In the film Repo Man, there’s a line: "The more you drive, the dumber you get." By this time, better than half-way to the ocean, we are closing in on idiocy. We have another six days to go, but all of the mountains and deserts of 66 to cross. I know there is a sea at the far end of this corridor, but I sure can’t see it for the wide open plains. If I close my eyes-- Franny’s driving now--the wind sounds like the roar of a shell against my ear. They say you can hear the ocean in those shells, but have they ever tried to hear a plains Norther as it gusts against a barbed-wire fence?

We finally pull into Amarillo, which looks as vast as Chicago after all that prairie. Then one of those petty differences in tastes emerges: where to stay. Franny is trying to break me of my chain hotel habit; and seeing as a visual artist, who could resist the glorious signs of Route 66 motels like the Cowboy, with his Texas-sized grin, or the Wagon Wheel, which offer at least a 100 yard’s distance from now-busy Amarillo Boulevard.

I am trying to catch up with myself. This afternoon I have a small breakdown. I am trying to rewrite historical passages, at the same time I look out the window. This is like writing backwards and forwards at once, and I start breathing heavily at the contradiction. It alarms Franny, who thought she’d done something and I was angry. I don’t go into my feelings, as she is catching holiday moments. When we stop at a rest area, she runs to the swings and pushes herself to the level of the bar. As she came down, her skirt flared over her longjohns, white over black. My complications seemed out of place.

So this night we set up in rooms smelling of insecticide and lacking lights--but with great tiling in the bathroom. I strap on my caving lamp, to read my notes. The heat doesn’t work well, and I feel a panic when I can’t shut off the TV. Cold night in a windy town.

I am looking forward to the Mojave in winter.

Luckily, not every evening is so cold, and another night I'm able to get out. I take a walk in the warm twilight, 62 degrees, to the nearby park. A restless wind returns, leading the night. Plastic shopping bags float over the picture-perfect park, the jungle gym, the swimming pool in one corner. I use the integrated restroom.

Bones Hook Park used to be the only place where African-Americans could gather. Its trees’ generous shade offered the only legal relief from the grueling sun of the plains. Still, on a Saturday night in summer, they say the park’s perimeter is lined with romantic couples. Now the only person I see is a high-schooler (white) jogging with a black terrier. The terrier looks happy. I am happy. I drive back to the hotel reflecting that Route 66 has its quiet success stories, many invisible to the traveler. This is not such a bad place. This is not such a bad job, either.

I stop at a supermarket to buy some juice and a container of eggnog.

When I step out into the lot, I hear a thumping Mexican waltz from a car. I can hear the tuba. Suddenly the warmth, the lights shining against the new night¾ it is one of those moments of gratuitous grace: illumination in a supermarket. Inside, half of the customers are black. The woman in the next check-out is Native American, a brown, worn face set under a mane of white, in a wheel chair. The lady who scanned my groceries is Hispanic and named Monique. And the woman in the tight yellow sweater, whom I almost run my cart into, is Eurasian. There is a spirit of comraderie--maybe the obligatory one at Christmas, but maybe not. In line, people are chatting, talking to the clerks. I am one of them.

Later, as I pack up the car, I take a hard look at it. There’s weather all over it. I find the traces of the trip there like an archeological dig: flecks of red mud from Oklahoma; a skein of gray dust from the 14" snowstorm in Missouri; something that looks like a surprise bump from Illinois, right where the last icicle fell off. It looks hideous, a car only a geologist could love.