a full tank of gas

I am compiling a collection of writing. The class I teach on  Wednesday mornings has been meeting together for years and so I thought it time that they be published. They each submitted a few things. What about me? Yes, I should be in this collection as well.  Remember my road trip? Well I guess enough time has gone by so that I can write about it. 

Hemingway wrote about home when he was in Paris  and wrote about Paris when he got home. Ideas need time to gestate, images to blur, stories to form. So here is something I wrote in class inspired by the topic, "a full tank of gas." Thanks, Rue, for the prompt which you sent to ME having done it with your Portland writing group.

A full tank of gas

 Across Massachusetts and into New York State all the way to Buffalo. Feeling the thrill of the open road, I headed west a few summers ago. Alone. I drove through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Colorado was the end point. Billboards advertised wineries in New York State. The sky was huge in Iowa. Corn and soybeans grew right up to the edge of the highway. Food was growing as far as the eye could see but there was nothing to eat along this road but sandwiches from SUBWAY.

I drove my daughter’s Subaru west, hugging Rt. 80 the whole way. She needed her car in Leadville by mid August and I had plans to visit my brother in Boulder and to attend a writing conference in New Mexico. I was happy for the excuse to get in the car and go. For five days the author Alice Munro read to me from shiny discs inserted into a thin slot in Eliza’s dash. For five days I listened.  I barely spoke a word. The images viewed through my windshield blended with the characters and landscapes in her stories. The family drama, the dangerous stranger, the bleak existence all blended with sunset, cloud, cargo truck, rest stop and white line stretching out ahead of me.

A green sign announced the Mississippi River. I couldn’t see it as I barreled over the bridge checking my rear view mirror for trucks. Next thing I knew, I was at Council Bluffs. I found a coffee place in a mall there. Council Bluffs. I imagined a tribe of Indians having a meeting overlooking the Missouri River under a big sky. They are wearing skins, feathers, and moccasins and sharing a peace pipe. I bought coffee in a disposable cup in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Leaving behind flat farm fields and mighty rivers, I crossed into Colorado where I didn’t need a state line to indicate that something had changed. I had entered an arid landscape. Soon I saw mountains. The Rockies at last. Having made good time, I arrived at my brother’s house a day early. No one was there. I went in, got a beer out of the refrigerator and sat on his deck looking out at a golf course.

I had made it across the familiar map of the United States. The one my sixth grade teacher pulled down like a window shade in front of the blackboard. In a few weeks I would travel east, headed home. By plane this time. It would take me three hours with a tail wind.