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Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The sun settled on the horizon directly in front of me like a neon gumball, searing its image onto my corneas. With each raspy breath I sucked in another lungful of the scorching desert air as I continued to run along the rutted dirt road, trying to stay ahead of my pursuers. But they were younger and quicker, with reptilian resolve and a hunger that would not be denied. The pair of huge lizards trotted along the road behind me, tirelessly, their sickening forked tongues darting out, drawing ever closer…

“BOB! Bob! Wake up! You’re having a nightmare!” Barb slapped me across the face, and I shook my head, opening my eyes to see the dark highway in front of us, illuminated by our headlights.

“Wha…what? Where are we? Where’s the lizards?” I tried to clear the cobwebs out of my head, looking quickly into the rearview mirror. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Today is the 13th anniversary of my marriage to Barb, which adds up to about ten years of wedded bliss. That’s right, it was 14 years ago that I tricked her into becoming engaged on a sunny Memorial Day in 1994, when I told her I was pregnant. She didn’t buy it, of course, but she must have figured it would be an interesting partnership. And as certain members of the law enforcement community will attest, it has been.

Why has this marriage worked? I think to understand that, you have to examine the roles of men and women in most relationships. Men are largely transparent and predictable. Many dogs have more guile. We generally stop growing emotionally around age 15 (why do you think so many of us like AC/DC?), and our needs have remained unchanged since the days when Piltdown Man got hollered at for coming home to his cave at dawn, after staying out all night drinking mastodon sweat and throwing rocks into a glacier. We want food, sex, affection and silence. And sometimes a boat. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

After a welcome night in a motel, where we got some laundry done and the kids watched some George Lopez (who’s about as funny as a Tijuana hand job. And yes, I would know), we drove all day until we found Weston Bend State Park in Missouri. After a quick supply run at the little grocery store, we secured a snug campsite punched deep into the dense woods near the Missouri River.

As usual, we’d gotten a late start out of the motel that morning. [Side note: as we left, Barb, while driving, explained to us the difference between a hotel and a motel is if the doors open to the inside or outside. Inside, it’s a hotel. Outside, it’s a motel. Rusty and I exchanged a glance. “You mean, you can upgrade your motel into a hotel simply by rehanging all the doors?” I asked. She said no, she meant the doors were FACING either and inside hallway, or the outside of the building. Oh.]

A late start meant we’d have to drive until it was getting close to sundown, which meant a frantic set-up, and eating dinner by lantern light, joined by whatever variety of bugs that part of the country had to offer. In Weston Bend, it was spiders, moths, mosquitoes, centipedes, ticks, gnats, no-see-ums, and the worst insect of all, see-ums. Those bastards can bite. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

“Welcome to Carlisle! We’re the mosquito capital of the United States.”

The matronly farmer’s wife was standing at our table, holding a plate piled high with her salad bar harvest. She’d come over to say hi as the dinner crowd (8:00 for the farming community) was starting to roll in to the pizza and salad joint we’d chosen for dinner. It was a hotel night for us, and we planned on hitting the road after dinner, and driving until we’d had enough for that day.

“Actually,” I responded, “I believe the mosquito capital of the world is at McClay Flats in Missoula.” I took a ragged bite of my jalapeño and onion pizza for emphasis.

“Well, that might be true. But you don’t want to camp around here. If you do want to camp, come over to my house. I have five red-headed grandchildren.” She went on to add that they grow rice in that area, which finally explained what we’d been staring at for the last half hour. Enormous rice paddies lining both sides of the freeway, with evenly spaced, curved trenches cut through every 50 yards or so. I thought it was a huge Martian graveyard, or maybe hydroponic bonsai marijuana. See, I come from Missoula where the main crop is knapweed. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Our destination this day was Graceland. We got into Memphis at lunch time, so we stopped at Central Barbecue and had two slabs of ribs. Smothered in sauce and served with greens, slaw and beans, these ribs were the best meal of the trip so far. I mean, slow-smoked, fall-off-the-bone tender, absolutely killer, ground-zero Memphis-style ribs. We decided that we would also have ribs for dinner after Graceland. I just love seeing Speaker and Rusty work on a rib until they leave the bone sparkling clean. I felt like a papa lion proudly watching his cubs dismantle a water buffalo.

Then it was time for Graceland. We drove south through the city along Elvis Presley Blvd., which goes through the ghetto. We got to the complex, paid for our upgraded tickets (which included tours of the Caddy-infested car museum and the Lisa Marie, his big ol’ jet airliner), and hopped onto the shuttle to the mansion across the street. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Refreshed, rested and ready for more adventure, we packed the truck, said our goodbyes to Barb's family, and hit the road for Memphis after five restful days in North Carolina. Our plan was to alternate camping and hotel stays, and we’d start out by finding a nice campground. We did locate one about an hour east of Memphis. We’d been slowed down in Lawrenceburg (“Hometown of Fred Thompson!”), by the biggest rainstorm I’d ever watched Barb drive through. The state highway bisected the little town, and their drainage system was woefully inadequate for such a deluge. The truck’s wipers couldn’t keep up, and we had to slow to 20 mph just because of the poor visibility. I felt like we were in an episode of “Daktari” as we drove through a puddle so big it broke over the top of our jungle vehicle like a wave.

We finally drove out from under the storm, and eventually found a great-looking campground at Chickasaw State Park. The campground sign had a red Christian cross on it, and the list of campground rules included “no alcohol.” Hmm. I remembered that we were deep in the Bible Belt. Western Tennessee may not be the actual buckle, but it’s at least that little retainer thing that keeps the end of the belt from flapping around. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

As I stared intently into the stainless steel mirror in the campground bathroom, trimming my nose hairs with a Leatherman, I let my mind wander back to the tourist-trap run-up to Mount Rushmore. I had been taken aback by the parasitic cottage industry that grew up around the popular tourist destination. But as I snipped away with the Leatherman’s tiny scissors, trying not to deviate my own septum, I was blissfully unaware that the roadside attractions of South Dakota would soon be dwarfed by the only stretch of American highway that can be seen from outer space: Pigeon Forge, Kentucky.

If you’ve never been, I hope you never have to go. It’s along the highway on the way Gatlinburg, the gateway to Great Smokey Mountain National Park. Traffic suddenly thickens as you enter Pigeon Forge, then slows to a crawl while all the tourists (including us) rubberneck at the unending barrage of neon-wrapped arcades, LED video billboards, immense go-kart tracks, t-shirt shops, souvenir shacks, and hundreds of other distractions vying for your attention like a crack whore on a New York sidewalk. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

There were some redeeming sights in Illinois, to be sure. The most impressive to me was the Indian mounds at Cahokia. Seems a native civilization had a community there of 20,000 people sometime between 1000 A.D. and 1500. They were similar in style to the Mayans, hence the huge mounds, which were shaped like pyramids with their tops cut off. By the time the first white explorers arrived, the tribe had vanished, leaving no known descendants. How do archeologists know this without any evidence outside of some pottery shards and a few ancient cigarette wrappers? According to one marker I read, they were digging in the thousand-year old site, and came upon the ruins of a 400-year-old interpretive center.

When we left the mounds, we drove around Collinsville for a goddamn half hour trying to find the world’s biggest ketchup bottle. We did. The transition from the Indian mounds to the ketchup bottle was jarring. Man, if we could have tracked down the Jesus Putt Putt course, it would have been the tourist trifecta. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

After driving clear across South Dakota, we were all very excited to find a hotel, our first of the trip. The first one we stopped at (Baymont Hot Pillow Inn, I think), had a seriously bad vibe. Many little things caught my attention on a quick walk-through, and they added up to a big "Nix." I herded the family back out to the truck. The kids were confused, so I tried to explain.

“Didn’t you guys see that bloody ax behind the front desk? Or the wasp nest under the breakfast bar? We’ll try somewhere else.”

The next choice, an efficiency suite at a Marriott-affiliated joint, was perfect. Exquisite. Lush. These were going to be the finest twelve hours of our lives. [more]

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

After our post-Rushmore lunch, we pointed the 4Runner east once again, and the antidote to my euphoria of natural beauty lay ahead in the form of Wall Drug. As we neared the Badlands, the Wall Drug signs multiplied like scabs on a ten-dollar hooker. We would have to stop, of course, although there was no way it could live up to the hype. I mean, a six-foot rabbit? I haven’t seen one of those since, well, I can’t remember, but I’m sure Jäegermeister was involved.

We hung out there for about 45 minutes, time which would have been better spent, oh, French-kissing a road-killed porcupine. What a colossal circle jerk. It’s a huge maze of third-rate curiosities constantly leading you to more cheap tourist gee-gaws, with everything from switchblades to swim diapers emblazoned with the Wall Drug name. Okay, so I bought a couple of postcards. But the capper was when we were leaving, and I asked a pizza-faced kid ringing up a rubber tomahawk where I could find some Advil.

“Oh, I don’t think we sell drugs,” he said. At that point I figured peyote would be out of the question. [more]

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