I dream of a different future which might just be possible only if I win a lottery. Or a semi-truck runs over us and a TV lawyer collects a big ol’ settlement.
A house. Built from scratch. In my home state. A meditation/de-stressing center where anyone can go to have some simple peace and quiet and be alone if they want to be or with others if they need community or a therapist or advisor if they need help.
I dream of book ends to my life; the first part of it was New Mexico, so let the last part be the same.
I first hit the road that is US70 when I was a day or two old. A block east to 70/North Main, a right on 70/Second, a left on Wyoming, a right on Juniper and there I was.
I hit the road long-haul when my uncle was killed in Oklahoma when I was six months old. We were due to go anyway for an extended family vacation; it was an extended family funeral with long-term repercussions for everyone. US70 was my first road, and it was often a route of sorrow. Visiting grandparents who were fading away. Watching my grandfather take his last breath after eight hours on US70. Visiting my grandmother after yet more hours on US70 as she, deep in Alzheimer’s, told me a story that made perfect sense to her, about her mother, that was mostly gibberish to me. Our last moments together.
Whether it was Roswell-Duncan or Duncan-Roswell, US70 was the thread that bound the two halves of our lives: Mom’s immediate family in Roswell, her extended and Dad’s family in Duncan. A road ran between them. I knew every spot on the road. An area just east of the Pecos River that I loved and thought of as “my” canyon. The Dairy Queen in Floydada is the halfway point of any trip. Gas stations. Shabby courthouses and dusty, shuttered downtowns every thirty miles in west Texas, ticking off the miles on the road. Vernon, Crowell, Paducah, Matador, Floydada, Plainview, Muleshoe, Farwell. We knew which restrooms were decent.
Dad would light a cigarette every 20 minutes. I’d try to roll down the window, he’d roll it up to a crack, and we’d breathe in the smoke and sigh relief when he put it out. Irritation would again mount as the next one was lit. He would get speeding tickets rather often around Matador, Texas. My sisters got the window seats and I was often squashed in the middle. I would kneel on the floorboard, lay my head on the seat, and sleep. Sometimes, there wasn’t as much cigarette smoke that way. It was like I was kneeling at an altar, the altar of US70, speeding along at 70 mph. With the speed limit often being 55, this would result in attention from the Texas Highway Patrol.
US70 is always two lanes through Texas. It took decades for the 90-mile stretch between Portales and Roswell to be expanded to four lanes. Now it’s smooth and wide and there’s no dangerous passing and the speed limit is 70 and people go 80 because there’s nothing out there. Derelict towns like Elida and Kenna, the Elkins bar, the abandoned schoolhouse from the 1920s, my canyon, the bridge over the Pecos which meant we were 10 miles from Roswell, either our home between 1957 or our destination from 1971.
When we moved from Roswell to Clovis along that road, my sister and I sang “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” over and over in the cab of the U-Haul while Dad was driving. He probably went a little insane and maybe smoked a little more. Another U-Haul along the road in 1974 took us to my 19 years, 10 months, 28 days, and 9 hours of exile in Oklahoma, a suffocating and hard experience for my teens and twenties that I still have difficulty with, for many, many reasons.
Now I use US70 often … going to work, shopping at Target, getting the car washed, going to Publix or Sonic or out to Mt. Juliet, or going into downtown … it’s all along US70. It’s not as mean a road or experience as taking that road to Oklahoma. It’s a kinder/gentler US70 in Tennessee, more benign. US70 West from Oklahoma to Roswell and Ruidoso was always a joy, a mounting excitement at going home. US70 East was always a hated road. It took me down from the Sacramento and Capitan mountains and ushered me back to ugly, flat west Texas and then to hated Oklahoma. US70 East here is just a trip to Kohl’s, US70 West takes us back home. A benign road. A central thread in life.
For my part, they could tear up eastbound 70 and make it one-way westbound only. It would always take me home and I’d never have to leave.
