I wasn’t looking out ahead into the wide open road turning into the hills above the desert. I was looking across at you. I was remembering how we used to ride out into the fields outside of our town and the white fences marked everything with their imprimatur. But the standards slipped as we worked our way into the west. There you were in the drug store, and me, I worked in an SRO.
We ate roasted turkey at 6 am and watched old tv shows on DVDs. We swallowed the wrong turns. We made false steps. Eventually everything is improbability. That last drive into the desert, with the big V8 rumbling to a slow stop because the brakes were dying had no sense of romance and neither of us smiled much after we parked and went inside the apartment.
No one sent their arms across the wide canyons of fire coming down from the drought lands where the lakes dried and stunk of death. But a turn toward into the line of mobile homes revealed somewhere we could eat some burgers. And that was a verdant pasture of relief.
Hey Hank,
I look forward to your posts every Sunday… I feel as if I’m on the road in a beat up caddy – inhaling dust, stopping for beer in some roadside dive, wondering if it will ever end and hoping it doesn’t. In short, I feel as if I’m not in New York City anymore. For that alone, I thank you.