Midway Through a Road Trip Oklahoma to Texas

After I filled up the gas tank and filled my pockets with quarters, I hit the turnpike and fled Tulsa. 

I hadn’t been back on I-40 long before I noticed the sheriff’s deputy behind me. I did what every person does when a cop trails them: my hands seized 10 and 2 and I went 5 miles under the limit. He gave me 2 miles before his lights and siren came on. 

The deputy looked inside the van before he tapped on the passenger window and requested my license and insurance. He inspected my documents and casually asked if I knew why he’d pulled me over.

“No, sir.”

“You briefly crossed the shoulder’s white line. 

“I’m sorry. I’ve been driving the last 4 days from DC. I must be tired.” 

“No problem. You can rest with me.” 

He left and I called back to clarify what he meant. 

“Come with me to the cruiser, sir,” and he motioned me to his passenger seat.  

I hesitated outside the cruiser and again he motioned me to get in. I crawled inside the dark car, leaving the door cracked open, and the dank stench of wet dog washed over me. Behind a steel grate came heavy muffled breaths from a German Shepherd.  

As he checked my license I spilled my guts. I gave up every life struggle in the chance he might see me as a human being. When I told him my dad had a heart attack at the beginning of the pandemic, and that there was nothing more important than family, my humanity landed.

“I tell ya, it’s been rough. My son was born a month into lockdown.” 

He let me off with an official warning.

I crept back into my van and slowly pulled onto the road, my heart like a drum in my ears. The deputy followed me a few more miles until careening into a speed trap. 

I pulled off at the nearest exit and perused the wares of a ‘Cherokee Trading Post’, thinking a little cultural appropriation might distract me. I had 87 long miles left before Texas. I crawled every inch.  

No peace of mind arrived when free of Oklahoma; deputies lined the panhandle’s red desert plains. 

From I-40 Amarillo appeared solely populated by truck stops, hotels, and roadside restaurants. 

I stopped in Amarillo as a waypoint between Tulsa and Santa Fe. My goals were to rest and see the Cadillac Ranch at sunset. Yet still irked by my traffic stop, on a whim I drove across town to Palo Duro Canyon State Park for silence. 

I followed the snaking main road up to the vistas. I planted myself and explored the quiet canyon. It was technicolor - greens and browns and reds and sapphire skies. Occasionally a cloud’s shadow drifted across the canyon. In the distance, a symphony of buzzing bugs and screeching hawks.

I admired the view until nearing sunset. 

Back across town I arrived at Cadillac Ranch, a nondescript field corralled by cattle fences, and at its center a row of 10 classic Cadillacs half-buried with their fins and trunks in the air. The permanent art display was surrounded by campers and giddy hipsters in their Stetson hats and tea-leaf sunglasses. Even in an open field it felt cramped with everyone snagging selfies. 

Those who stop by often leave their mark with spray paint and litter the field with their cans. Those forerunners had imparted a million names, dates, initials, and mysterious symbols on the Cadillacs. Decades’ worth of paint drips had frozen into Fordite stalagmites hanging from the contours and crevasses of each Cadillac. Nothing lasts here; someone is always behind you, shaking their cans. 

I spoke with several people, commiserating on our shared experiences traveling through the country amid the pandemic and strife. We were all sidetracked here, going home or fleeing something. 

Randy was headed home for Michigan, off the job as a long-haul delivery driver. It was an uncharacteristically slow time in his life, and he now relied on one-way jobs to steer him toward money. He hoped a job would materialize before he made it back to Michigan.  

He was an amateur photographer who took his camera everywhere he travelled. He claimed to not be an artsy person – although he bragged about delivering several Picassos to a client. But there was something about Cadillac Ranch that brought him back repeatedly for the last 10 years; a break in his fast-paced life that he relished.

An alarm went off in his pocket. He dug out his phone and his face lit up when he answered the call. He was headed to Houston. He stayed for the sunset, then lit out like a bat out of hell. 

I headed over to the hotel, ready to be home. Four days traveled, four days left, and 1400 miles to go.