Tag Archives: Road trip

In hospitable

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On my own, I wouldn’t have stopped; it was a run-down, over-used gas station built say, forty years ago. The smeared windows of the office cum convenience store were plastered with crude posters of past events, beer and cigarette specials.

At arm’s height on the door, a sign said, Restrooms for customers only. Right below it, If you’re not a customer, Sorry! Since I fell into the customer category,  I walked straight to where I believed the restroom would be and found a single door with a unisex symbol.

The room was a grimy rectangle with painted concrete block walls and a spattered concrete floor. Trash spilled on the floor in the corner and a film of dirt covered the top of the sink and the toilet. Stuck on the wall opposite the mirror was a sign, No eating, drinking or smoking in here.

Doncha just love the chutzpah behind putting up a sign that warns event planners to choose another place.

Buzz Kill

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It wasn’t until Maggie was a very old woman that she finally admitted that she had no idea of what really happened.

She had met Lance during her first semester at Texas Woman’s University in Denton in a cowboy bar across the street from her dormitory. He was an apprentice to the founder of a horseshoeing school in Ardmore. Their first real date was at McGee Creek Reservoir where they had torn into fried chicken and potato salad and laughed their heads off.

Lance’s family was prominent in Love County, Oklahoma. His mother, Mona, was at the top of society’s heap, a gracious hostess, high-octane volunteer and philanthropist. In fact, when the plans to create a lake in the valley were finally done, it was called Lake Mona McCoy.

The twins always called their grandmother, Big Mac and the lake was Lake Macarooni. Maggie smiled to remember it.

Those were the days, she thought as she drove home through the deepening twilight, the western sky glowing a rosy tangerine as the sun sank and lit up drifts of pink cotton candy clouds–

“Hey, how about stopping at the rest stop coming up?”

“Oh, Ok. So do you wanna drive now?”

“Yeah. I’ll take it on in from here. Nice sky, isn’t it?”

“It really is something, kinda rosy tangerine, would you say?”

“No, not really. It’s about the color of the tile in the bathroom, whatever that is.”

“

Sweet Alsace

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We wheel in from a 3 day road trip: there’s too much junk to carry in – in one trip, the real draw-back of road trips. The porch cats are annoyingly wailing about being under-fed, a solitary bold-face lie. The door won’t stay open without help, for heaven sakes!

And we are hungry, not for the McDonald’s dollar menu or Subway’s tired 6” subs, or the Pick 2 at Panera’s; we want something good without leaving the house and without cooking.

So I find a pizza in the freezer from Trader Joe’s, part of a bounty of goods I scooped up when I made the mistake of going there hungry. It’s a Tarte J’ Alsace, a French style flat bread with ham, caramelized onions and Gruyère cheese made by Maitre Pierre.

I fire up the oven and in it goes. It’s cheesy, chewy,  flavorful and if I had slowed down enough to make a salad it would have been a dinner for company as long as I had two pizzas and my guests liked ham. Stock up.