Springfield, Missouri — Green. I’ve spent most of my life in the deserts of the southwestern United States and I always marvel at how green the landscape is nearly everywhere else I go. And here in Springfield, where it rained heavily last night, it has just begun to rain again. I hear the drops hitting the window of the room Owen and I have taken in the Holiday Inn.
Tired. Having driven about 850 miles in two days, I am tired. It’s been, and will continue to be, freeway all the way, following what was once Route 66. The road has been good and fast, the great Penske land-caravel a reliable machine. Bright yellow, too, for easy visibility.
Many stretches of the freeway have had lane closures and speed reductions due to work being done on them. If I am figuring right, this is the application of federal infrastructure money. It is nice to see it at work.
As with the Texas panhandle, Oklahoma’s plains are also sprouting wind farms. A car dealership in Tulsa had two huge flags, one American and one Oklahoman. The Will Rogers Turnpike was straight and smooth and not terribly expensive, and well-patrolled by the Oklahoma State Police.
People all along the way have been good. Owen has been a great help, watching the truck’s blind spots, managing the truck’s music, helping find lodgings, conversing with me, and keeping me on an even keel. I would not want to be on this trek alone.
Tomorrow’s goal: Bloomington, Illinois.
Elk City, Oklahoma — The coffee maker in the motel room malfunctioned, giving off a wispy curling smoke such as might be seen in a horror movie and stinking up the room in a way John Waters might appreciate. I’ve gone down to the lobby to get a cup of lobby coffee and have it here next to me. I have not yet drunk enough of it.
A huge storm came in the night. Around 2:00 a.m. I was awakened by thunder. There was that and the causal lightning and buckets of rain. It was after 3:00 before I got back to sleep, to dream of the Cadillac Ranch and the great Groom Cross, both of which are along Interstate 40 and both of which Owen and I saw yesterday in passing. At the Cadillac Ranch, the frontage road was clumped with the SUVs and pickup trucks of sightseers who had stopped to see the noted work of art, photos of which I had seen before and which is somewhat smaller in real life. As we passed the great Groom Cross, I saw no one and did not see the grounds with their array of bronze sculptures. While many poor could have been fed with the money it cost to erect a cross nearly 200 feet tall and fashion the accompanying structures, the poor will always be with us and would only have got hungry again so they will have to find some other way to get by.
There is also a leaning water tower in Groom, about which I did not dream.
The lobby telly says a cold front is coming. It is a barrier of stormy weather through which Owen and I will be motoring later today in the great yellow Penske rental. Time to finish the coffee, pack up, check out, and head out. Breakfast possibly in Oklahoma City.