As I was wheeling my grocery cart past the aisles and piles of
Valentine cookies, candy, cards and stuffed toys, it dawned on me
that this Valentine’s Day is a milestone for my husband Bill and
me.
As I was wheeling my grocery cart past the aisles and piles of Valentine cookies, candy, cards and stuffed toys, it dawned on me that this Valentine’s Day is a milestone for my husband Bill and me.
Ten years ago on February 14 we set off from our home in Tampa to start a new life in Hollister. While we had met in Tampa and had many friends, family and other ties to the area, we wanted to be closer to my brother and his growing kids and to my own aging parents.
We had arranged to buy The Bookstore, at that time on Fifth Street, from Adele Churchill and her husband. The confusion and delays of trying to arrange financing, close the deal and settle tons of other details made us decide to just go: get to California and finish everything in person.
So we packed the futon, the folding picnic table and chairs, clothes, papers, and a cooler chest in the enclosed back of our pickup truck. Bill packed it so that our dachshund, Mamouchie, could stay in her kennel in the back of the pickup and peek through the sliding windows when she got lonesome.
Setting off, we agreed that we would take secondary roads, eat local food with local people, and not rush so we could enjoy the journey and get to know our vast nation a little bit.
We had arranged the first night with an old friend of mine and her family in Montgomery Alabama, an easy 485 miles. So we postponed our meandering a bit and went directly there, to get there for dinner and have plenty of time to visit. After that, we meandered north to pick up Highway 40 which would take us west.
We stopped for lunch at a roadhouse off a side road somewhere in Mississippi. The service was slow, the food mediocre and the locals not particularly colorful.
After that, it was white line fever all the way.
We never really decided to skip the back roads and local color. We never discussed it and came to an agreement. But it seemed that whoever was driving at any given moment gravitated toward the main highway, the Denny’s and McDonald’s and just getting here.
I vaguely remember the skyscrapers of Dallas, looking like The Emerald City, from a bewildering and seemingly infinite series of cloverleafs and intersections. Eventually we emerged on the other side and continued on our way.
We took one detour in to go through the panhandle of Oklahoma and found ourselves in a vast, barren flat landscape littered with 5-story tall rocky lumps. We stopped at a town to ask about their history, thinking they were the remains of, perhaps, a mining project or some other manmade scheme gone bad.
“You mean the mountains?” a local replied.
Our impatience with sightseeing grew as our distance from Hollister shrank. Snow-covered mountain pass in New Mexico? Let the dog out to do her thing and let’s get going.
Museum of Route 66 memorabilia in Kingman, Arizona? Let’s get across that state line.
Giant feedlot outside of Bakersfield? Hold your nose and step on the gas.
The almond trees were in bloom as we drove north of the Tehachapi Pass, and I knew we were nearly home.
