Two-lane blacktop across Kansas

It was a hail of a trip!
Thinking it would prove more scenic and maybe save some time, my son and I left the safe and reliable interstate and decided to take two-lane blacktop across Kansas on our trip to Phoenix and Tucson.
At Wichita we turned west and took old Highway 54 heading for Tucumcari, New Mexico where we would again hook up with the Interstate system.
Our plan when we left Wichita, just after 5:30 PM, was to drive to Liberal, Kansas where we would find a hotel and spend the night.
The detour would be more than across Kansas however; we would detour through time, too. I would tell my son about other days and times when all roads were two lane, the pace was slower and filled with old barns, and small towns.
Driving into the night across Kansas is a Missouri tradition. We are usually on or way to Colorado and the mountains, and Kansas is an annoyance at best.
On this night however, with a generally full moon shining in the driver’s side widow from the south, Kansas turned spacious with farm house and grain elevator etchings along the horizon.
Radio stations in this part of Kansas carry the full spectrum of music; they had country and western music.
Grain and hog prices, and radio garage sales, joined static to complete the spectrum of wireless entertainment. Crossing Kansas at night on Highway 54 becomes an endless repetition of white lines, telephone poles, all night Pepsi machines, and empty spaces.
I drove and we talked. We remembered our other trips.
Because I was lucky enough to be a schoolteacher, I had time in the summers to take trips. Zach, and then Matthew, and I drove off to Niagara Falls, New Orleans, Seattle, Atlanta and all points in between. Sometimes we made up our route according to whim and the state’s color on the map.
We followed two basic rules. We slept only in motels with a swimming pool and ate hamburgers at least once a day. It does not take much more that that to keep kids happy.
That night across Kansas, our actual conversation is already fading in time. We talked about graduate school, music, the Royals, Republican bad breath, and ancient history. I told him about all those drives across Kansas on Highway 36 until I noticed he was sleeping.
At midnight we made Liberal, Kansas. The main attraction in Liberal is Dorothy's House and a theme park dedicated to the Wizard of Oz. The house is a replica of the original used on the set of the famous movie.
Tonight however, the main attraction was the Holiday Inn Express. Located off the main the drag, we had to cross the river and follow a labyrinth of bad signage to get there.
The Holiday Inn Express was not open. It looked like it had been bombed. Actually, a hailstorm had wrecked the place and most of Liberal Kansas. Roofers, Insurance Agent, hawkers and construction crews filled ever other available motel.
We had to drive on. My son took the wheel after I forgot to push in the clutch to stop. He could tell I was tired.
Here is where the adventure began. We were worn out and there was no place to stay. I asked an extraordinary looking lady with beautiful blonde hair and bug eyes where we might find room. She said we had best find another town.
At a convenience store the clerk turned pale when we asked where the next town might be. He swallowed hard and then choked up the name, Guymon, like it was some kind of penal colony at the edge of civilization.
Guymon, Oklahoma has a population of about 10,500, is 312 feet above sea level, and the Area Code is 580. That’s the interesting stuff.
In Guymon we found a room at a motel with no pool, a grain elevator view, and a manager who spoke only nine words of English –none of which related to the motel business. At breakfast the milk was five days outdated and the most edible offering. A sign above the counter read: “DO NOT SPIT IN THE SINK”
We left Guymon, OK the next morning knowing this was a trip we would remember for many years to come.

Tucumcari

The Pythagorean theorem states that for a right triangle with legs a and b and hypotenuse c, a2 + b2 = c2.
Our plan had been to drive on Interstate 35 down from Kansas City to Oklahoma City and then go west on Interstate 40. Oklahoma City was the right angle.
Our alternate route, Highway 54, was the hypotenuse ‘c’ in the equation.
Using geometry learned in high school, we deduced not only how many miles we save by cutting across Kansas; but, we also created a formula comparing our current speed with how fast we would need to travel if we had gone through Oklahoma City.
“According to my calculations, though our speedometer says we are driving 75 mph, we are actually going 103 mph,” I said, after some quick figuring on the back of an Arby’s roast beef bag.
Yes, I am a nerd who does things like that. If you were riding in a car going from Guymon, Oklahoma to Tucumcari, New Mexico and points West, you would find ways to occupy your mind as well.
We laughed as my son raced the car past 110 mph, relatively speaking.
“Tucumcari (Two-Come-Carry) Tonight” read the weathered signs.
At one time Tucumcari, New Mexico, claimed to have 2,000 motel rooms. In my youth, I remember motels shaped like tee-pees, and I wanted desperately to stay in one.
Tucumcari was a stopping point on the famous Route 66, the “Mother Road” according to novelist John Stienbeck.
EVERYONE HAS, OR WILL, SLEEP IN TUCUMCARI AT LEAST ONE NIGHT IN HIS OR HER LIFE, wrote somebody in a rip-off of an earlier saying about Times Square in New York
Tucumcari is an old railroad town clinging to Route 66 nostalgia for its meaning.
Just outside of the town is Tucumcari Mountain. It has an interesting story.
The Legend of Tucumcari Mountain has supposedly been handed down “from mouth to mouth by Indian tribes” reports travel writer Dan Phillips.
An Apache chief knew he was about to die and ordered two young rivals to fight for the right to become Chief. As an extra-added benefit, the Chief proclaimed the winner would also marry his daughter, Kari.
And so it was that Tonopah and Tocom fought for the hand of Kari, the daughter of Wautonomah. But Kari loved Tocom and hated Tonopah. When Tonopah killed Tocom, Kari revenged Tocom by killing Tonopah. Kari, lovesick and distraught then killed herself. When the old chief sees his daughter is dead; he plunges a knife into his heart, crying in agony, "Tocom-Kari."
“The old Chief's dying utterance lives on today with a slight change to "Tucumcari," and the scene of the tragedy is now Tucumcari Mountain."
We are pleased to leave Tucumcari and drive west toward Gallup and then onto Flagstaff, Arizona. My son, who is on his way to start law school in Tucson, Arizona, is driving. I am awed by his manliness to drive six hours without stopping, but my 54-year-old bladder is screaming. At a fast-food restaurant I am so dazed by it all, I hand a kid a $50 bill thinking it is a $5. My son catches the error and scolds me.
“Just remember, old man, the first time I see you drool; it the old folks home for you,” my son says. It is a very old joke between us, and we laugh.
We are driving almost 14 hours today and the car is quiet. I watch the mile markers roll by and feel the loss. Each mile takes us closer to the end of this great trip –this time I share with my son.
We are in the same car, going the same direction; but my son is still beginning, and I am going the other way.
No fancy math, or “thinking thing” relieves the mile-by-mile and hour-by-hour in the car, but it is a fitting metaphor that we are driving into the desert
We get our first glimpse of the great saguaro cactus on the last leg into Phoenix. Zach says that each arm of a saguaro takes fifty years to grow. Saguaro, some 20 feet tall with up to five arms, stand like crosses welcoming us to the Valley of the Sun.
That night in Phoenix we stay with relatives and rest for the final push into Tucson. I see on the Internet that the bloody story I read about Tucumcari is entirely false, made up by marketers. Tucumcari Mountain was actually named from an earlier Indian word which meant woman's breast.
Tomorrow we go to Tucson.