Picture Me Walkin'

Why yes, that is a 40-foot statue of Babe the Blue Ox. I'm sorry if you've been driving for hours and thought that you might be having a malaria-flashback hallucination, but that's how we get the tourists to stop. (Notice the little boy appreciating Babe's "virility") Anyhoo, now that we've got you here, wouldn't you like to buy some Authentic Redwood Carvings(c), made from local, sustainably-harvested cedar? No? You're sure? Well you go ahead and have yourself a nice day. Drive safe now. (Already can't decide if the Ox was real, or was a result of all the acid he took in the 60s) What a strange country.

Really not too much to say about Kansas, so I'll let someone else handle it: The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them. Extra credit if you can ID the passage without Google.

Some few weeks ago, I got an unusual phone call. Without getting into too many details, a friend needed a car driven from Florida to Connecticut, about 1,400 miles. It sounded fun enough, a good chance to see some other parts of the country, and it's not like I don't have the time, so a few days later, I got off a plane in Tampa. (Not Florida, but very patriotic) Now, I've gone down that way a few times in recent years to escape the awful, terrible, miserable, soul-sucking New England winter, so just seeing that airport brought back fond memories of Crabby Bill's, pirate festivals and severe dehydration. Driving back from the airport with the top down, enjoying the warm night air and gladly stuffing my jacket into my bag, I couldn't help but wonder why I decided to come back to the North. Then the sun came up. I guess it was about three months early for my Florida trip, because it was like 90+ degrees and sticky, nasty humid. I thought I was down with the heat since...