I got up early enough to watch the people leave and to watch the Sun rise. Such a strange land to me. The Anasazi lived here eons ago and left the relics and carvings in the rocks. Mesas, canyons, ancient volcano cones, lava flows, the time less looking Painted Desert, Dinosaur bones, and of all places, a huge meteorite landed here leaving an ancient and huge crater. This was a place where Summer Thunderstorms would cause flash floods in a few minutes and dis-appear about as fast as they came.....and always with a rainbow spanning the sky. This was also a place of death. The fatal car accidents were memorialized by placing little white crosses where they died. Sometimes, there would be a group of five crosses....a whole family with children....probably on vacation, which made it even more tragic. I stopped in Holbrook for breakfast. Lot's of excited children, looking for a new day of travel. They seemed so happy, probably because they kept their parents awake all night ! I continued on after breakfast and crossed into New Mexico. I was fascinated by the old cars on the road. Even though it was 1952, many cars from the 40's and even a few from the 30's. Many of the old Burma Shave signs which Lady Bird Johnson had removed because she thought them ugly. I did not care for Lyndon Johnson, but I did find a way to tell when he was lying: if you saw his lips moving, he was lying. I approached Albuquerque and that long hill down and down into valley where the city was. The highway back then went through every town, not around it. Driving is conducive to thinking and I got to laughing when I suddenly remembered that as a boy in the back seat, I found a paper and a pencil and wrote down every bad word I knew...(shit, damn, hell) and I dropped it out of the window in downtown Albuquerque! Weird kid ! The way out of Albuquerque was as it was on way in. Long up hill through the Sandia mtns. Twist and turn, climbing, climbing Going East, the land settled down, flatter and flatter. When I got to Santa Rosa, I stopped for the night. There were some very deep natural water holes there. They were surrounded by rocky formations and were hundreds of feet deep. I had heard that you could take diving expeditions with a guide. No deal, I was afraid of drowning as much as I was afraid of throwing up. Weird kid!!! I rented a room at a Mom and Pop and took a hot shower. Then, I decided I would mosy across the highway to a local bar. Lot's of relics on wall. Very few people..quiet...hurricane lamps on tables...I noticed a sign on the wall; JOIN OUR PISTOL CLUB, DRINK TILL TWELVE, PISTOL TWO' I knew well what tomorrow would bring as far as topography. At the New Mexico and Texas border, I would be ushered into the Western fringe of the high plains. This was also the Western fringe of tornado alley. This was where Gulf moisture would get funneled in to meet the dry air from the west. Dry air is denser than moist air and so it shoved in under the moist air and lifted it up. Thunderstorms did not form, they exploded like an atomic bomb. Tendrils of spinning vapor would come down and then pull back up. Sometimes no tornado funnel became visible, but was there, Sometimes a distant field would suddenly erupt in clouds of spinning dust and the funnel would suddenly appear. Lightning stabbing the Earth and sometimes balls of electrical fire would roll down the barbed wire strung along the road. I reached up and turned off the light. I was relaxed from my drinks and the hot shower and slept through the entire night. Welcome to my new friends in Latvia, Malaysia, Germany, and China.......(to be continued)
(to be continued)
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