Sallisaw to Whitesville, Tennessee (yes, seriously): Woke up and
showered. The Sallisaw motel was subpar and it made me wonder how it had been so highly reviewed on Google (its
high rating had been our main reason for choosing it). All became clear when I took my
shower. The water pressure was something
to behold. I felt like the grime of the
previous day was being sand-blasted off of me.
It was actually almost painful.
One knob for hot water and another for cold, which I think I prefer to
the standard “all on a spectrum” temperature control you encounter in Today’s
Showers. (Surely there’s some subtle ideological reason for this shift.) I
turned the shower off and felt already dry, which should give you a sense of
how hot and pressurized the water was.
Great shower, top ten all time.
Drove across the street
to a diner attached to a gas station.
Shades were pulled over all the windows and I thought that was a bad
sign. When we got in the place was huge
and clean © Treesha. One side was the kind of
convenience store you’d find at any gas station but it was more expansive. You could buy not only soda and junk food
there but jeans and t-shirts most of which had American flag graphics on them or
slogans in support of the Second Amendment.
The diner portion of the building was expansive too and probably
excessively so. There were a lot of tables and a lot of people sitting at the tables and the two waitresses (a
heavy blonde woman and a teenage girl) seemed overburdened. From the
bar where we sat I could see straight through to the stainless steel
kitchen. There were three or four chefs
back there but the food was coming out slowly.
At one point a big fat tan guy who immediately struck me as being a
trucker but may not have been came up to the bar and yelled, “Where’s my eggs
and sausage?” I thought it was a joke
but the waitresses looked at each other uneasily and said the food would be out
shortly. Yikes. There was a neatly written sign at the
pick-up window that read, “We have the right to refuse anyone service. Thank you.”
When the blonde waitress came to take our orders I asked if they took
cards here and for a moment she just stared at me with a curious
expression and I wondered if she were considering refusing me service. But then she smiled and said yes and was very
charming and jocular for the rest of the time we were there. The food took a long time coming out by diner
standards but the waitresses were very quick on the coffee and water
refills. (To our credit the enormous
amount of liquid we consumed that morning led to nary an extra bathroom
break. Road shape.)
Took 40E towards Memphis
and Nashville and Tim drove first as per tradition. He was a bit jittery from the coffee. Listened to a Yale lecture on Greek history
and I didn’t really pay too much attention to
its content. Only kept
hearing the lecturer clear his throat after like every sentence and it was killing
me inside. Like water droplet torture
for my ears. We didn’t make it through
the lecture; not spirited enough. This guy was no J. Ruf. I
looked up a Yale lecture on hermeneutics which I claimed Tim would like but it
was also too cerebral and slow-moving (I maintain that Tim WOULD like hermeneutics
under different conditions).
Eventually we started listening to a Katt Williams standup special (the
one filmed in Atlanta where he’s wearing a bright green suit) and got some
chuckles out of it. Before it could
finish we switched over to Louis CK to finish yesterday’s yet incomplete
standup special. (Somewhere around
Sallisaw our 4G disappeared so we hadn’t been able to hear the show’s
conclusion.) We stopped at a MacDonald’s
there to pee and get iced coffee (more liquid!). Lots of traffic. It came as a surprise to us that it was
lunchtime for normal people. I guess
we’d lost track of time. When we finally
pulled up to order I said very clearly, “Two large iced coffees, both black, no
cream or sugar in either.” The order was
repeated back to me correctly and appeared on the screen correctly with “NO
Crm NO Sgr” below each “Lrg Iced Cffee.”
Then Tim in his infinite wisdom instructed me to ask for extra ice in
his iced coffee. I objected that they’d
surely screw up the order if we asked to change it now and he persisted so I
relented. We eventually made it up to
the final window and even before it opened I could see the server holding two
large iced coffees so filled with cream as to be nearly white. When the window swung open the server was
smiling but before he could say anything I said very sternly, “I’m sorry I
specifically asked for no cream or sugar in either of these coffees.” “No cream or sugar?” The server withdrew into the kitchen and the
rest was all but inevitable: he returned with two amber “coffees” that were
about 50% water and about 47% ice and about 3% coffee. Neither coffee had more ice in it than the
other. And to think we would have been
golden had we kept our order simple.
I think I took over
driving at this point. Crossed the
Mississippi and Tim once again expressed displeasure at its not being wide
enough. There was a huge pyramid to our
left as we crossed and it looked spookily like the Luxor except that instead of
being black it was covered in a cheap-looking metallic siding. I suggested that they might be cooking up a
massive hamburger scramble inside. Hit
terrible construction in Memphis.
Memphis, get it together.
One bridge was walled up so that the only driving lane was about ten feet wide with no shoulders. To make
matters worse there was an unavoidable rumble strip on the left side of the
road. So I was driving over this poorly
paved, rumblestrip road trying not to swipe the barriers a foot away to my
right and a foot away to my left. We
decided not to go back to Memphis once we’d crossed the city limits.
At around 4pm I spotted
a BBQ restaurant. We hadn’t eaten lunch and
so I immediately pulled over and drove
around the restaurant all the while discussing with Tim whether we should stop
here. He was amenable but didn’t himself
want to eat. Not wanting to stop just
for me I pulled around the building to leave and…it turned out they had a
take-out window! Deus ex machina. I ordered a Jumbo Pulled Pork Sandwich with cole
slaw and pickles and it was delivered to me in a Styrofoam box along with a
plastic fork but I couldn’t wait to eat it and so ended up using my right hand
to hold it and sneak bites of it while driving the on highway. Meanwhile I used my left to turn on and off
the cruise control and to use my blinkers and to switch lanes © AMT. Spilled only a drop of BBQ sauce/grease on my
jeans. Pulled off the rest of the
driving masterfully and therefore felt almost godlike.
Tim and I checked into our
Super 8 motel and it was unexpectedly nice.
Apparently the woman at the desk had fleeced us: “Oh, you wanted TWO
beds? That’s gonna cost you….” So maybe the room was exactly as nice as was to be expected. But it WAS nice and nicer than
Sallisaw (except for, it turned out, the shower). One complaint: there was a fly in the room
and it irritated us. Not really the
motel’s fault though.
We went looking for a
grocery store. Figured we could buy a
chicken or something on the cheap. Drove
through Whitesville and at first couldn’t tell if it was an up-and-coming town
or one on the decline. Finally got to
the main street and decided it was definitely on the decline. Boarded up shops. Decaying marquees. This had probably been a charming little town
in the 70s. No more. There were still at least three churches here though. I even think I saw signs for the forthcoming erection of a new church. Whitesville: Earth's Highest Number of Churches Per Capita! We made our way towards Sam’s Grocery, which we’d seen listed on Google
Maps. We turned a corner and saw a
run-down gas station with some cars in front of it and I said, “Wait – is that
place OPEN?” Tim responded: “That’s Sam’s
Grocery.” Decided against Sam's. Drove along the
highway back to our motel and I saw a big pink tank that I recognized as a slow
cooker and pulled into the plaza it was part of and found a BBQ joint and
decided I’d try to get something now and save it for later. Tim still wanted nothing. I got a pound of chopped pork with hot BBQ
sauce, which they gave me on the side in a cup as if doubting my ability to
handle it. We went back to the room and watched NFL Channel theatrical recaps of Superbowl
seasons. Then we watched Chappelle’s
Show. Then BRIDESMAIDS. By this time it was about 7pm and the sun was still
up. Tim said, “I’m gonna set the alarm
for 7:30 tomorrow,” and I replied that he usually fell asleep within fifteen
minutes of announcing the next day’s alarm time. He waved me off but sure enough was snoring
by 7:45. He woke up
again at 8:15 and ate what was left of my pork. We flipped through the
channels and came upon – No! It couldn't be! – 42! Recognized it
because it was playing from the exact spot we'd left it in Flagstaff! Uncanny!
It was a moment of celebration. Spontaneously I
did an impression of the Chicago kid’s “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" Tim did J.
Rufus Fears’ turkey-like “HOYOYOYOYOYOYOY!” which was apparently the sound Athenian women used to make when ecstatic. Tim fell asleep
watching it. At some point I flipped away and ended up watching “Fresh Prince” late
into the night. Will Smith used to be
such a great actor. Will Smith, get it together.
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