If you think you're leaving urban sprawl behind by going out to the Midwest,
fuggedabouddit. Traffic around the Bowling Green, Kentucky, area was just as
much of a madhouse as the Precision Driving School of the Washington Beltway.
Don't move out west thinking people have spread themselves out: the strip mall
spores have already been, gone, and ruined everything out here too.
On the other hand, there are advantages to the deep tax pockets in the DC Metro
area. The photo I sent yesterday of Kentucky's "country road"? That was the Big
Road. Driving out to St. Louis today, we drove along a parkway so uneven it
could shake the fillings right out of your teeth, and one of the toll stations
was located right underneath a bridge. As we drove away, we couldn't help but
wonder if we'd just been taken by some shysters who set up some breakaway phony
"toll booths" under the bridge and made a fast buck off unsuspecting travellers?
As you drive further west, the landscape flattens out and the sky expands and
expands, and the roadsides are dotted with Queen Anne's lace alongside the
highway, making you want to stop and pick it and put it in cups of water with
food coloring. The trees are different -- fluffier evergreens more like big
bushes than our trees, and miles and miles and MILES of
Kentucky/Indiana/Illinois corn. And us, dragging a very 21st century version of
a little house on the prairie.
Keighley sat in the back seat making flowers out of pipe cleaners and telling us
all the jokes on the Pringles potato chips -- I don't know if they're just test
marketing this variety in the Midwest, but we bought "Joke" potato chips at the
Wal-Mart, with jokes of the "what's black and white and red all over" variety
printed on one side with edible blue ink.
Once we got to St. Louis, we drove around some in the driving rain through their
tangled city streets, and discovered that the city was overrun with crowds going
to the Arch for an early Fourth of July celebration. It is actually nice just to
sit still instead and fight that feeling of continual forward motion you get
from driving all day.
Great discoveries: since cell phone carriers want to keep people connected while
they're on the road, there is usually great signal along the main highways
(internet!). Also, Karen loaned me a book that has turned out to be a real
page-turner: "The Dress Lodger" by Sheri Holman.
Americana watch: the Fat Cats nightclub at the border, the Snoots Barbecue in
midtown St. Louis, and Get A Mystic Tan in 60 Seconds! (is that a New Age thing?
does it take a minute to hypnotize someone into THINKING they got a tan??)
The theme song to the movie "Meet Me In St. Louis" has Judy Garland singing, "We
will dance the hoochie coochie, I will be your tootsie wootsie" but one of the
downsides of living in close quarters is that when you THINK your daughter is
out of range and you flash your husband as you come out of the shower you hear
someone say, MOM! Did you HAVE to do that???? Also, the shower curtain keeps
trying to draw me into a personal discussion about its real destiny and life
dream of becoming Saran Wrap, no matter how many times I try to beat it back and
tell it if it wants to get that familiar it should really buy me a drink first.
Being a tootsie wootsie is harder work than Judy ever let on.