Much of our trip was spent on the road. As Chicago Dave, one of our dearest friends, exclaimed to Tom when he called him while we were cruising down through Arkansas, "You two are like two kids who ran away from home for an adventure on a road trip’" when he heard our sad, silly saga. That’s it. Road trip! Road trip!
Of course there was the 3 1/2 day layover in the Durango ICU, but even that was full of stories from the road. We were 1,600 miles from home by then, you know.
The first leg of the road trip began rather unceremoniously We arrived the first night about 11 p.m. in Albuquerque instead of 7, picked up our rental car and immediately got lost, tooling around the car rental building and huge parking lot about 10 times before finding the exit to the world. It was dark, in our defense and I can’t see too well at night any more. (I’m the navigator in my better seeing moments.)
Then we couldn’t find the stupid lever release inside the driver’s car door to open the gas cap cover on the back left side behind the driver’s door. Tom was uttering a few words in vain ("dadburn gas cap, what’s the deal here") since we needed gas until I had a momentary glimpse of brilliance and quietly reached down to the cover and flipped it open with my hand. We’ve been driving foreign cars so long with their interior release gizmos we forgot how to open a gas cap cover by hand!
So . . . we were on the road.
I’ve already described our trip up to Pagosa Springs and to Durango and the hospital. I don’t remember that part of the trip much at all, unfortunately. But when we left the hospital with me hooked up to my oxygen tanks, I was in good form once again.
We nearly needed a trailer to haul our loot home from the hospital at the last minute when my nurse, Ingrid, sweetly volunteered, "is there anything here from the hospital you want to take?" indicating my toothbrush, etc. Tom immediately jumped in and said, "Can we take the vibrator bed?"
He really thought the flat screen TV would be a better parting gift from Mercy, but Ingrid, who was totally taken back said softly, "I didn’t mean those things." We all laughed a lot and we picked out more and more stuff to take. But no-o-ooo.
The four hour drive down to Albuquerque was fun. We went over the Continental Divide once again, this time with me on oxygen so I could enjoy it, and the ever changing rocky landscape was glorious. Mountains and hills and mesas and mounds. We saw a few old adobe ruins of small cabins and wondered who would come live out here so far from civilization and why. The native pueblo Indians had once roamed this terrain and we wondered about them, too.
When we left our suite in Albuquerque two mornings later we jumped on old Route 66, now I-40 and headed east. It was marvelous. Much of the way to Oklahoma City, where we were headed, we passed lots of old strips of 66 and it looked very small and terribly worn. What stories it must hold.
I wrote of stopping at Cline’s Corner mid-morning and then we headed on toward the Texas Panhandle and Amarillo. We passed the Cadillac Ranch and saw Burma Shave type signs for Amarillo’s 72 oz. T-bone steak that is free to anyone who can eat the whole thing. But we passed. I didn’t want to add another hospital stay to my trip resume.
About that time we saw the biggest cross I’ve ever seen that someone has built and planted along I-40 west of Amarillo that looks as high as the St. Louis Arch. It’s 3 dimensional, looks like aluminum or steel and humongous. Below it is a Calvary scene with figures actually hanging on the crosses and there were lots of tourists parked nearby.
While I was wondering what on earth all that was, who had built it and put it there and why, we drove right by it and I could see a big building nearly completed right in front of Calvary. It had a big sign on it that I found somehow most appalling and incongrous. The sign read in big bold colors, "Now OPEN, Gift Shop."
I couldn’t believe it. What on earth were they selling do you suppose? Tom said maybe they had autographed pictures of Jesus or something. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case. It couldn’t be shards of the cross – I don’t guess – it was metal. Somehow the entire thing really turned me off. I really was struck dumb by that.
In Amarillo, we pulled off the interstate to buy Tom a pair of black Python boots. He’d been looking for months and months but Mississippi is not the place to go boot shopping. We tried Dallas last summer but they were too fru-fru and too expensive in that big faux western city. Wanted upwards of $1,000 for a pair of boots! No real cowboy would stoop so low, let me tell you. Just them uppity urban cowboy dudes.
We next stopped at a neat "rest area" a few miles east of Amarillo on the other side of the interstate. We had to go down to the next stop and come back and then do the same on the other side to get back on the road east, but it was worth it.
It was built into a man made hill and served as a tornado shelter among other things. There were a lot of historical displays and an old windmill running. Outside was a big metal wind turbine, comparable to the cross we’d seen, but much more practical. We saw "wind" farms all the across Texas panhandle along the road and they were a sight to behold. Massive 3-spoked machines churning and turning in the forever West Texas wind. Massive and impressive.
We arrived in Oklahoma City about 7 p.m. and called it a day. Day 1 of our 1,350 mile trip home from Albuquerque (added to the 250 miles we’d already traversed from Durango two days earlier).
Next time we’ll finish our cross county odyssey home, so stay tuned. You’ll want to hear about "Toad Suck Park" and the Clinton Double-Wide we saw! So, stay tuned for "Rockin’ & Rollin’ on Route 66, Part Duex!
Cheers! Dee
P. S. I saw our cardiologist Thursday afternoon, gave him a "GOT OXYGEN? – Colorado Rockies" shirt we’d gotten besides mine and being from India, he got a big kick out of that! I’m having a bunch of tests done this week, starting later today, and then more in a couple of weeks so keep praying for me. Please. The one today is to determine if I I have a small hole in my heart from all the extra pressure on them in the mountains (I was on a Nitro-patch the entire time in the hospital there because my blood pressure rose so drasticly). I’m also going to be undergoing tests to see if my lungs are now okay again, full of this (as Tom commented when we got out of the car in Pine Bluff, Arkansas) "thick" air. Isn’t that the truth!
I’m still anemic, so have to watch that (long term problem that’s now worsened, hence the 2 pints of red blood cells I got in the hospital). Life isn’t easy, you know? But I’m still very happy and enthused. So . . .
Cheers today to you all & Blessings! Dee
Dee Andrews
Dee , you will be in my thought and prayers!
you are a blessing!
God bless
All that manual labor to get gas … you gave me a laugh this morning. My wife and I drove through part of that I-40 leg after mom died, except we were in a gas-guzzling Budget Rental truck. But I was struck by the size of that cross … and then the gift shop. We didn’t stop, but I suppose they were selling little versions of their tourist attraction. Reminds me of a story Chuck Swindoll (I think) tells of a man wanting to buy a silver cross necklace for his lady and the salesperson asking, "Do you want the one with the little man on it, or the plain one?"
Guess everything really is BIGGER in TX. Look forward to hearing "the rest of the story" I will be praying for only good news from your tests.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Dee.
While some people have occasionally traveled the roads of you mentioned, I can
close my eyes and remember every stretch of highway you have mentioned. BTW, my
mother was born in a little ranch house in wide open spaces north of Shamrock, Texas. I won’t mention
that I am distantly related (by marriage) to the folks who constructed what
same claim to be the world’s largest free-standing cross near Groom, Texas.
You remain in my prayers.
Blessings,
-bill
aw, you could have got a snow globe with the cross in it.
Yahhh!!!! I just skimmed through your blog. What a trip!
Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles » Blog Archive » Resting Here Until Day Breaks . . . // Oct 30, 2006 at 11:50 am
[...] October 30th, 2006 at 11:47 am by Dee O’Neil Andrews "Resting here until day breaks and shadows fall and darkness disappears is Quanah Parker, the last Chief of the Comanches" (On the tombstone of Chief Quanah Parker, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.) Today I tell a poignant, but ultimately uplifting story from American history and tie it to my own. More specifically about Texas and Oklahoma history and Chief Quanah Parker, to whom I may even be kin. I wrote a few weeks ago about death and eulogies and epitaphs that I called "Journey to a Far Shore." Remember? In the post in which I said I was not trying to be morbid (which I wasn’t and am not today), I compared death to sailing off into the sunset toward a lighthouse across the short way whose beacon guides us home.I talked about all of the loving voices from our family and friends calling out to us in the growing darkness across the water also helping to guide us home.Today I talk about some interesting lives, then death as resting quietly for a bit while waiting for morning. As fate would have it and as life unfolds ever surprisingly, both good and bad, it wasn’t but a few days after I wrote that other post that when I went into the hospital in Durango, Colorado with multiple immediate life threatening problems beginning with acute kidney failure and I thought about what I had written.But something seemed lacking. I’ve also mentioned over the past three or four months that Tom and I recently made wills, signed health care directives and powers of attorney and talked with each of our children at length about life, death, values and beliefs. We talked about worldy possesions and eternal destinies. We talked about plans to have a headstone carved now to put on our graves for the time when we shall lie next to Tom’s dad in the Old Biloxi cemetery under the majestic live oaks.Something still seemed lacking.Then providence intervened, as it so often does, and I discovered the missing pieces. They are some of the words above that Tom and I want engraved on our headstone and it’s an interesting story about how we found them and why we want to use them.We were on our "Route 66" road trip coming home across the panhandle of Texas when we saw a most unusual rest area on I-40 east of Amarillo. It was on the other side of the interstate for people headed the other way, but we were so intrigued we drove to the next exit and turned around to come back to it.It was a huge manmade hill built in the middle of the flat prairie. Its center was cut through front to back and composed of high glass walls with a ceiling soaring above. Outside rose a giganitic wind turbine while inside an old windmill spun slowly under the power of an electric motor. Numerous displays told the story of the "old west" beginning with the Spanish conquistedors who came up through what is now Texas looking for gold in the early 1500s. When they got there they found no gold, but countless clans of native American pueblo dwellers and other clans of nomads roaming the vast prairies hunting buffalo for sustenance. One such group was composed of many smaller clans, all tribes of the Comanches. They lived and roamed across northern Texas and Oklahoma.They were warrior tribes in many ways, but mostly after being hunted down and killed by the white man who later came to take over their lands. In truth, they were a peace loving at heart and had great families.In 1836 a young white girl of about 9 who lived in West Texas, Cynthia Ann Parker, was captured along with two other children by a Comanche raiding party. She became part of the Comanche culture, part of a loving family, forgot the English language and never was fully integrated into the white world again.Her story is a sad one. She died heartbroken at 43 after being forcefully taken back to her white family 25 years after her capture. She’d just learned of the death of three of her children by her Comanche husband from influenza. She’d cut her hair short – the Comanche way of showing grief – and mourned. There is a a last picture of her, thus, with her baby daughter, Prairie Flower, at her breast. But her life was also filled with goodness. The blue eyed girl had married a Comanche chief, Peta Nocona and had children the lived, the oldest being Quanah Parker, who became the last great chief of all the Comanche tribes, beginning with his own, the Quahadi tribe. He never lost a battle against the white man and later worked with them, even journeying to Washington, D. C. to bring about peace between his people and theirs. Quanah Parker (check out each link to different photos and interesting facts about Quanah) provided forceful leaderhip and supported education, ranching and farming as a new way of life for the Comanches. In 1905, Parker even rode next to Geronimo in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade. He could not read, but spoke three languages, English, Spanish and Indian, and moved with ease between his mother’s and his father’s peoples. He educated his children among the white man so that they would be prepaerd in the early 20th century for their lives to come lived nearly exclusivly among white men.Quanah Parker (read especially this last link which vividly describes Quanah’s life achievements, family life and death) died on February 21, 1911 at age 63 when his great heart went out and was interred next to his mother’s grave, which he had just recently moved from Texas to Oklahoma to be near him and the people who had become hers and who she loved. Their graves had to be moved a couple of times later, but with honor and are now at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.According to the rest area displayout near Amarillo, Quanah Parker’s grave reads: "Resting here until day breaks and shadows fall and darkness disappears is Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches." I loved that and copied it down on a post a note that I have here on my big wooden desk.You see, my own heritiage and ancestry includes my great-grandmother on my dad’s side who was native American from either Texas or Oklahoma, I’m not sure which, or maybe even Georgia. My great-grandmother on my mother’s side (see this post) taught school in the late 1800s in Oklahoma Indian territory before it became our 46th state in 1907. Tom is part Cherokee, as well, some of whom were in Mississippi, and his heritage shows. While I tan easily, even when I’m at my darkest, I’m ligther than Tom whose skins quickly turns Indian brown. So we wish to have the words of the great chief Quanah Parker on our tombstone as well. I now think of them every night when I go to sleep along with "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray Thee Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee Lord my soul to take. If I should live for other days, I pray Thee Lord to guide my ways." They comfort me with thoughts of momentary peaceful rest until the dawn of an eternal sunrise and the brightest of all tomorrows."Resting here until day breaks and shadows fall and darkness disappers . . ." [...]