only two hours and this is the longest we have been separated in almost ten days. it is all so strange to think of. vivid.
real real real, i keep reminding myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-05-05 09:04 am (UTC)(m: i'm having visitors from texas this week later.
jenny: is this the two people who are in love but live far away?)
& we are no longer far away!
Date: 2003-05-05 10:22 am (UTC)when are you moving to nyc? because k & i will be visiting my friend jennie in brooklyn later this summer.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-05 09:05 am (UTC)good to see you back...
especially liked the story of the flour sacks :-)
all those wonderful placenames. my god, your country really lucked out with placenames. & what do we get? solihull. peterborough. grimsby. they just don't cut it, do they :-)
i don't know why, but your writing reminds me of georgia o'keeffe's paintings...
no subject
Date: 2003-05-05 10:16 am (UTC)saw your icon and thought "yay! schiele!"
& i was thinking about place names too. i'm not partial to US place names in general -- i'm not sure why. but 'solihull' is a perfectly ... grim name for an equally grim place. ;)
(i don't usually do random comment-replying, but my hatred for various suburbs of my city knows no bounds...)
no subject
Date: 2003-05-05 01:01 pm (UTC)i added you to my friends list & hope you don't mind...
Re:
Date: 2003-05-05 10:25 am (UTC)new deal, texas
truth or consequences, texas (my favorite)
shickshinny, pennsylvania
i really loved the susquehanna river, too. the name just sounds like shallow water going slowly over rocks. ahh.
thank you :)
no subject
Date: 2003-05-05 09:23 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-05-05 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-05 11:11 am (UTC)