Where Is The South?

During this weekend celebrating "Juneteenth" in Texas I was reminded of recent changes in the American mindset regarding what is currently considered the American South versus how large the South really is. I was recently amazed at how contemporary opinion can absolutely rewrite history. It happens regularly and many in the conversation either don't know any better or choose not to contradict the speaker, especially if the setting happens to be the speaker's home. Being polite is one thing, allowing revisionist blowharding to be accepted as truth is quite another.

On the way to a business conference in Florida while driving the rental away from the airport my colleagues and I were talking about various parts of the country and what it must be like to live there. We talked about the South, the "Deep South" and the Southwest, going over their similarities as well as some key differences from one region to the next. Somehow the subject came up regarding Maryland and Delaware and their place in the American South.

"They're not in the South" one of my more loudmouth co-workers unequivocally proclaimed. I politely pointed out that they were considered Border States during the Civil War and were prevented from actively participating in the conflict; their inclusion would have completely surrounded Washington, D.C. with Confederate States, an untenable and unacceptable position for the seat of the federal government. That's all well and good my highly opinionated peer said dismissively but that still didn't place either state in the "real" South. Even the truth that the Mason-Dixon Line ran along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border wasn't enough in their minds to be considered a part of the South. The Mason-Dixon Line has been reduced to an historical technicality.

At a recent Memorial Day party a similar conversation took place only this time regarding my home state, the great State of Texas. We were discussing traveling for family reunions and I mentioned that my mother's family was in the "Deep South" of rural Virginia. While not as far south geographically as Alabama, Mississippi and southern Georgia the mindset of the "Deep South" permeated this part of Virginia and the Carolinas as much as anywhere else. In that mix of opinions came Texas' place in the South.

"Texas is not in the South" came the last-word opinion of the party's host. After allowing myself time to collect my thoughts and continue my argument I stated that Texas was indeed in the South and that the traditional feel and mindset of the American South could be found alive and well in the eastern part of the state. The Talladega Forest region that extends in to Texas from Arkansas and Louisiana as deep in to the state as the Tyler-Lufkin-Nacogdoches line was as southern as any part of Tennessee could ever be. El Paso not so much, perhaps, but all along US Highway 59 as far as Houston the traditional "South" can be found. Anybody remember James Byrd, Jr. of Jasper?

I guess in their crude way I am supposed to go along with the argument that times change and that feelings and basic instincts evolve, etc. Those were different times and, indeed, Northern Virginia around Washington, D.C. is a whole other country compared to any part of the state from Richmond and Charlottesville south. At the same time, Texas is simply too large to be part of any one region geo-politically. El Paso is famously closer to Los Angeles than it is to Houston while Amarillo is barely connected to the coastal culture of Corpus Christi. I still held the final trump card in the debate as far as I was concerned.

Juneteenth is the celebration of the coming of Emancipation to the State of Texas in 1865, two and a half years after Lincoln's initial declaration. Now celebrated in 37 states across the Union, it was first celebrated in Texas which, like Delaware and Maryland, was a slave-owning state, plantations included. To any Black American breathing, that puts all three states squarely in the South. Happy Juneteenth.

Gotta go.

Wrong Way McDonald's

One of the strangest things I had ever done was to go through a McDonald's drive-thru backwards. Many of you have already tried to visualize going through in reverse either so the guy riding shotgun would be able to place his order directly but that's not what I meant. This relates to my first experience at the world-famous restaurant chain at one of their franchises in England. "Backwards" means that the drive-thru wraps around the building in the other direction, as in clockwise!

Many things are different about the overseas experience with fast food, all of which make it at interesting enough to almost be an adventure but certainly not the normal routine expected at home. In Germany a Filet-o-Fish is called a "Fisch Mac," for example. We all know by now that a country that operates on the metric system would therefore not have a "Quarter Pounder" on the menu so it might have a name like the French "Burger Royale" instead. Likewise they by now understand that the German word for big, "Gross," would NOT translate to steady sales from English speaking patrons who happen to stop by. Another reason for names like "Koenig'sburger" (King's Burger).

In England the product names tend to translate fairly easily so no worries about what exactly is being selected from the menu. The interiors of the restaurants from one country to another are also fairly innocuous and easily recognized, perhaps with a few local flairs thrown in just so the natives will feel more connected as well. While on business in London one time, though, we were in a hurry as most business travelers tend to be and decided we had just enough time to hit the drive through before going back to the office.

McDonald's was nearby, everybody knew the brand, the product and what to expect so in we go to the parking area, except I happened to be the one that was driving. Instinctively I started turn right to join the "queue" for the drive-thru. "No, mate, turn left!" my local companions warned before I completed my maneuver. In England with right-side drive (from the passenger seat to most others) the menu board and attendant speaker is on the right hand side of the car. To face it properly and not be considered a total "prat," the line for the window starts at the left side of the building.

Drive thru's in general tended to be more of a novelty at the time as opposed to something absolutely required in the design of the establishment. This is Europe, after all, where population density is much greater than America and land is certainly not to be frivolously paved over. Even at a lot of highway rest stops the logic leans towards entering the restaurant as opposed to pulling over in a drive-thru. One has to get gas in the first place, which means getting out of the car, plus the fact that a gallon of regular there is easily twice the cost in the United States. Not something to burn through so readily while idling in a drive-thru waiting on a burger and fries.

So here I am trying to navigate the narrow lane for the drive-thru near Heathrow Airport from the left side of the building while piloting a car from the right hand side of the front seat. Even though my favorite sandwich at Mickey-Ds is the Filet-o-Fish I knew better than to order something like that while in England, home and reigning king of fish and chips.

I went with a Quarter Pounder!

Gotta go.

Whales and Seals

It was Todd's first trip to New Zealand. One of us, I forget whom, had won two free tickets on Air New Zealand, the national carrier of a country I'm quite familiar with, and we made arrangements to go for a couple of weeks. On the flight down I was thoroughly humbled by a grandmother from England who traveled two hours to London's Heathrow Airport, flown 12 hours to Los Angeles, was my seatmate for the 12 hour flight to Auckland from whence, following a healthy layover, she had another three hour flight to Brisbane. All for the sake of seeing her first grandchild. I kept my agonizing to a minimum.

Following some time in Auckland we made our way south to Christchurch to visit with friends and to hopefully experience real whale watching for the first time in either of our lives. I'd done some research before flying down about expeditions launching from the small coastal town of Kaikoura and had set all the arrangements for the 2nd day of our arrival on the South Island. Of the three tours scheduled between early morning and high noon we were booked on the 2nd starting at around 10:30 the following morning.

We picked our way to NZ#1, the two-lane national highway leading north along the eastern coastline to Kaikoura, paying attention to every road sign since every road looked the same as well as the British Commonwealth driving on the opposite side of both car and highway. Despite being tired from an evening with friends and the early hour upon us there was time aplenty to notice the bucolic beauty of rural New Zealand, something to that point I had never experienced in this part of the country. Farms, sheep of course, short trees, fruit groves and all of it covered in thick carpets of green. In a country of only four million confined to two middling sized islands (the North Island could fit in Ohio) they were thankfully blessed with not needing a lot of space along with the fact that much of it is quite mountainous and rugged, limiting any desire to create a lot of sprawl from the start.

Large pods of bachelor sperm whales gather off the coast of Kaikoura on the northeast side of the South Island. They gather here as they wait to mature and grow large enough to compete for females but also because one of their favorite foods, the giant squid, is known to collect here in great quantities as well. Diving up to a mile deep for their prize, when they surface the sight is nothing short of spectacular, blowing huge plumes of spray as they seek to replenish sorely depleted oxygen reserves. These brutes average 40-45 feet in length and are the largest toothed-whales in the world. The deep waters of Kaikoura are not always tame, either. These are active, deep Pacific waters with no reefs or shoals to tame the seas.

Three hours of driving and we had arrived. Kaikoura would be right at home as a one-horse town somewhere in Wyoming. Not much to look at, one road through town to the rest of civilization and one angry, roaring ocean just off the right shoulder. We hadn't noticed the storm clouds getting thicker the closer we drew to our destination. Unlucky us, they came together with a vengeance right off the coast but having come all this way we refused to let the weather tell us our tour was in jeopardy.

The sign in the window of the tour offices did that instead. All whales had either gone deep or further out to sea to escape the boiling cauldron nearer to shore. With up to a 10-foot chop at the surface there was nothing to see and nothing worth the risk in trying. Sorry, thanks, come back another day. As with most tourists there wasn't "another day" built in to our timeline. Asking about other activities in the area we were advised of a seal colony a few miles south where one lone seal steadfastly snoozed on the rocks while the others also absconded to better climes and locales.

Three hours' drive and some eight thousand miles from home for one stinkin' seal? Nice!

Gotta go.

Not Enough Land...

"So, Ma," I asked. "What do you think of Hawaii?" It was 2005 and we had arrived only the day before for an unplanned stop over on the way back from Japan. There was some time left in our vacation with my aunt and cousin so the three of us decided to visit Hawaii for one last hurrah before heading home. The aunt and cousin had never been to Hawaii before, indeed, they'd never been to any of the places we visited on this trip, and Mom had not returned to the 50th state in over 30 years so we figured why not? Today found us on the North Shore facing the massive expanse of the Central Pacific from a high overview.

"Not enough land for all that water" was her now famous reply. Charged with a heady mixture of absolute fear of open water along with memories of the tsunami reports coming from Bali in 2004 Mom saw very little in the way of scenic beauty. While not visibly shaking in her shoes she gamely went along with us for the ride around the island fighting to keep an eye on the road and the water at the same time.

We weren't there in time for the famous "Big Wave" season when surfers the world over arrive to tackle seasonal waves coming from as far as Japan and culminating in monster waves up to 20 or more feet high. That was a good thing if for no other reason than traffic was non-existent, no more than the usual island trade plus a few other curious tourists who chose to venture beyond the pineapple plantations in the center of the island. For me it was a first because I had never completely circumnavigated an entire island before and it gave me a first real perspective on the size of Oahu, 2nd largest in the chain, compared to the largest body of water on the planet. Maybe Mom was stating the truth after all.

We chose a random beach to pull over and get out of the car for a little while where three of us lit out for the water as soon as we could get our shoes off. There was no tide, the surf almost non-existent - for that side of Hawaii, anyway - and the air and water cool, blue and inviting. My aunt could barely contain her glee as she hopped in and out of the water, recalling one good story after another of her days as a young girl in South America. My cousin was pleased to simply stroll in the waves as they lapped over the sands while I made as big a splash as someone my size would be expected to make. That's when the screaming started.

"Come out of that water!" Over and over again Mother implored us all to leave the waves which in her opinion were far too high and strong. "You gonna get pulled out to sea! Y'all get outta the water!" One wave had indeed snuck up behind auntie and flattened her on the beach. When she reappeared in the froth, hair all off on one side, salt and sand in everything else, she was howling with laughter, free of the cares of the world once more.

"I give up," Mom declared. "Y'all drown if you want to, I can't watch. I'm going to the car." One and all made it home just fine.

Gotta go.

Gas-O-Sene

Airlines live by the economics of unit costs per mile. Using that formula I just filled my car at $3.35 a gallon here in the great but not always cheap state of Texas. A 16-gallon fill-up sets me back right at $54 for regular unleaded. My car's mileage over the course of a week of commuting to work and one or two trips for groceries and essentials is about 350 miles. That is right at 22 miles to the gallon over both highway and city mileage. If it were all highway I can add at least another 60 miles to that total before having to pull up again. An entire year of fuel burn, if I drove the same every week, including vacations, would be 832 gallons at an expense of $2800 for 18,200 miles. In airline breakdown that is 6.5 cents per mile with no change in the price of gas or the mileage driven. Doesn't sound so bad but how does that compare to flying?

This month Qantas will launch direct service from my home town of Dallas/Ft. Worth to Australia, featuring nonstop service to Brisbane with return nonstop service from Sydney. The smallest plane in their fleet that can handle the route is the 747-400ER which is no small bird to begin with. The A380 is too big, there aren't enough of them yet and the ones they have are suffering persistent teething problems with engines and fuel pumps. The new 787 would be perfect to start out but oops, those aren't delivered yet or ready to fly at this writing. The 747 it is and here are a few numbers to toss around for just this one flight that will operate only four days a week.

The -400 version has been around since 1989. It expanded upon the original -100 model to the tune of an additional 2300 miles in range (think of flying 11 hours from Athens to New York and then keep going another six hours to California without stopping). It ships 15,000 more gallons of fuel per flight in order to make that added flying possible and weighs 140,000 pounds more than the first one did for Pan Am back in 1970.

Did I say 15,000 more gallons? Yes, for a total of 63,700 gallons fully loaded for just one flight. And you can bet this flight will have a full load of fuel almost regardless of how many passengers are on board. That kind of fuel would need 76 years to burn for just me and my car but that's not a fair comparison. Spreading that fuel load over 450 passengers and you're talking 145 gallons per person to fly all the way to Australia. At 22 miles per gallon in my car that isn't even half the distance of getting there if driving to Brisbane were even possible!

There are millions of cars in the United States alone much less around the rest of the world. My car seats five but carries only me 95% of the time. Boeing 747s rarely operate with only one paying customer on board though it has happened. As of March 11th, the IATA website indicates the price of jet fuel ran at $3.15 per gallon, 20 cents off of what I paid. At that price Qantas has to shell out over $200,000 per flight for the new service from Dallas, the kind of money that would again take me over 70 years to spend if the price held steady that long. Spread it over 450 paying customers, though, and the cost is $445 per person, each way, about the same as it costs me to drive my car for two months.

I just looked at Qantas' website where the cheapest roundtrip ticket between Dallas and Brisbane is, wait for it, $988 round trip. That's hardly $100 over the total cost of fuel at the IATA price and does not necessarily include surcharges, airport or security fees much less the price of labor for the pilots and flight attendants or even the food. Yes, for 17 hours in the air they do feed you.

Just like you I don't like to pay any more than I have to for gas or the cost of a plane ticket. At the same time it is a bit more understandable when they say "seats are limited."

Gotta go.

Appomattox, Look Away

On the way to Appomattox General Lee's forces were engaged once again by Major General Philip Sheridan at Sayler's Creek who had deviled him previously at the Battle of Five Forks. Lee was racing to Appomattox to catch up with a supply train after abandoning Richmond and Petersburg a few days earlier. This action along with a delay at Amelia Court House hoping to be resupplied there gave the Union time enough to reach the supply train ahead of Lee and lie in wait for his arrival. It was April of 1865.

For me it was December of 2011 and I was winding up a lengthy tour of the United States immediately after the attacks on September 11th in an attempt to determine what the next phase of my life would be. I knew I would not go back to the industry that had just cast me aside but after over two decades in the field I needed to figure out what transferable skills I had and where they might fit in to the new United States labor market. And who knew what that market was going to look like? How fitting to wind up at Appomattox Court House where the United States may have been preserved but it was surely quite different from the nation it had been or set out to be.

General Lee was in the last desperate throws of trying to preserve the Confederate States of America, he of West Point vintage but Virginia birth and loyalty. After a ten month siege at Petersburg he had been forced to abandon his erstwhile capital at Richmond and decided to head west in an attempt to regroup with the Army of Tennessee. Union forces dogged his retreat and preceded him to Appomattox Court House where a supply train waiting for him had been captured. Seeing no way out, General Lee fought one of the last battles of the war in the vicinity on April 9, 1865. As an astonishing courtesy at the end of the battle, Grant allowed Lee to choose the location of his surrender, Appomattox Court House.

Specifically, the place chosen was brick home of Wilmer McLean who had moved to the area to get away from the war! Appomattox then was like any highway town one might find today, there mainly as a county seat but specifically to serve travelers on the road to somewhere else, in this case the trade between Richmond and Lynchburg. It is preserved virtually intact today as it was nearly 150 years ago, farm houses, cross fencing, the court house and a general store. In this building there is such and such, in that building over there one can find so on and so forth while in that field over there is where this, that and the other took place, etc.

It was too neatly preserved. Almost like an over-manicured battlefield Appomattox Court House was so well preserved as to almost be more of what to expect at a Disney resort. I did not expect to see field hospitals tending the wounded or the pall of cordite smoke and decay in the air, nor did I anticipate damaged buildings unsafe to enter. I was one of maybe six people not counting the national park staff there to run the place that day. No screaming kids, thank the heavens, but too quiet and ghostly for the significance of the event that took place here. The air was crisp, the skies above bright blue and the rest of the world nearby went blithely about its business, almost wanting to forget anything happened here at all.

Only Lee's army surrendered that day. Almost 200,000 Confederate men at arms remained in the field but the final campaigns soon played out, the last major battle occurring in May. At least, the last major battle of the killing fields.

Gotta go.

Away to Appomattox

The last leg of the trip around America was at hand. Since being furloughed immediately following the attacks on September 11th I'd sought to find myself and my future through a journey across the country, literally and figuratively putting as much distance as possible between myself and my former life and career. Some said it was wasteful not to immediately look for work, I felt there was no real work to be had in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy; the layoffs had only just begun everywhere you looked.

After meaningful and significant stops in the Rockies, Texas, Florida and Georgia I found myself in Wilmington, North Carolina at the beginning of Interstate Highway "I-40" heading northwest towards Virginia by way of Goldsboro and Raleigh where old friends lived. There had been many opportunities to visit friends and family in Dallas, Oklahoma City, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta and Wilmington on this trip of rediscovery. My oldest friend from Junior High lives in the Raleigh area and has always been a rock of stability in the chaos of my own life. We all should have at least one friend of many years that keeps us grounded whenever there is an opportunity to spin out of control. His son, my godson, lives nearby in Goldsboro, allowing both to serve as a good, loving one-two gut check on the things that really matter.

The trip provided a not entirely planned but satisfyingly balanced cross section of American history and achievement. Pioneering the western frontier through Wyoming and South Dakota, musical history via Lubbock and space technology at Cape Canaveral in Florida. There was American Civil War history at Andersonville in Georgia so now, on the final leg towards home in Maryland, it was time for one more call to a Civil War landmark destination deep in the heart of Ol' Virginny.

By early April of 1865 the City of Richmond, capital of the Confederate States of America, was a lost cause. The Army of the Potomac under Ulysses S. Grant had crossed the James River the previous summer and finally broken through Robert E. Lee's lines after ten months at the Siege of Petersburg to force a Confederate retreat from the area. Lee headed west to regroup and resupply at Amelia Courthouse from where he planned to move farther west to reunite with the Army of Tennessee. At Amelia, however, there were no supplies and a full day's marching was lost in scouting the area. This delay gave the pursuing Union forces an opportunity to catch up and disrupt Lee's plans.

Even today if any American is asked about Appomattox Court House they might be able to say it was where Lee surrendered but they would know very little else about the place. Certainly I was one of those Americans as I moved north from the Carolinas in to southern Virginia towards a town that remains next to nothing in the middle of nowhere to this day. Lynchburg, home of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, is the closest major city at the junction of US Highways 29 and 460. Interesting.

I followed US #460 west from I-95 at Petersburg, probably the same route Lee had taken in at least a few places, past towns such as Farmville and Pamplin City towards history. A supply train waited for General Lee at Appomattox, his last hope to pull off his plan. Grant was there, too, by the time he arrived.

Gotta go.

Mileage Milestones

What is it about our cars that cause us to take interest in the odometer reading? Whether the car is used or new I surely am not alone in being fascinated when the "clock" turns over every 1,000 miles. The paradox in seeing the range of numbers turn over, of course, is that each mile depreciates our prized possession that further while marking some minor sense of achievement in the distance personally traveled. Too bad much of that mileage is centered upon the commute to work and trips to the grocery store. Purchased or leased, a new car, new smells and all, represents virgin mileage. Nobody else has driven the vehicle and it almost encourages the new owner not to put too many "clicks" on the meter, this to try and preserve as much of the newness of the vehicle as possible. That first turnover, at 100 miles, usually eases the inevitable, that the car/truck/bike was bought to be driven - there was no turning back. Not legally, anyway. With a used car the thrill, if any, lies merely in the purchase for we all know this horse has been ridden before and whatever personality it contains it is ours to learn and adapt to. How many times has the car passed some milestone that you had previously marked in your mind to observe and then missed it by a mile? Here comes the next, "000" in the series and you want to watch the mileage turn over. Then, either forgotten or distracted, you look down and the odometer says "001." Argh! After retracing that mile back up the road in your mind you remember where you were when the event most likely occurred: either traveling at speed and unable to take your eyes off the road or just pulling out of the gas station and several blocks down the road before remembering. Or something to that effect. Oh but the worst ones are still to come. All kinds of numbers can come in to play: the birthday, a zip code or the miles that correspond to the month, day and year. There's nothing now to do except wait for the next occasion to pop up, in another 1,000 miles. Try something like when the odometer is only a few miles short of 333, 3333 or even 33,333. There is no next thousand miles for that number to come around again, it's gone. There is only another 11,111 miles to go until 44,444 pops up on the odometer and you are hopefully there to see it. A little over 11,000 miles? That's anywhere from nine months to at least a solid year of driving to get to and get through, but most definitely you will do your best to remember that next one. My car just went through 111,111 miles on the clock and I was there to see it. I was driving at high speed at the time, though, so I couldn't take a picture of the moment but I do remember it and where I was...on my way to work! I bought mine used so not all of those miles are mine but indeed I enjoyed being able to mark that milestone. I'm not entirely sure I will have that car when it reaches 222,222! Gotta go.

Bussing

For much of my life riding a bus meant either a road tour across some stretch of Europe or "goin' down Grandma's" to visit family in Virginia. It was a particular thrill as a child to ride on one of the biggest things on the road with those narrow but interestingly patterned seats and the scented interiors of the buses. The windows were huge and the scenery ever changing, from towns and cities, to hills and mountains with the occasional lake or river thrown in for good measure. It was exciting beyond measure to "race" a train that happened to be thundering alongside in the same direction. As a child there was no stigma attached to riding the bus. I was too young to worry about the collected mix of passengers on any given trip. As at least some of the trip was at night it was my job to sleep as best I could, anyway, and not worry about whoever else might be on board. Mom and Dad paid the fares so all I had to do was stay close by, stay on board and stay out of trouble. Easy enough. On a bus there was a whole aisle to wander if I got bored or annoyed with my younger sister as opposed to being trapped in the back seat of the car for hours on end. As best I can recall I was well-enough behaved to not be a nuisance to my fellow travelers and certainly no one to my recollection made any untoward advances in my direction. For many today the blue and silver silhouette of Greyhound is the only bus line they have ever known. There once was a time when the red liners of (Continental) Trailways competed for fares across the nation's expanding network of interstate and national highways. We typically rode with Greyhound as they had a stronger presence along the east coast but even at a young age I remember a distinct difference in their service. For some reason I felt the Greyhound's were faster but the Trailways coaches were larger, cleaner and more powerful thanks to many of them having manual transmissions as opposed to Greyhound's preference for automatics. Trailways is gone, having been absorbed by Greyhound who now faces a crazy quilt world of competitors from surviving Trailways franchises as well as the likes of Peter Pan and Coach USA for scheduled and chartered service across the country. I've been driving for thirty years now and enjoy the freedom of long drives up to 10 hours in any one direction. Going "down home" now is a three-hour flight back to the Maryland/Virginia area followed by up to a five hour drive in to the country to Gramma's. That in itself is a long day but put all of that in terms of a Greyhound schedule? One day, five hours and 10 minutes, according to their website with one transfer in Atlanta for a web fare of $167.56 up to the fully refundable fare of $208 one way. Oh, and that includes 16 stops between Dallas and Atlanta where the bus arrives at 3:30 in the morning before waiting an hour to catch the 2nd bus with nine more stops to my Grandmother's home town. Come on along! Gotta go.

15 for 15

Blogs were started so ordinary people could voice their opinions, share their stories or whatever without having to work for major media and be credentialed just to say what's on their mind. This is a good thing. It allows us to accept or reject the information presented to us in an equally powerful way. Take for example yet another interesting article on CNN.Com about the 15 places in the United States that young Americans should see before the age of 15.

Included in that list was a lot of colonial history, including Boston's Freedom Trail, Williamsburg, Independence Hall in Philadelphia and of course Washington, DC. It also came with strange things like Disneyworld. Really? A theme park? Some responders to the article decried popular favorites in their parts of the country while other, more altruistic replies included suggestions to visit any country in the Caribbean or Central America far less well off than our own. He did have a point....over-stimulated and under-motivated American teens loaded with cash and gadgets actually being told to discover America at Disneyworld!

The beauty of the blog is not necessarily having to submit to committee and then debate for hours the relevant content or, in this case, the list of things the idle youth should see before real cynicism sets in. In my list I have been to 11 of the 15, some as early as Age 5 and others as recently as last year. To keep things simple I will offer more on the reason for going than simply listing the obvious and/or endless attractions associated with the destination itself.
Consider:

1. Grand Canyon - One of many ways the sheer power of nature and time combine in to something so spectacular. Want to be alone and experience something greater than the self? Go to the canyon.
2. Washington DC - Like Muslims to Mecca every American of means should see the nation's capitol. Not even so much for the museums. If we're talking about 15 year olds what teenager wouldn't love to toss a football on the Mall or just lay out and snooze the day away in the heart of the city.
3. New York City - Challenge any teenager in the one city that truly says if you can make it here then you can make it anywhere. Find out what they're made of from Harlem to Hell's Kitchen.
4. A Southern Plantation - CNN suggested Monticello but there the focus is more on Jefferson. Pick any plantation in the south to feel the brutal heat and the sting of mosquitoes while laboring six days a week over cotton, tobacco and other cash crops.
5. Pearl Harbor - Where a superpower was born thanks to impossible odds and unbelievable logistics. No teenager will turn down a day at the beach, either.
6. Mt Rushmore/Crazy Horse - This is a place of ultimate irony, where the teenager can begin to understand the pride of a nation while coming face to face with the death of another.
7. Buffalo/Niagara Falls - Wings, working folks and water, lots of water. But also another key station in human migration across the home of the free. The Underground Railroad went through here.
8. San Francisco - No city blends nature, brass and bohemia like San Francisco. Whatever community your teenager feels outcast from every cast-off and outcast in society has its own neighborhood, carved with fierce pride from the hills of the bay.
9. Cape Canaveral - Teen boys and girls can marvel and the wonders of space exploration and feel a chest-thumping pride at the sight of a major launch. What better place to reach for the stars than the hub of celestial activity?
10. Austin/San Antonio - The beating heart of one state among 50 that was once its own country and, according to legend and true believers retains the option to one day be a country again.
11. St. Louis - What teenager will believe the United States' western border was once this city in the center of the country? What better place to prove it than the Show-Me State under the Gateway Arch?
12. Denver/Colorado Springs - After the frontier town of St. Louis the teenager might truly begin to develop a sense of the resolve of his ancestors in climbing over the Rockies to continue westward towards the ocean. And some will really get a kick out of the Air Force Academy and the headquarters of the US Olympic Committee here as well.
13. Anchorage/Mt. McKinley/Denali - Nature at its frozen best with nowhere near the crowds of the Grand Canyon and just as majestic. A few good moose for good measure, too.
14. Boston - Boston politics is as rebellious and contrary today as it was when the original tea party took place. And the sports are as partisan as the politics. Any sharp-tongued teenager will feel right at home in Beantown and see more than a few good colleges to think about as well.
15. Any rural farming community - It is debatable if America's poor are still better off than those in Haiti or El Salvador but one good trip to the Gulf Coast will show any beating heart that charity can and does begin at home.

Gotta go.

Music for Motoring

Few things match the open road with the top down and the radio blasting in the front seat. The car and the AM radio is one of the most storied pairings of modern technology, forever immortalized in films such as "American Graffiti." If you didn't have a Thunderbird or at least even know Suzanne Summers you still wanted the experience of the wind in the hair and the Beach Boys singing the praises of California girls, right?

Not always. But the endless highways and ever changing scenery of America or any picturesque part of the world such as this pass in New Zealand pictured here have always been irresistible to millions of car and driving enthusiasts, myself included. I remember my first cross-country trip in a blue Pontiac my parents had given me during my sophomore year at college. I drove from Baltimore to Dallas by way of Atlanta which was two days of torture because the speed limit was still set at 55 MPH and this old Pontiac only had an AM radio. Between traffic, watching for cops and constantly fidgeting with the dial to find any listenable station I somehow survived the trip with an overnight stop in - wait for it - Meridian, Mississippi. Sigh.

Good music was not only a requirement to help pass the miles but that certain types of music had to match specific moods, the time of day and the surrounding scenery. Classical in the morning along the coast can be a good and relaxing thing but after dark in the desert following eight hours of driving, not so much. Still, the limited range of most stations required channel surfing roughly every two hours even for the more powerful signals. It was always amusing and frustrating to be tuned in to 103.7 and then without even changing the dial a country crooner would suddenly pop up, grieving the death of his dog over a longneck beer where Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes had been lamenting their women not knowing them by now!

XM Radio went a long way in guaranteeing never ending streams of clear sounding music that would play all the way across the country, a huge step-up from local programming and without commercials. Even for the most die-hard "Office Lite" fan, though, there has to be a change in flavor every now and then. Moreover, as much as I wanted steady listening I wasn't about to pay a subscription for something I used to and still could get for free. I could always bring my own.

My cars over the years have featured 8-tracks to cassettes and then CDs. Through the 90s and the turn of the century I would have a box of my favorite CDs in the passenger seat next to me and boast of my skill at changing out discs by feel without taking my eyes off the road. Still, this practice was dangerous and cumbersome, exposing myself and other motorists to accidents and my collection of music to theft. Something, anything, needed to come along that would make driving easier.

Like others with a huge collection of CDs I resisted the iPod as long as I could. I'm rarely one to jump on a fad right from the beginning, not buying my first iPod until 2008. Sifting through the accessories I found what I was looking for...a cassette adaptor that would let me enjoy my playlists through the car stereo. At last! Personally crafted music exactly suited to my tastes from my own collection and in the listening order I desire. Skipping a song or changing an entire playlist meant simply thumbing the flywheel. The "Shuffle" feature makes it even easier. Today the only reason not to have good music is simply whether or not I want to hear any at all.

Now if only I could afford a late model car that comes with a docking station so I could get rid of that high pitched feedback whining through the adaptor thingy!

Gotta go.

Andersonville Revisited

No amount of historical markers can truly paint the picture of the horror that took place at Camp Sumter near Andersonville, Georgia. The Andersonville National Historic Site that I was visiting this day as part of a national tour around the country following the events of September 11, 2001 preserves an oxymoronic institution, a concentration camp in the United States of America. This is one of the largest and oldest in the country, operating from February of 1864 through to the end of the war in April of the following year. Both sides in the War Between The States were guilty of inhumane conditions as the war dragged on, certainly by the latter stages of the contest. Particularly in the south food and weapons for the front lines were hard to come by leaving even less for the care of POWs at places like Andersonville.

In a war no one expected to last all that long prison camps seemed initially to be an afterthought. Both sides figured they would fight a few skirmishes then life would get back to what each considered normal with everyone home in time for dinner. Didn't happen that way. And POW camps no one had a master plan for sprang up and, despite the best of intentions, broke down rapidly and appallingly. Early exchanges of prisoners fell apart over levels of authority and particularly over the status of Black soldiers, former slaves, that were captured in the south. It is not hard to imagine what the Confederacy wanted which in no way matched the Union desire to treat White and Black with no distinction. "Negros belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange," was General Lee's reply.

As bad as the outside forces were there was a unique troop at the camp known as the Andersonville Raiders. These were fellow inmates who bullied and killed other prisoners for the sake of food, tradable goods and other comforts before they were caught by an opposing group called "the Regulators" who sought justice such as it was available. Six of the Raiders were hanged for their crimes in a mock court of their peers while their captors looked on. Politics on both sides through intractable demands and poverty throughout the Confederacy combined to make conditions worse by the day and fueled a growing resentment up North towards the people of Dixie.

In a camp built for 10,000 there were three times that many enlisted men here after hardly eight months of operations. The cemetery to the north of the camp holds the remains of its victims, nearly 13,000 people, over 900 of those unknown. The six Raiders are here, too, though buried some distance away from the honorable dead. Of particular note to me are the markers of "USCT" troops buried here. "USCT" stands for United States Colored Trooper, a man on one side, returned property on the other. How they must have been treated by the guards.

Andersonville is yet another part of the Civil War that most in this country simply prefer to avoid discussing. The battlefields draw millions as do the museums but few travel to a place the combatants themselves located well off the beaten path even then. The history of the Civil War prison camp includes over 150 such camps, some probably worse than Andersonville, some with familiar names like Belle Isle in Richmond or Rock Island, Illinois, even Ft. McHenry in Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner! Ft. Delaware, a union camp outside of Wilmington and Elmira, New York are both said to have rivaled Andersonville in nearly every respect except scale. Elmira charged 15-cent admission just to watch the prisoners mill around.

I joined the line of cars on I-75 north to Atlanta. Some of my fellow motorists might have been interested in the events that occurred less than 20 miles off the highway. Others roared past in a hurry no doubt to no place really that important. If asked they surely would have said "Such things simply could not have happened here."

Gotta go.

Passing Through Plains

Plains, Georgia just happened to be near my real destination as I drove north in to Georgia from Central Florida. I'd just witnessed a shuttle launch for the first and probably only time of my life and, imbued with a new found spirit following the recent events of September 11th, was back on my journey of discovery, finding my future through the history of this great nation called America. I never bothered to clock the miles I'd driven since leaving Chicago and swinging through the upper Rockies and Texas before stopping last in Florida. That might have been an interesting number to track but I just wanted to get away with no rules or requirements. After Mt. Rushmore and the plains of Texas I was now zeroing in on the headquarters of the Peanut Campaign.

Jimmy Carter came literally out of nowhere from this small farming town in Southwestern Georgia. He demonstrated an early temerity to defy the Washington establishment by running his campaign from a railway station that ran through the town known previously for its cotton and peanut farms. After his one arguably disastrous administration he retreated to the area with his entourage including Rosalynn, arguably the most gracious First Lady in contemporary history, his mother Miss Lillian and good ol' boy brother Billy. He and Rosalynn still call the area home where he teaches Sunday School at a local church whenever he's not rescuing hapless Americans from Korea in his capacity as elder statesman and Most Congenial ex-President of the United States.

It was unnerving to roll through acres of cotton still on the stalk waiting to be picked. I didn't want to think about who actually did this backbreaking and historically cruel and menial labor today. I didn't see any peanuts and wasn't looking for any, either. Carter's compound off of Church Street is well protected by trees and fencing, leaving very little of the main house to see from the road and, after a stop at the town cemetery to see Miss Lillian and Billy, pretty felt the tour of Plains was wrapped up. I remember as a teenage in 1977 that something about Mr. Carter didn't settle with me, the first stirrings of political activism. I just didn't like the guy and didn't really know why. After four years in the White House I was able to more clearly articulate why my first gut instincts were right. Time to leave.

On the same side of I-75 running north between Tampa and Atlanta, on the west side about 20-25 miles off the interstate and just north of Americus, the next biggest town to Plains is Andersonville. What? Where?

As a child of the military fortunate enough to live overseas I was well acquainted with the concentration camp history of the second world war. It wasn't until later that I discovered the concentration camp went back in American history to the Civil War and on both sides. Of these camps Andersonville has been acknowledged as the absolute worst of them all. No wonder few people hear of it today or stop to visit at least while on the way to somewhere else. Since we don't openly discuss the Civil War in polite conversation today it remains all too easy to dismiss, deny and diminish such atrocities on our own shores.

It is better not to talk about it people say. Which is exactly why I decided to come and see for myself.

Gotta go.

Endeavour Launching

December 5, 2001. I had timed my visit to Florida specifically around the launch (watch the video!) of Mission "STS-108" using Shuttle "Endeavour" to take place Wednesday afternoon in the fall of 2001. I am old enough to remember the Apollo Program as well as witness the Challenger disaster some 15 years prior. Now I found myself searching up and down the coast near Cape Canaveral for a free but convenient spot to watch the launch. Invited guests only were allowed near the launch pad while those willing to pay a nominal fee could be just outside the gates of the complex on the mainland. I and other "freeloaders" were to choose from any vantage point at least five miles away that allowed roadside parking for the occasion.

The spot I ended up with was at least seven miles away near Titusville and despite assurances from veteran observers I wasn't all that sure that I'd be able to see much of anything at all. "Just look for the sudden sheer quiet in the air followed immediately by an orange glow in the low eastern horizon just above the tree line" they said. Fine. I didn't have much choice in the matter and settled in for the wait with the rest of them. The skies were cloudy and there was a slight chill in the air but all notices and indicators were that the launch, already delayed from the day before would go today.

Big problem with space launches, the weather. Safety first, above all other considerations as the Challenger reminds and resonates in clear, unforgiving fashion. At the same time it can play havoc with the vacation plans of the visitors, particularly those that drive or fly in from the far corners and are on a set schedule. I had no such time constraint but all the same we had been warned that after yesterday's delay if the shuttle did not launch this afternoon for any reason it would be at least a week before another attempt was made.

The wind had picked up to go with the overcast skies adding further worries that one and all at the Kennedy Space Center, Mission Control in Houston and here on the streets of Titusville would be disappointed yet again. It had been moved back from late November for some maintenance issues at the International Space Station then delayed again from the day before due to weather. This mission was only a supply and maintenance run to the "ISS" so other than the launch itself there was really very little fanfare around the event.

Five P.M. and all systems are go. Someone nearby with a short-wave radio is tuned in to the commentary and lets us all know on the street that we're about to get a show to end all shows. Like the ball over Times Square this countdown got everyone on their feet and calling out the numbers. "Ten, night, eight..." until exactly at 5:12PM Eastern Time there was a sudden and total quiet in the air. All noise had been sucked from the atmosphere when a bright yellow flash lit up the eastern horizon. Gray clouds over head crowned an orange glow as darker brown clouds bowled out around the orange center than elongated in to a massive tail of fire.

We still could hear nothing from the launch itself and it had little to do with our own shouts and screams of "Wahooooo" and "Go, baby, GO!" One and all were emotionally connected to this machine soaring beautifully skyward, goose bumps and chills to our very core. Some hopped up and down, some covered their ears but never broke their gaze and still others high-fived and clapped each other on the back as if they themselves had put something other than tax dollars in to this mission.

Some of us cried. Heck, a LOT of us cried. We remembered the Challenger Incident. We remained deeply wounded and shaken from the attacks on September 11th, hardly three months before. Today the excitement of the launch and the release of energy, both human and machine, proved overwhelming. Each of us in tears for various reasons looked to the skies as the orange tail flew higher in to the sky leaving a dark rooster tail of smoke from ground level up to the highest atmosphere. This time the tears for some may have been left over but for others they were tears of joy, of cleansing and acceptance. The US of A was going to be OK and damned if this launch wasn't just the thing, JUST the thing to prove it.

Finally the noise from the engines reached our chests more than our ears. As the shock waves of sound pounded in to our sternums and crackled like unimaginable thunder, "Endeavour," operating STS-108 proved to be more than just an ordinary launch after all. Far more.

Gotta go.

The Space Dream

The drive between Dallas and Tampa is on the lines of about 17 hours, just the driving. I'd made the haul before but this time was not trying to set or match any personal records so I pulled up outside of Tallahassee for the night before stop #1 in the Tampa area to visit friends from high school that had settled in the area. After a few days there it was on to the Orlando area to spend time with more friends from high school that had moved to that part of the country. I had been on the road for about three weeks at this point, two of them in Dallas and all not too long after being furloughed following the September 11th attacks of 2001.

While in Dallas I knew I would be traveling to Florida to visit friends but another thought came in to my mind, something that I had never done or seen before. I'm old enough to remember watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon during the summer of my 2nd grade year of elementary school. There was nothing so powerful as to watch the Saturn V rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, as tall as a football field is long with five enormous engines lifting the beast in to space with no small amount of noise, smoke, flames and chest thumping pride. This while watching from a living room on maybe a 12" or 15" screen in scratchy but still new "living color" thanks to NBC.

The Saturn V program continued for only a few more years after that with nothing nearly as spectacular planned in the years immediately following. There was one reprise launch in the mid-70s thanks to the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission at the height of the Cold War. All that space muscle for the sake of a handshake over the Atlantic ocean but certainly the theatrics of the launches were worth every gallon of detente rocket fuel. By the time of the Space Shuttle in the spring of my senior year at high school I and most of the rest of the nation weren't sure there was a need to go back to space. If all they were ever going to do was orbit the Earth and visit a space station I certainly felt it couldn't be as breathtaking an experience as the Saturn V (watch video) launches to the moon.

Fifteen years later the Challenger accident was still on my mind and the minds of others. There was national pride at stake as well as honoring the memory of the Challenger victims by continuing the work they sacrificed their lives to forward. There was a space program active in my adult lifetime and I had the time available to actually go and see one 32 years after Kennedy's Dream came true. I fired up an online search for some information and found what I was looking for - I was going to Cape Canaveral to witness a shuttle launch for the first time in my life.

Gotta go.

Lubbock to Dallas

Driving in Texas can leave a person a lot of time to think. Despite myths and stereotypes classifying everything as dusty and flat the landscape is actually quite diverse, from the forests and lakes of the east to the mountains of Big Bend and the rolling hill country of the central part of the state there is more to the roadside scenery of Texas than tumbleweeds, scrubland and snakes. Except for the part that I was presently driving it, of course!

Having paid about 30 minutes of respects at the graveside of one Buddy Holly in Lubbock, Texas the fastest way out of town to my next destination, Dallas, was US Highway #84 to Sweetwater and from there on Interstate #20 straight in past Abilene and around Ft. Worth. Once in Dallas I was planning a couple of weeks visiting with various friends in the area that I missed greatly since moving away in 1994 to further my career with my then employer. That employer furloughed me and 20,000 other staff less than a month after September 11th which is how I found myself on this journey of purging and self-discovery in the middle of the United States Southwest region.

This was also one of many long stretches between destinations with either little to see in between or little time to really stop and smell the roses as much as I may have liked. Even though I was laid off and had all the time in the world it was not a deliberate goal to spend every waking moment and dollar of my severance to turn every rock in the road for some iota of great revelation. I wanted to spend time in Dallas so down #84 I rode.

I felt the awe of nature at Devil's Tower, a spiritual uplifting at Mt Rushmore and a sense of the old west survivor's fortitude while driving through the plains of Nebraska and eastern Colorado towards Lubbock. This panhandle city of Texas was little more than a rest stop where I wasn't expecting to find much beyond a hotel room and a grave marker but I found a small legacy in that cemetery. Buddy Holly may not be an alpha god in the pantheon of musical art and artistry but he has never lacked for his share of fans and pilgrims since the day the music died.

The sun can set very fast in west Texas though the trip itself was only one third of the way through. Dallas was certainly not going to reveal much to me since I had lived here for many years before moving away. Maybe a few more suburbs and shopping malls but the core of the city was right where I'd left it. This stopover was simply about being off the road for a little while, resting and reconnecting with good friends before pressing on again to Florida. I made it in safely, enjoyed seeing my friends who allowed me to cook for them a few nights in exchange for a bed and hot shower.

Following my time in North Texas it was on through the bayous of Louisiana and the gulf coasts of Mississippi and Alabama before arriving in Central Florida for a one of a kind event that brought every pent up tear pouring from my eyes.

Gotta go.

Long Way to Lubbock

Dumas, Texas! Buggy had been rolling an easy eight hours by the time I crossed the Texas state line on US Highway 385, right at the top of the famous “Panhandle” of the Lone Star State. This was the first time for me in this corner of Texas where #385 shared the road with #287, a highway more familiar to me and ran directly in to Amarillo where I would catch Interstate I-27 to Lubbock for some well deserved rest on my journey of rediscovery. Dumas wasn’t much larger than Stratford or Cactus, Texas, two towns I also had to pass through on my way south.

Pronounced “DOO-mus,” it was the third in line and the one where the local sherriff’s department was doing a fine, fantastic job of keeping the small-town po-po reputation intact. I and several others were pulled over for being exactly two miles over the posted limit. A fine howdy do and a warning later, Buggy and I rolled on down the highway to Lubbock.

There was no indication that I would discover anything significant in Lubbock other than the grave of Buddy Holly. It was a convenient stop on the road after visiting Mt. Rushmore only that morning. Both car and driver were on fumes when we finally pulled in to a hotel just north of town for the night. Dallas was my true destination after the Black Hills of South Dakota but that drive was too far for one man alone to make. In Lubbock there was Texas Tech University and the chance of a good steak; not much else after that so I thought.

Another half-day of hit-and-run touring the local area dawned after I checked out of my hotel, rested from one long drive but seven hours of asphalt lay ahead of me to get to Dallas. I woke up late and gave myself two hours in Lubbock to see what there was to see. It was a Sunday and since I’d already missed and had no plans on church, much of this lower plains town was closed for the day. No worries. I was looking for a graveyard and the tenants there certainly wouldn’t mind a visit from somebody.

Like something right out of a Randolph Scott film, typical towns in Texas have the main square with a courthouse in the middle of that and a grid of streets fanning out in all directions except one truncated arm where the cemetery lies. Lubbock lopsides just slightly to the west while on the east is, you got it, Eastlawn Memorial Garden also known as the City of Lubbock Cemetery.
No one was in the office to point the way in this fairly sizable resting place. Being used to fans visiting through the decades there were well placed signs that showed the way to Holly’s marker by the side of one of the roads near the front entrance. A simple flat marble marker with his name and a few lines of music identify the plot near a tree as the grave of Mr. Holly. Simple, dignified, not much to look at and perfectly fitting.

I knew the larger hits, “Peggy Sue,” “Oh Boy” and “That’ll Be the Day” but I cannot say that I ever lived and breathed for the sound of The Crickets. Lubbock was a rest stop on the way somewhere else and since I happened to be in town figured it worth an hour to stop and pay my respects at a place I might not otherwise have gone to deliberately. The surprise was that here, again, of all places, I found something else to carry with me on the road to rebuilding my life.

I found simple, uncomplicated peace.

Gotta go.

Never to Neverland

In the United States there are five main houses that pretty much everyone knows by name and location: The White House, the Biltmore, Graceland, Southfork and the exquisite Hearst Castle. Then there is Neverland Ranch. It is not famous at all for the main house which was hardly more than a typical ranch home like others in the area and rarely seen. Neverland Ranch, the former home of the late Michael Jackson, was more about the collection of trains, rides, animals and other amusements strewn throughout the grounds to entertain Michael and the long list of famous and underprivileged visitors.

The infamous man-child entertainer had passed away some 18 months ago and hadn't lived on the property since 2005 after the fallout of the second child molestation case brought against him. The place was overrun immediately following the death of the superstar and there have been few serious efforts to sell the place since. It stood alone, quietly to itself among the other ranches and wineries in the area just north of Los Olivos one beautiful Saturday afternoon, the day I chose to finally go and see it for myself.

Leaving the hotel where I was staying on business in Woodland Hills the drive seemed no less shorter for starting in the San Fernando Valley. Heading west on US-101 I joined California #154 for the drive over the mountains in to the Santa Ynez valley about 30 minutes north of Santa Barbara. In this same area is the Dutch tourism village of Solvang but my radar was locked in on finding Figueroa Mountain Road leading to the mountain range on the north side of the valley. Five miles up and on the left was #5225, the former home of Michael Jackson, Neverland Ranch.

The gate was all anyone today can see. What must it have been like when Michael lived here, groupies at the gates hoping for a glimpse as the motorcade sailed past? The gilded lettering announcing "Neverland Ranch" is gone. All of the floral arrangements from mourners were gone but much of the small graffiti left on the low walls around the gate remained. I parked in a small bare patch on the opposite side of the road that clearly had seen much use and thankfully noted two other cars parked farther down - at least I wouldn't be the only fan making a pilgrimage. I shouldn't have worried. The seen-it-all guards at the security house on the other side of the gate never came outside to see what was going on.

I took pictures from every angle, through the bars, off to the side, up a slight hill and as deeply in to the grounds as my zoom lens would let me go as it followed the winding road about a mile in before the road disappeared to the left around a small hill towards the main areas. I read some of the graffiti from well wishers that had traveled from as far afield as Australia, Japan, and Italy to pay and leave their respects. In September Nancy from Germany wrote on this rock "You were the greatest entertainer of all time. I will always keep you in my heart. I will never forget you."

A young couple from Chicago drove up soon after I did and we took each other's picture by the gate. Most stunning of all, a family stopped by in a minivan and helped the elderly grandmother walk to the gate first, cane in one hand, determination on her face.

The security guards came out to talk to her but the gate remained closed. There is really nothing to see except, as if visiting some ancient ruin, where things used to be. The house is empty, the rides and animals long gone. All of it in fact, and Michael, too, is gone too soon.

Gotta go!

Clearing My Mind at Carhenge

Nebraska is big. It's not quite the size of Montana, Texas or Alaska but it is certainly no slouch in the wide open spaces department. Most people not from the area tend to think of Omaha or the state capital, Lincoln where the Cornhusker Nation lives and breathes. I had never been to the state before and this day found myself in the far northwestern corner rolling south in my buggy on US Highway 385 through Chadron. The Black Hills of South Dakota were behind me as was my visit to both Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument near Keystone with my next destination a solid ten hours of driving in front of me, Lubbock, Texas. HIghway 385 would take me straight to Amarillo and from there the rest of the way in on I-27 to the home of Buddy Holly.

The four presidents of Mt. Rushmore gave me inspiration during this toughest period of my life, having recently been furloughed shortly after the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001. Crazy Horse showed me the truest face of resolve and personal sacrifice against impossible odds. Before that I found reason to look to the heavens for guidance after spending a day at the Devil's Tower National Monument. Well, truth be told I was looking more to see if the Mother Ship from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" had actually been there or might one day actually pay a visit. After all that existential and spiritual musing the great plains of Western Nebraska worked their own special magic in helping me clear my mind for the drive ahead as well as the next round of ethereal events.

Neither prairie dog or buffalo made an appearance but I honestly felt it would have spoiled the truly unspoiled landscape all around me. If I had seen buffalo I would have wanted to see Kevin Costner and a tribe of Lakota Sioux pounding over the hills, guns, bows and arrows blazing and zinging through the air. The sky was royal blue, the long grass 24 karat gold and the air scented just slightly with natural pixie dust. There wasn't a soul around in the middle of the United States of America, something both rare to experience and worth every minute of preserving. When it did come, civilization came back in to focus in probably the quirkiest manner I'd yet come across.

Alliance, Nebraska is like any farming town, a gathering place for locals to do business when not tending the hundreds of square miles of the immediate area. Others in the area are either pure-dee-lost or on their way somewhere else, most likely Mt. Rushmore where I'd just come from. One farmer in the area like any typical farmer had a lot of junk cars and trucks on his property with no real purpose other than to rust back in to the ground and re-enrich the soil. Unlike any other farmer in the country, though, he drew inspiration from a famous international landmark in England and decided to recreate it as closely as possible with his collection of clunkers.

"Carhenge," just like the original Stonehenge, this one sits on the side of a two-lane road with little in the way of facilities or parking except this one is free of charge. Since I was the only one there none of those issues were a problem. I didn't have a lot of time to explore the homemade exhibit and there was zilch in the way of informational plaques and markers. Still, it was there, I felt quite confident I wouldn't be back anytime soon and it helped break up the long drive to Texas.

Mind cleared, somewhat, it was time to move on.

Gotta go.