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Tucumcari, NM

the fourth leg of my trip
Total Miles: 449
Miles to Date: 2880

On the road again...

I left Dallas Monday morning, heading west. I'd hoped to make it all the way to Taos in one go, planning on staying there a night, and moseying around for most of the day. As I hit New Mexico, though, I was more tired than I'd figured, and I hit a fairly steady rain, which made conditions less than ideal. So I pulled up and stayed the night in Tucumcari, not the least reason for which was that I liked the name.

The Texas leg of my trip was lo-o-o-o-ong, but on the bright side, there were a couple of pretty solid rest stops along US 287, which runs from Dallas to Amarillo. The first one was about 10 miles south of a town called Quanah (I think), and as I was heading back to my car, I was intercepted by the attendant. Turned out that he lived in Quanah, and his ride was 30 minutes late, so he wanted to know if I could give him a ride. We talked the whole time, without exchanging names (?), and it turned out that he had just moved to this little dinky town in Texas from Oakland, where he was in the process of taking a second crack at building a life for himself (he was 44). He ended up there because he had helped someone get there from California, and this woman's family helped him find a job, get a loan to help with his credit, etc. We talked a little about my trip, too, and by that time, we were where he needed to be.

About eighty miles later, there was another pretty nice rest stop. So I get out of my car, and walk towards the restrooms. As I do so, I walk past a pickup truck, and a middle-aged, red-haired woman who's clearly walking back to it. A conversation ensues:

She: Are you the New York boy?
Me, after a brief pause: That's me.
She: You're a long way from home...
Me: Yes. Yes I am.

I'm sure she must have passed me and noticed the plate, but I suppose there's also the possibility that New Yorkers are so rare in the ol' "Panhandle Plains" that word of my trespass preceded me.

Here come some pictures.

Comments

Your trip reminds me of a trip my brothers and dad and I took to the Rose Bowl in 1959. We took Rte 66 back, Grand Canyon, etc. and came through Tucumcari. Lot of good memories. Which reminds me of the Rose Bowl trip I took with my brother and our sons in 1885 or so. Lot of memories of that too.
What does CCCC stand for, anyway?

So you let a little rain keep you from Frank and Lupe's, the finest eating establishment not only in Soccoro, NM, but also in the entire Southwest, and maybe the universe. Collin, Collin, Collin!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Socorro was in the opposite direction, and it was already a long-ass drive for me. I'll get there eventually...

cgb

ps. CCCC = Conference on College Composition and Communication. CCC is the journal of the same name, minus the "Conference on" part.