Chance = Change

At last, we've hit an annoying snag in our blissful journey: noisy motel neighbors!

I was beginning to wonder what happened to all those many reasons to complain on a trip!  This one has been so smooth (oh God, please don't take this as an oversight on your part...let it continue thus?!!) and so easy to enjoy, i forgot that there are reasons to worry about one's next stop.

Turns out, there are parts of Oklahoma under serious construction and the various crews are housed in motels near the sites. The Days Inn here on I-35 , right outside Oklahoma City, is such a housing. And last night was , after all, Friday night : the arrival of a much welcomed weekend of partying and rest, I would think, for these hardworking guys.   But, why is it that hardworking guys just have to drink beer - lots of beer , it would appear, from the empty beer cartons that litter the parking lot outside - and get loud.

One phone conversation i overheard, as i timidly peeked out my curtained window of room #136 last night: "hey...hey...HEY!!...you wan' me to come home and punch you in the face??"..i closed the curtain fast and worried for our car.

After a while, though, (and my two Valerian tabs that have become habit), a gentler quiet soothed the night, and the guys had either passed out or gone out to make their noise in local strip joints. Peter and I were grateful and, after checking the Ford Escape, relieved.

This morning - another early one ...(i simply cannot wait for each day to begin, so I rise early to greet it)...i discovered that right next our room here at the end of the corridor is an Indian Restaurant, probably run by the same folks who keep this motel, and from the looks of it, the food is both home-cooked and authentic. Next to it, as part of the same space, in fact, is one of those truck stop shops with huge signs in the window that tell you beer can indeed be purchased: $14.99 for 12 of this and $12.99 for 4 six-packs of that, only $8.99 for 24 of some local brand...i mean, every beer known to long-distance drivers, and drunk, no doubt , by our last night's TGIF neighbors!

This very convenient store also has the typical shelves of beef jerky packaged in brightly colored cellophane, countless brands of chewing tobacco, cab deodorizers in cute shapes and fragrances, every Hostess baked treat made, bags of crunchy and salty chips, (a guy has to balance the sweet with the savory for a good meal, right?), packaged suspicious meats, processed cheeses, white (and only white) bread  - (no whole grains here! whole grains are for sissies, and taste funny, anyway) - small jars of yellow mustard, mayonnaise (make that Miracle Whip), large containers of ketchup (I guess they DO put it on everything: America's sauce of choice) , Cracker Jack, all candy bars made by Mars, chewing gum, Life Savers, toothpaste, Coke products,  milk, chocolate and strawberry Yahoo, pre-packaged sandwiches, trinkets to hang around one's rear-view mirror, seat covers, cigarettes, hair pomade and combs to go with it, tweezers (why do truck drivers need those?), energy drinks, aspirin, Listerine, individual horoscopes in little rolls tied with string ("You will go on a long journey, Scorpio."), cough drops, nail files, soap, chamois cloths, bottled water, peanuts, cashews, little containers of Kellogg's cereals, from Fruit Loops to Corn Flakes, spicy almonds, chocolate covered cherries, Christmas cards, little dashboard Santa's (lonely Christmas, out there on the superhighway),  stain remover, salt and pepper, Tobasco sauce, instant soups and noodles, tea bags, eye drops, cold medicines, Noxema, Calamine Lotion, Clearasil, honey buns, packaged pickles, peanut butter crackers, dental floss, facial tissue, toilet paper, paper towels, canned beans, apples ( one fresh thing!), old bananas, barbecue sunflower seeds, sunglasses , and of course: all that beer.

One more thing this store has, though?  Incense!  A large, pretty display of colorfully wrapped and foiled
Indian incense, in many many fragrances.  This made me want to stay in this store longer, and so I did.  I pretended to be looking for stuff i possibly may want to buy there, (their coffee did smell good), while i observed the young man behind the counter: a slender, pretty, dark-skinned and soft-spoken Indian , courteous and  nice, who later informed me we could call the guys who cook in their cafe...call them about 20 minutes before we depart from the area, and they will cook, made to order, fresh samosa, poorhi, whatever we wanted to take with us! Incense AND Indian food! Beer AND biryani!

Oh,  if I was worried about the food smelling up our long-travelling car? Well, they did sell that incense , right there!

I bought a coffee, and left the store, marveling at the immigrant's way of making a place for himself in the large world, no matter where they land.  Adaptation. Life is adaptation.

Labels: Cross-Country Journey