5.26.2013

The Road I Remember

I drove back to Memphis in one shot. Not really a big deal since I drove down in one shot except for the fact that this time, I left on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. This means that for the entire seven hundred and fifty mile drive down I was never more than one car length away from another car. Not really my idea of the open road.

To top that all off I got a migraine aura, had to stop and dose up on fioricet and then drive the last four hours directly into the setting sun on the Westbound I-40 stuck in a traffic jam next to a Toby Keith tour truck, listening to the only CDs I had on hand: The Beach Boys Good Vibrations and a mix CD with mostly ABBA songs. I had no energy or coordination to find a radio station or song on my phone. I don't remember much about the ride home except asking a gas station attendant at a Love's Travel Stop if I could set up camp using some Love's napkins, styrofoam cup, and a plastic baggie, in a patch of grass near the gas pumps and live there until the end of my life.

And I remember a stop early on in the trip at the Fairmount Historical Museum. Fairmount Indiana is the "birthplace" of two great Jims: Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield and James Byron Dean, the creator of rebelliousness.

I was surprised at how much stuff they had. Little Jimmie Dean was quite the prolific doodler and writer and ribbon winner back in his youth.











The gift shop had a bunch of vintage Garfield postcards so I had to buy some to send to my sis in the 'ghan. Not because she LOVES Garfield but because I am always looking for new crap to send her. I am sure the street value of those postcards in Japan is quite high. 



The woman who rang me up asked me which route I was taking back and she told me a long story about her husband being a trucker and still had guided her on the wrong path - full of construction and traffic and that I really should go through Illinois and not down the 65 through Nashville. It was my Scooby-Doo moment and I didn't heed her warning (all because I had just seen James Deans moto boots). 

You should always, always listen to people in Fairmount, Indiana. 




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