The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 13. Garden City, Kansas to Canadian, Texas

Texas Plains

1.  Kansas

We were on the road again, headed south on U.S. 83 towards Dallas.  If I remember right, the day started off somewhat overcast, but the clouds burned off soon, leaving white wisps.  The only topography south of Garden City were some low, grass-covered dunes, but that didn't last long before everything was game-board flat.  From the air, it would look like a patchwork quilt made with scraps of different poke-a-dotted cloths pieced together.  This was due to the big, circular irrigation sprinklers that run off central pivots.  Of course, we didn't see anything from anywhere close to a bird's eye view, forever trapped on a two-dimensional plane.  I just use the metaphor (and the Google Earth image below) to get across how flat and unnatural the landscape was.  I could probably add boring as well, but I'm generally a boring person, and so I sort of liked it--at least for a while.

However, I didn't like it near as much as when I first moved to Texas with my parents when I was in 9th grade.  Then I was absolutely mesmerized by flat horizons.  Growing up in the Inter-mountain West, I had a false notion that earth always meets sky along a jagged edge.  That there are naturally flat places astounded me.  I was a smart kid, so it's not like I didn't already know that.  It's that I didn't know it where it counts--through the senses.  It's like right now: I know I would weigh less on the moon, but of course, I don't really know that because I have never felt it.  We never fully grasp something until we experience it first hand.  The abstract always remains just that, abstract, until we know it concretely.  I was floored the first time I knew flat.  What an amazing thing!--to go miles and barely change elevation--to change elevation so slowly, it is imperceptible.   I came from a world of constant up and down.

Our route through Texas when we moved to Dallas from Utah was along I-40 to Amarillo and then down U.S. 287.  Amarillo flat stunned me.  Back then, the perfectly level fields almost met the glass skyscrapers of downtown, other than a thin but dense trail of billboards, gas stations, hotels and retail centers following the freeway.  So, at certain spots one would look out and see great flat fields with a gleaming glass skyline behind.  It seemed so cool.

On this trip across the plains, I realized how lucky I was to live in the jagged West.  Yes, I was still fond of the flat fields, but the views clearly did not compare to to views I left at home right outside my door.  I live on the lip of an alluvial fan where two creeks and two canyons converge--one maple filled and one cottonwood filled.  Behind that stands a 10,000 foot range.  I step out my door and I'm in the wilds.  For nine months of the year, I'm very aware of that--for more often than not, I startle five or six deer in the process, and once in a while many more.  There are times though when I forget how wonderful my life is.  There was one day a couple of years ago when I had an especially hard day at work, and on the 35 mile drive home across the nothingness between work and home I became depressed that any sort of night life (dinner, movie, etc., was over an hour away).  There are no nights on the town for Marci and I, especially since our movie theater closed down.  Still, except for rare moments of insanity, I would not give up what I have to live anywhere near Broadway.  I certainly would not give it up for the flat fields of Kansas.

And so by the time we reached Liberal, just over an hour (75 miles) down the road, we were already bored enough to stop for a soda at a Love's Truck Stop.  For some reason it was a magical experience to get out of the car with Marci, my woman for twenty years, and go in and get a soda.  Maybe there is something transcendental about following a black line across a flat plain that makes you appreciate what you have.  I don't know, but for whatever reason, stepping out of that car with Marci, I felt like we were back in college out on a date, which back then was usually a drive up in the mountains.

Sure, there were no aspen trees fluttering in the breeze, no alpine wildflowers, no stunning views down into forested valleys, no distant snow clad peaks, no little tumbling streams, as there often were when we dated many years ago.  There was just the asphalt apron of the truck stop and two highways meeting on the outskirts of town, and that perfectly flat horizon broken only by grain silos, but I felt young again.

We were trying to budget money, and so we were avoiding snack and drink stops; maybe I just really needed a soda.  Anyway, the Love's Truck Stop on the outskirts of Liberal, Kansas will always be planted in my memory, even though I had to spend forty-five minutes on Google Maps to find it now because I didn't remember where it was.  It was, after all, all Kansas, which is all the same.

If, like Marci and I were, you are wondering why there is a town in Kansas named Liberal, I'll tell you, although it isn't that exciting.  According to Wikipedia, S.S. Rogers, the first settler there, gained regional fame by giving water to thirsty travelers, and "Liberal gained its name from the common response to his acts of kindness, 'That's very liberal of you'" (Wikipedia).  Now you may say, giving someone in need good water isn't really that liberal at all, but then think about Flint, Michigan and Governor Rick Snyder.  By Republican standards, giving someone good water can be a very liberal act in deed.  However, if you're some geriatric hippy thinking of moving to Liberal, Kansas to join a nudist commune and grow pot, don't hop in your VW bus yet.  In the last presidential election, 62.7 percent of Liberalites voted Republican; only 32.3% percent voted Democrat (Best Places).  No flower-power, magic-crystal vortex here.  However, your water might not have lead in it, which isn't bad, considering the recent Republican track records.

2.  Oklahoma

Not long after Liberal, we were in Oklahoma, or sort of.  We went across the Panhandle, which is only 34 miles wide (Wikipedia), and the only town we passed through (if you can call it that) was Turpin, Oklahoma, where I assume, based on its name, the water has turpentine in it.   The unincorporated town only has 467 residences (Wikipedia).  However, it does have a Panhandle Pizza.  I have no idea if the food is good, but the name is great.  Nice ring.  Effective alliteration.  Generally strong sounds.  Panhandle Pizza.  Just don't drink the water.

3.  Texas

And then we were in TEXAS.  Finally, you think, you have arrived at the content of this series of blog posts after suffering through twelve other posts just to arrive at the state line.  Don't worry, I'm sure I'll be able to stretch out the remainder of the series to feel as long and tedious as the epic drive across the state itself feels.  Fun fact:  Texas is 790 miles long and 660 miles wide at its most distant points.  That's as the crow flies.  On Interstate 10, you can actually drive 878.6 mind-numbing miles and never leave the state.   You are, to say the least, in for one hell of a road trip.  I hope your play list is as good as ours was, because as Chris Rea sings, "Warm winds blowing / heating blue sky / and a road that goes forever."  We're going to Texas.

Texas, my home for 11 years, although, because I was in my teens and twenties, when I formed much of who I am, it seems like I lived there longer than that.  Time is so much more expansive when we are young.  It flashes by faster and faster as we approach our departure flight from earth.  However, I'm not going to wallow in existential melodramatic self-pity here.  If you want that, listen to "Time" by the Allen Parson's Project.

Texas, at first I couldn't tell it from Oklahoma, or even Kansas.  It was one continuous journey across a flat, that if you could get up above it all, would contain one giant circle crop after another, thousands upon thousands of green, ocher and gold bulls-eyes, until you know longer know what one to shoot at.  If this were a film, I'd insert here a clip of the sea of holes from the movie Yellow Submarine dubbed with the ringing of the piano at the end of "A Day in a Life".

Circle, circle, circle; same, same, same; tedium, tedium, tedium--until, perhaps, a great song arises out of the sameness, a song where meaning builds ever so slowly, as in Ravel's "Bolero".  If it does, that song is of sustenance, of bread, of life.  Here in the heartland, America feeds the world.  It starts off in a quiet field, the tufts of a single corn stalk waving against a white, wispy sky.  Then there is a small white grain silo down a rutted road, a windmill idly turning ever so slowly.  The camera zooms out, and up, as the music builds.  We see three or four of the great living circles of green.  And a highway makes a long horizontal across the bottom sixth of the screen, a semi-truck pulling a trailer of silage moving to the right.  We zoom out; the volume of both music and landscape multiplies, circle after circle, the details getting smaller and smaller, the music rising and rising; it continues as the circles become dots, thousands and thousands, broken only by the occasional highway, pencil thin lines running directly east and west or north and south.  The sun gleams over the curving horizon.

And then there is a rupture.  All is broken.  Admittedly, it's not much of a tear in the fabric, but there are definitely claw marks, gouges and gullies in the otherwise perfectly smooth earth south of Perryton, Texas.  After all that mind-numbing flatness this interruption in topography feels very significant.  It is even visible from the air:

The claw into the fabric of the plains here is Wolf Creek.  Why it created such an eroded imprint on the otherwise featureless plain, I'm not sure, as it isn't a significant stream.  There is one small reservoir to the east of where we crossed called Lake Fryer.  It is a pretty little body of water, important enough for a county park but nothing else, in a state deprived of natural beauty.   Here is everything you will ever need to know about Lake Fryer and much, much more:  "Located in Wolf Creek Park in Ochiltree County, approxamately 12 miles south of Perryton; surface area:  86 acres; maximum depth: 25 feet; average depth 13 feet; impounded: 1939, dam rebuilt in 1953" (Texas Parks and Recreation)  Truth is you don't need to know anything about Lake Fryer or Wolf Creek.  But in a landscape so deprived of significance, a little gouged earth takes on significance.  The beauty is in the details, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it was beautiful.

We didn't see Lake Fryer, as I didn't even know it was there, but now I kind of wished we'd taken a little side trip.

If there's one thing I've learned in this life it is this:  often the greatest meaning is found in what most view as insignificant details.  Mies van der Rohe coined the expression "God is in the details" when talking about architecture.  The same of life.  Beauty is everywhere.  It's just that so many eyes--often including my own--are too blind to see it.  I love small knolls, small canyons, small valleys, and small bodies of water because they make you aware how intimate our encounter with nature is.  Sometimes in search of grand awe we miss these little vignettes that make up the tapestry of life.

Although we didn't make that side trip Lake Fryer, I did stop at a little roadside table down the highway a bit on the edge of the flood plain of the Canadian River, which has also eaten its way a bit through the plains, and there are some low bluffs and gullies associated with it.  However, what is amazing is that the erosion of that major river doesn't seem any more extensive than that of Wolf Creek.  I wonder what it is about that little creek that has such a bite. 

Anyway, the roadside at the junction of U.S. 83 and Farm Road 6 is a typical Texas picnic area.  A couple of sturdy stone tables in the shade of big trees trailing a water source across the plains.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of such stops across the highways of Texas, all wonderful.  It is something the state should be mighty proud of.  The state also showcases many large rest areas along the interstates and other major divided highways, many of which are architectural masterpieces, but it is these tiny, hidden picnic areas on the back roads that I'm most fond of, and so I stopped even though there was no restroom and we weren't yet ready to eat.

Rest Area, U.S. 83 and FR 6, near Canadian, Texas

Just down the road from the picnic area, U.S.83 ends at U.S. 60, and there was a small gas station, the Oasis Truck Stop, so we stopped to use the restroom and get snacks.  Had I realized what a unique town Canadian was for Texas, I would have waited until we were in town.  The town actually has hills--steep ones!--as it is built at an angle on the eroded edge of plains just above the flood plains of the Canadian River.  That was my first regret.  My second regret is that we didn't stop even though we'd just stopped at the gas station.  The town is really quite beautiful.  Perhaps, I was getting road weary, because despite the town's beauty, we drove on through, not even stopping for a picture.  If life ever throws you on a long road trip headed through Canadian, Texas, don't make the same mistake we did.

References

Best Places. Liberal, Kansas: Politics. n.d. 25 January 2019. <https://www.bestplaces.net/voting/city/kansas/liberal>.

Texas Parks and Recreation. Fishing Lake Fryer. n.d. 25 January 2019. <https://tpwd.texas.gov/fishboat/fish/recreational/lakes/fryer/>.

Wikipedia. Liberal, Kansas. 13 January 2019. 25 January 2019. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal,_Kansas>.

—. Oklahoma Panhandle. 20 December 2018. 25 January 2019. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Panhandle>.

—. Turpin, Oklahoma. 13 January 2018. 25 January 2019. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpin,_Oklahoma>.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 12. Garden City, Kansas--Riots in the Trees and Pink Styrofoam Pool Noodle Fungus

Travel Date:  September 9, 2018

Perhaps the reason I struggle so much with writing fiction is that I'm not that much into people.  Don't get me wrong, like most everyone, I'm a social creature.  I lived alone for a few years and it sucked.  My family means everything to me as well as do a few good friends I've made over the years.  However, the moments I fully live are the moments I'm alone with no one around except my creator.  Silent places.  Still places.  Very unsocial places.  Right now, writing this, I know it's probably 18 degrees outside the black window, a gritty, granular low-moisture snow spread across the field.  It's silent.  There may be a few stars poking through breaks in the clouds.  If there are, they are piercingly clear.  Knowing the moon-like landscape is outside my window comforts me.  A party, on the other hand, leaves me feeling like the last fall leaf of a cottonwood tree dangling over a turbulent river.  I cling desperately to anything not human--Oh look at the plaid on that tablecloth.  Lovely, Oh so lovely!  It's not that I don't like people; it's just that I don't like how they make me feel.  They always want to converse.  It would be so much easier if we could just stand and stare into each others eyes with kindness.  Now, that I can do.  I get along great with my dogs, and even the deer out in the field.  That is all they expect--to look into your eyes and see you mean them no harm.  I mean no harm, and nature knows it.  I'm not so sure about people.  I'm awkward, and I make them feel awkward, which just makes me feel even more awkward.  But people are always part of the narrative.  So, here we go, a night with Marci's sister and her family, wonderful people, who, none-the-less make me aware that I'm shy.

The sun was getting somewhat low when we approached Garden City.  We were suppose to arrive around 4:00, but it was more like 7:00.  We kept that up the rest of the trip--always 2-3 hours behind schedule.  When we got out the car on a tree-lined suburban street, I was greeted with the familiar riot of cicadas that I know well from living in Dallas, but Marci, on the other hand, stepped out onto another planet.

"What's that noise!" she demanded.  She did not like it.

We walked up to the door and knocked, hoping we had the right house.  The porch had a Mexican-styled tile that I liked--shiny blue, yellow and white if I remember right.  About to greet people, I was seeking security in the visual details.  Charlsea answered and followed us out to the car to help us bring stuff in.  Along the way she showed us a weird pink Styrofoam looking thing that appeared to be growing out of her lawn. She said it was a weird mushroom, but of course, we didn't believe that.  It was spongy and pink and had the consistency of one of those Styrofoam pool noodles you use to keep afloat.  However, she insisted that it was indeed an organic thing.

When we got inside, we consulted Jeff.  He agreed that you cannot grow Styrofoam.  I liked this.  It kept the focus off the normal conversations that give me the heebie-geebies, things like, "How was your day?" "How was the trip?" or worst of all, "How are you?"  Things that you can either answer with "good" or actually describe in detail in a meaningful way.  If you go with "good," the conversation quickly plummets into an awkward silence.   If you actually describe things well, the way any good writer would, people become terribly bored.  They want something in between--something that has a flow back and forth between speaker and listener.  I just don't do that well.  However, a debate on whether a pink erectile jutting out of your lawn is organic or manufactured, well, I can jump on that train.  For one thing, it doesn't involve me.  It's like discussing Ezra Pound's "In the Station of the Metro."  You just go with it, add your two cents, even if you don't know what you're talking about.  "How are you?" on the other hand--what a loaded question?:

Well, see I once thought life was completely meaningless, and I drank a lot so that I wouldn't have to think about it.  I fervently believed there was no God and swore at him just the same.  Now, after a slow, tortuous but glorious conversion, I believe we are sent here for a specific purpose and that the fact you and I are standing here in front of each other probably has eternal significance.  Now, don't let that put any pressure on you though.  We just have something to learn from each other that will continue on into the eternities.

See how terribly damn cruel the question "How are you?" is.  Just don't use it.  For people like me, if there are others like me, it's a minefield.  But discussing pink pool noodle mushrooms--that's a grand thing!  Perhaps that's why I have always liked Charlesea.  She never has a normal conversation.

In fact, frequently she doesn't even put her sentences into standard grammatical order.  It creates a lot of entertainment and a certain amount of poetry.  For instance, she once meant to tell her mother, "Your laugh cracks me up."  Instead, she said, "Your crack laughs me up."

See.  Wonderful!

If everyone could talk this way, I'd be laughing so hard, I wouldn't have a moment to be ill at ease.  Instead, they ask things like, "How was your trip?"

But at Jeff and Charlesea's we discussed mushrooms, which is what I will also do here:

It turned out Charlesea was right.  I bet that is often the case.  She makes a lot of self-depreciating comments about her intelligence, but she seems like a deep thinker to me, who cares deeply about others.

Anyway, either Charles or Jeff--I can't remember which one--Googled the pink Styrofoam erectile sticking out of the lawn, and it is indeed a mushroom.  I'm not sure of a genteel way of putting this, but the name refers to a dog's genitalia, or at least part of it.  A post on Michigan State University's Extension blog words it this way:  "It looks like a certain doggy part protruding from the soil"  (Voyle).  Although not necessarily genteel, Grandma would probably be alright with that wording, so I'll go with that here.

The common name for this uncommon fungus is dog stinkhorn mushroom.  Its scientific name is Mutinus caninus and according to the article, "the fetid odor of the mature mushroom has been described as being associated with the contents of a cat litter box"  (Voyle).

Clearly not an adored plant.  However, unlike the cicadas, I don't think they are regular inhabitants of Garden City, Oklahoma.  I don't think you can quite say, "Don't go to Garden City; they grow stinky dog genitalia in their lawns."  That would be unfair.  Much of the plains were experiencing a very wet summer and autumn, and it probably was due to that, rather than just a regular state of living in Garden City.

As exciting as mushrooms are, they can only carry a conversation so far.  There were moments of awkward silence.  Charlesea did make a comment about how quiet I was.  I said something like, "Yep, that's me."  I had the clicker to open my car to fiddle with though.  It is broken, but we thought the battery was dead, so I spent a good amount of time trying to open it, put the battery in, close it up, then open it again, to see if I put it in wrong.  That took up some time.

Eventually Jeff turned things to politics.  Jeff and Charles are Democrats, as are we--the only ones in Marci's very Republican family.  So, it a was time to talk about how crazy and misled the rest of the family is.  I'm sure the rest of the family has the same sort of discussion when we're not around.  Such is life living in a divided America.  It was nice though, not having to stifle my desire to say what I really think for the sake of family continuity.

Jeff then made an amazing dinner.  He is king of the grill, even when using an oven.  The meat master.  We had pork, but it might as well have been steak.  It was that good.

Then Marci and Charles talked into the early morning, Jeff coming in and out of the conversation, now and then.  Me too--very occasionally.  Their kids, Cameron, Maddison, and Tristan, now all but grown up, popped in now and then to ask questions unrelated to the "adult" talk or to join in with some interesting detail.  Maddison has a lot of Hispanic friends, and apparently there is a lot of racism in Kansas, so she has become quite political at an early age.

Much of that racism I'm sure is rooted in shifting demographics.  According to Wikipedia, "In 2017, Albert Kyaw, a translator of the Garden City Public Schools, stated Garden City was the most ethnically diverse community in the state of Kansas" (Wikipedia).  I've always thought of the plains as white, rural America until you get at least as far south as Amarillo.  This trip taught me otherwise.  It makes sense with so many Mexican Americans employed in agriculture that the opposite would be true for all of the plains, but perception and reality seldom align.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau Quick Facts (which, accessed on 1.12.19 came with the warning, "Due to a lapse in federal funding this website is not being updated"), it is currently (or almost currently) estimated that Hispanics comprise 49.9% of the population of Garden City (U.S. Census Bureau).  I never would have expected that.

Finally, conversation died out, not out of awkwardness, but just because we were so tired.  Jeff peeled off first.  Then Marci and I headed over to the motel Jeff had reserved for us.  Being a pilot, he racks up a lot of travel rewards, so he was able to use those to put us up in a very nice room.  We didn't expect that, but it sure was nice after two nights of camping.

References

U.S. Census Bureau. Quick Facts: Garden City. n.d. 12 January 2019. <https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/gardencitycitykansas>.

Voyle, Gretchen. Stinky Dog Stinkhorn Mushrooms. 19 November 2014. 10 January 2019. <https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/stinky_dog_stinkhorn_mushrooms>.

Wikipedia. Garden City, Kansas. 5 January 2019. January 14 2019. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_City,_Kansas>.