Wherein I muse about America for a while.
Overjoyed as I was at being back in civilization, that still left me in an uncertain position. I had been dropped somewhere along Route 66. For those not familiar with the intimates of American geography, Route 66 is a very long road. It stretches from California through the middle of America and then up to Chicago (though some biased readers may suggest that it begins in Chicago and ends in California instead). I knew that I was on it, but I didn’t know where. Before my sojourn through the wasteland, I had thought that I was in Texas or New Mexico. But after that dream-like experience of dark worlds and walking houses, all bets were off on where I ended up. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was in Oz.
Lost with only a backpack full of meager possessions is in some people’s minds a very romantic way to get to know a place. Having been there, I disagree. Sure, if this were Paris, Rome, London or New York City, I might agree. But when you’re on a highway at night with darkness as far as the eye can see, you are not very endeared to the desolate expanse. I was tired and hungry, weary of travelling and wanting a bed where I didn’t expect a crazy person to wake me up with cryptic words in the middle of the night.
And so I walked. The good thing about roads is they go one way or another. Walk far enough and long enough, and you’ll find something. It’s important not to second guess yourself, though you inevitably will; about an hour in, you become sure that only five minutes from your starting point in the other direction was the cheapest, comfiest hotel in the world that allows guests to sleep away and gorge themselves on a continental breakfast based on the promise of money via Western Union in the morning. When it’s you, tired feet, dark nothing, and only the occasional beams of fast moving cars, your thoughts don’t have to be rational or practical.
Yes, there were cars passing me. That’s the only way I knew I wasn’t in some Omega Man scenario – oh, no, the old man had returned me to my world, but years later after a plague wiped out humanity and I am the last man – dum dum DUM! Even if it were a Planet of the Apes scenario (either way I get to be Chuck Heston), the apes wouldn’t drive cars, they’d ride around on those horses in their black leather. A car, even though more efficient, is not very imposing when you’re enslaving another intelligent race.
But yes, cars. None that I could flag down, of course. I’m not sure if they could even see me before they were practically on top of me, driving at sixty miles per hour. And if they could see me, I’m not sure if they would stop. It’s a good many years since Jack Kerouac’s On The Road America or even the carefree road life of Easy Rider. Serial killers and news reports have made people very gun shy on the whole hitchhiking situation. I’m not saying there aren’t some kind souls who still do it, it’s just perceived as a much more dangerous thing these days. The unfortunate result of that was me having to jump out of the way of oncoming cars that didn’t slow down, their drivers probably never seeing my middle finger in the dimming darkness behind them.
In the middle of nowhere you find strange things. I bet no one even knew about half the things on the road in the middle of nowhere. Lacking a flashlight, my eyes had to adapt to the moonlight, welcoming the rare light on the road. So I tripped and stumbled when I found the boot. Lying on the shoulder of the road was a single leather boot, old and unhappy. Not a cowboy boot, just a lone brown boot of creased and bent leather. Not two boots, mind you. I glanced around and could not find the companion piece of footwear, just the sole boot. Stretching the bounds of my curiosity, I reached inside, hoping not for some danger like a scorpion or a venomous snake who had curled into the boot like an old mother with countless children. No, there was nothing harmful, if you discount the funky smell which emanated from inside. Instead I found what seemed like a torn scrap of paper. When I finally reached the next road light, I discovered that it was a well-worn ten dollar bill. Lucky break for me. That elevated my road funds to, including my lucky John F Kennedy half-dollar, to $10.50. I wasn’t going to buy any bridges anytime soon, but maybe I could buy a meal now.
That was fortuitous, because after another while of walking, I found a diner. I didn’t know how long I walked, and I know it probably felt longer than it was. But from afar I saw the diner, lit up with neon, a glimmering jewel in the darkness. I knew now how those who saw mirages in the desert felt. A shimmering oasis would present the same amount of hope and unlikelihood as a garish neon diner would in the middle of the night on a dark road.
As I got closer I saw that this diner was the extremely traditional sort of diner you sometimes don’t see anymore. Like some mythical beast of stainless steel and neon, this oblong trailer-shaped building was the traditional mass produced pre-fab diners that they shipped all across America via railway cars, plopping them down whenever there were hungry people and some entrepreneur willing to make a buck off said hungry people. To say they don’t make them like this anymore is an understatement. Whoever did own this one kept it well-maintained. The street lamps around it made it shine in the darkness. A pink neon sign proclaimed it the “Nighthawk”. At least I knew it would be open.
I passed by the handful of cars and trailer trucks parked in front of the diner; some were parked on the small square of concrete that the diner sat on, while others were parked in the well-worn dirt around the diner. I felt something akin to glee as I walked up the steps, glancing in the windows at the well-lit inside drowned in fifties nostalgia and neon. I lovingly touched the stainless steel door handle with its uncomfortable grip. I paused for a second, took a deep breath and opened the door.
I lingered a moment in the door way, looking around, causing some of the customers to stare at me.
“Large Marge sent me,” I said.
After a long pause where nobody got the reference, I sat down at one of the stools in front of the counter. Real faux red leather seats, just like they used to make them, long ago in a time before I was born. But part of the whole vintage fad is being almost religiously affectionate towards things that allow you to reminisce about times when you weren’t born, so I think I was covered. I spun a full 360 around in the chair, trying to not be too loud with my “Wheeeee!” exclamation.
I got a dirty look from the burly fellow on the stool next to me. On second thought, with the girth and size of the man, I have no way of know if he actually just took up the stool next to me, he could easily take up both that stool and the stool next to it. Sure, I could make jokes about the sheer enormity of the man’s gut and ass (“When’s the baby due, and will it come out a fan of Budweiser, or will you have to wean it onto it?” “Do they make retail pants to make such a huge plumber’s crack, or do you have them custom made?”), but he was a big man all over. His forearms seemed the thickness of my neck, covered in a coarse hair I’m sure he sold for use in wire brushes used for the most extreme hair styling catastrophes. He wore a collared flannel shirt and a dark, coarse beard which removed any suggestion of a neck to the point where viewers would begin to wonder if he still had a neck, or if it had collapsed under the weight of his enormous head, that head coming to a wobbly rest on the massive slab that was the man’s torso.
Upon his head he wore a rather worn baseball cap which proclaimed his name to be “Bill”, which would have been a surprise to no one. He was clearly a trucker, and here in the heartland of America (I still assumed), he fit a stereotype. All the fat redneck truckers had names like Bill, or Biff, or Joe Bob, or Rick, or Rex, or Big Jim. They never seemed to differ. Of course, I know by saying that, I would now meet some exception to the rule. I’ll be sitting in a roadside diner, and a trucker will walk in with the name Thelonious stitched into his hat, a name given him by overzealous jazz enthusiast parents. Willing to drop my stereotypes about truckers, I would ask him about jazz and the works of his namesake. Turning to me with a sneer of disgust, he would remark, “Jazz is for fags,” then he would burp right in my face, poisoning with toxic beer fumes, before returning to his chicken fried steak.
Surprisingly, this particular instance of the Platonic trucker stereotype, our Bill, was not eating chicken fried steak. Instead he was eating apple pie, which would have looked delicious, if I actually liked apples. Of course, that did not rule out him having chicken fried steak earlier. Chicken fried steak would have actually helped to nail down what state I was in, since it was a southern dish, particularly Texas and Oklahoma.
I realize that some of my readership may never have heard of chicken fried steak or if they have heard of it, they have never actually seen it. I know when I first heard of such a notion, I had imagined something different. I had imagined a thick, juicy, rare steak that had been flash fried in the same way someone might fry a Twinkie (also a southern delicacy) or fried ice cream. Instead, chicken fried steak relies on a very thin cut of beef, some flour, and a pan frying. Historians and chicken fried steak haters would suggest that it really is a form of schnitzel, but don’t believe their lies. When chicken fried steak is drowned in the appropriate amount of white pepper gravy (appropriate amount = when you think it’s too much) is one of the most American foods out there; assuming your America is both southern and heavily fried.
I put my hand on one of the menus on the counter, both to check for chicken fried steak and maybe order something, but the waitress materialized out of nowhere and placed her hand on it.
“No offense, Sugah, but you look pretty rough. I need to confirm you can pay for things before you order them.”
I sighed but understood her point. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the crumpled ten dollar bill, which I placed on the counter.
“Welcome to the Nighthawk, Sugah,” she said, taking her hand off the menu and wandering over to another customer.
I’d like to point out that it is not simply writing for local color that causes me to write “Sugah” for her dialog. If you had met her, you would know the way she said that word, no letter “R” was within twenty miles of the word. “R”s had been deported to Europe, and we can get along fine having sugah in our coffee without them. Seriously though, she was a doll. Older, so not one I would go for, but as sweet as the “Honey”s and “Sugah”s she repeated continuously. I’m pretty sure I could create a fairly successful internet meme of edited footage of her saying “Honey” and “Sugah” set to “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies.
I did find chicken fried steak on the menu. I had hoped for some of the rumored things I have heard of that I wanted to try, like chicken fried bacon, but alas, not on this menu. I settled on a regular burger, which was within my price range, still leaving me a dollar or two of my own.
When she took my order, I asked the waitress the pertinent question: “Where the hell am I?”
She started, “Well, Route 66 will run a few more miles before it hits – “
I stopped her. “I mean,” I said sheepishly, “What state am I in?”
She looked at me weird then laughed. In backpedal mode, I lied some story about how I was hitchhiking, and some crazy guy decided in the middle of nowhere that I had to get out of his car immediately, and since I hadn’t been paying attention to the road I really didn’t know where I was. It sounded plausible, if not rambling. Still, it got me an answer.
I was in Oklahoma.
I’d have a joke here, if I had any knowledge of Oklahoma. But I got nothing. There’s no TV or school textbook stereotypes of Oklahoma. Here’s the best I got. Oklahoma: Texas’s Hat. See? Nothing.
After she took my order, the waitress, who I knew now as Audrey, came back and talked to me. Hearing an account such of mine demanded she try to get as much of my life story as possible. Obviously, there would be believability issues if I told her the entire thing, so I told her the relevant parts. She learned that I was without resources and a thousand or so miles away from home. I probably had taken far too long on this summer trip, and now I just wanted to get home.
Sure, I embellished for purposes of drama, making myself seem more of a lost and hopeless case than maybe I was. Then again, as I thought in my mind of my actual experiences, they were so outlandish that I had no way of knowing that I hadn’t been slipped a drug at some point and then spent the past few weeks in a ditch somewhere hallucinating fanciful experiences. So yeah, maybe I was that hopeless. I knew at this point I had only two fifty to my name and a backpack full of scavenged items.
Whatever the reason, Audrey took pity on me and decided to help me. As she put my hamburger on the table, she said she’d try to find a ride for me. She wasn’t sure how far, but perhaps a regular might take pity. I thanked her as I bit down on my burger. I wasn’t sure where things were going to go, but sometimes it’s hard to be too depressed in the face of a tasty burger.
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