Heat, Heat, Heat

Well, I’m here. I am in Texas. And I’m glad the trip is over with. Not because anything happened – I had no trouble at all – but because two days in a car is exhausting. And boring. And leaves lots of time to think about how you could be spending those hours doing something profitable.

I left home Thursday morning around 7:30. It was hard to leave. I couldn’t help wondering what in the world I think I am doing. The drive from Indiana to Illinois was uneventful. Flat fields, soy, corn – nothing to look at. Illinois wasn’t much better, except it’s just fields and not much corn.

Then I came to Missouri. First is St. Louis, which I drove almost all the way around and so saw the Arch at every possible angle. They don’t make it easy to drive and look in the city, though. The lanes were narrow and bordered with concrete on both sides. But I managed to look some.

Missouri is a bit more scenic. It has hills. It has trees. It also has dead armadillos on the sides of the road. (I hadn’t realized they lived that far north.) I stopped in Joplin that night, just east of the Oklahoma border. I arrived about 4 in the afternoon, now in Central time. I was glad, for I changed into my swim suit, went down to the indoor pool and swam laps. No one else was there except a few kids that came in for a short time but whose mother took them to the outside pool because it was warmer. I liked the cold, and it felt so good to work out all my stiff limbs. Afterwards I grabbed a bite to eat and flipped through channels. There wasn’t much to watch, but I did get the remote to myself so I could flip as slow or as fast as I wanted to.

The hotel was quite large with a convention center and everything, and the convention of the day had something to do with corvettes. I think it was just starting because I saw only a dozen the day I arrived. More arrived that morning, and I met some on the interstate heading in that direction. Nice cars. And in all colors: white, orange, yellow, silver, blue, purple with yellow streaks, and every shade of red imaginable.

I left the hotel a little after ten and was in Oklahoma within a half hour. Oklahoma is one of those places where it’s really hard not to stereotype a race of people. They practically ask for it with their license plates picturing Indians. I thought about counting casinos today, but I refrained. I probably saw a dozen, but I saw billboards for fifty more. You drive through that state and you see signs reading, “You are now entering Kickapoo Nation” as if we should expect cowboys and Indians dashing about with bows and arrows and guns. I didn’t see any of that, but I did get a new concept of the “Trail of Tears”. Who wouldn’t cry if they left their homes of beautiful mountains and tall trees to plain rolling hills where trees refuse to grow very high or very dense?

A very small part of Oklahoma as you enter Texas – called the Arbuckle Mountains – is somewhat scenic. It looks like the movies you see of the old west, except its more scenic heading north than heading south as I was today. Then you hit Texas: flat, treeless, hot and full of concrete and people the closer you get to Dallas. Yet these people love their state (or should I say country?). You can feel their pride the moment you cross the border and see the state (or country) flag waving everywhere – sometimes on equal standing with the American flag. (Which, by the way, is legal in Texas. It’s allowed because Texas was once – or still is? – a nation itself.) Texas. I felt like I did thirteen years ago when I crossed that border and it was 100 degrees – I wanted to turn around and head to someplace cooler.

But I am here. And I am here to stay for a time…although I haven’t unpacked yet. I’ll get to rest a little bit this weekend, and then I start work on Monday. It’s a little overwhelming. But that’s good. It reminds me of how much I need to trust my God. He has seen me thus far…I know He isn’t leaving me now.