Thursday, February 16, 2006
On the Road Again
I've been pretty much out of commission for the last two weeks traveling for work. Denver was pretty cool, and so was the northern panhandle... in its own way. While Barbara and I were driving around Amarillo, we saw a lot of random road signs that were painted over, like this:
"We called him Count Dracula"... B and I weren't sure of the sign's origin or purpose, but we saw a bunch of other like-shaped signs with different sayings/drawings on them, so there must be something behind it.
Most of the panhandle was barren and strange. Each time we visited a new county further away from civilization*, I felt more and more like we'd driven onto the set of To Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Every tiny place had an innocent quaintness to it, a complete lack of regard for what the outside world was doing. It was apparent right down to the steakhouse waitresses in Pampa, TX, whose attempts to keep up with the latest fashions while working within the confines of their limited shopping choices had left them looking slightly off base with their ostentatiously large plastic earrings, faded no-name jeans, and too-skinny "chunky" belts.
After the panhandle, I went to Houston suburbs with another coworker. In Conroe, we came across this bar:
That lone mustache hastily tacked on the wall, floating in midair struck me as particularly funny. If it could talk, it would say with the utmost seriousness, "I'm here, I'm queer, and yes, your creepy uncle molested you. Press charges."
Too bad the mustache isn't actually a handlebar. I guess you can't have it all. Maybe they could rename the bar "Your Creepy Uncle".
*We flew into Amarillo, stayed in Canyon (semi-normal), drove to Hereford, the beef capital of the world (stin-KAY), and did some work in Canyon before we drove out to Pampa (tiny) and then Lipscomb. Lipscomb was especially interesting because we had no idea which building we'd be using for training; we just saw two cars turn onto a main road off the highway and pull into a makeshift parking lot outside a nameless building, which we correctly assumed was the right place.
