dilemma3

Marilyn and Pal Mark Go West!
(continued)

DAY 2 continued...

    Finally we crossed into Texas, where the scenery was EXACTLY what I was looking for.
    "Look at all this flat land!" I cried. "Flat as far as the eye can see--off in the horizon, nothing but fields!"
    "Yeah," Mark replied, "Tomorrow it'll be 'Flat! Flat! Flat! I can't stand anymore flat! Pull over!' You get out of the car. 'Are you people crazy!?! It's too flat!'"
    I decided the sky really is bigger over Texas, and Mark agreed, commenting that driving in a car with all this scenery is like watching one big movie. During our plans, I had suggested waiting until we got to Texas to eat dinner, because I figured we could order small things and get HUGE servings ("Yeah, even small's bigger in Texas!" Mark agreed). Before OK City, I saw a billboard that said "72 oz steak free!- Amarillo TX" so I knew that's where we were going.
    And it was PERFECT!
    The tons of billboards leading up to it promised exactly what it delivered -- a huge Texas steakhouse with a mock Western town motel next to it (all booked up! Such a shame! They even had a Texas-shaped swimming pool!). The wait for dinner was a few minutes for non-smoking, 10-15 minutes for smoking. The interior was a two-story saloon like Miss Kitty would have, a huge stuffed bear, Western music... Mark and I couldn't stop smiling.
    After we were seated, Mark said, "I'm waiting to hear someone kick back a chair and holler 'Are you calling me a cheat?!'--silence in the room, a glass drops and breaks..."
    The wanderin' musicians were playing lilting fiddle and guitar music. I said I'd request Tennessee Waltz if they asked me.
    Mark said "But this is Texas -- they'd throw you out. The room would go silent, then," he leaned into the table staring at me with cold eyes and hissed "Git...out...!"
    We passed on the 72 oz steak (which to get free you had to eat within an hour on stage), but I made a point of having RANCH dressing on my salad.
    After dinner, we took off in search of the night's lodgings and hit four hotels -- all booked due to some big girls basketball tournament. Finally, at the suggestion of a convenience store cashier, we drove in the dark and stormy rainy night a little out of town to Jesse's Texan hotel (en route, Mark noted the amazing wicked lightening cutting through the darkness down into the black Texas terrain looked like footage from The Weather Channel). At the small roadside motel, we got out of the car, pouring rain, flashing lightning, and I point out to Mark this was a scene in every schlocky horror film ever made. We walked into the room and I promptly requested Mark to kill the Texas size gray spider at the door. I then pointed out twice that his foot had missed, to which Mark replied, "Give me a chance!" and "Oh, Marilyn, there's probably lots of these guys hiding in the room -- we'll have plenty of opportunities to kill one."

DAY 3: THE SOUTHWEST
    Tuesday morning, we took off from Jesse's around 7 in the rain, and stopped for breakfast at The Adrian Cafe, midway point on Route 66: "If you're here, you're halfway there!" Three old grizzled, cowboy-type farmers were sitting at the middle table talking. All three stopped talking and looked at us when we walked in. We chose a booth at the wind'r. They turned back around into their conversation. Our young blonde waif waitress gave us menus and brought me coffee. Mark remarked on the water, which was delicious--pure clean, straight from the well outside. In turn, my coffee was extraordinarily delicious -- dare I say, damn fine? Mark had scrambled eggs and toast, and I had delicious homemade biscuits and country gravy with bacon. Um-mum! While we were eating, we overheard the cowboy farmers discussing various things, most notably the one, whom I later decided was a woman, who said she saw a rattlesnake on her porch and it gave her quite a scare. The other remarked, "I always look out the door for rattlesnakes before stepping out on the porch, 'specially when I'm barefoot." (Words to live by in Texas, said Mark later).
    More driving in the rain and marvelling over just how swell Texas is -- huge, fun and great food. We crossed the New Mexico border (Land of Enchantment) and pulled over to the welcome center to get some pictures of Texas in the background (Mark made a point to walk really far from the camera so the Texas landscape would look even bigger). Then I handed off the camera and he took a picture of me with New Mexico behind me to hit both states in one stop. The welcome center had signs that welcomingly read "Rest rooms" and "Watch for snakes."
    On the road, I'm cruising down a mesa or something when a light on my control that I have never seen before came on. Houston, we have a problem. Mark looked it up in my car manual and read.
    "Read it out loud!" I call to Mark.
    "Oh," he said. "It says don't drive excessive speeds and you need to take it to the nearest Honda dealer immediately."
    Words I could've lived without all day. So the speedometer drops to 54 mph in a 65 zone and we pull into Tucumcari and asked THREE different mechanics to help, which none of them really could, except to say that it's probably no big deal, especially since the light's gone off now anyway. Just keep an eye on it. So we hit the road into more desert on our way to Albecurque, where I'm really hoping my engine won't die and I won't have to trust a strange mechanic in the middle of nowhere.
    Tons and tons of more beautiful scenery--mesas, sand, cactus, beautiful. Now I wanted to see Indians and pottery and blankets and sand paintings, so we pulled off for gas at some stop in the middle of beautiful nowhere and the cashier suggests we lunch across the street at the shopping center owned and run by Lunga Indians. Cool! It was like a grocery store thrown in the middle of Northern Exposure. I wanted pictures with the beautiful background, so I sat on the trunk of my car with Mark taking a picture (although he was really disappointed I wouldn't walk into the certain snake-infested field behind my car for the perfect picture).
    A couple of more stops, notably a place for cactus marmalade and a picture with real bison and a machine that smashes pennies into copper Route 66 ovals (Mark won't stop at Toad Suck Park, but he wants to smash a penny) -- AND a picture at the Continental Divide.
    Then as we left the Welcome Center in Arizona in the rain, we heard a sound that sounded like the sound a flat tire makes when it's way dead. Mark got out and said with the same tone he used to order scrambled eggs that morning, "It's flat."

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