Category Archives: Diary

My time in the Ozarks

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It's been a sweltering several days through Oklahoma and Arkansas. I don't want to know how I'd be faring if I hadn't gotten cab AC in Wichita.

Generally, I prefer to zig when others zag, and the Ozarks are regrettably touristy this time of year. But I pulled off the beaten path enough to catch the real flavor.

Thorncrown Chapel

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I've seen a lot of churches and this one, built by late Pine Bluff, Ark. resident Jim Reed, is different. The glass and wood are perfectly reflective of the surrounding Ozarks. I stepped inside and felt a much needed dose of peace. Didn't hurt it appeared around a bend when I desperately needed it, after miles of steep hairpin turns, just before Eureka Springs.

Eureka Springs

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After going through the tourist zoo that is Eureka Springs, it was another sweet reprieve to walk through a creek with no one but my dog, baby cat fish, crawfish and lots of interesting bugs.

Come to think of it, on a hot August night could't you see me sitting out on a porch in the Ozarks with my dog? I think we'd feel right at home.

For those who feel lost

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I tell myself one of the reasons this trip is so exciting is because
I never know which of my 300 million "neighbors" I might meet.
America is full of different types of people. It's dauntingly big geographically, too.
In uncharted territory I could find myself feeling lonely or displaced.
But the longer I'm on the road, the more I feel at home — in big
cities, small towns, unincorporated lands or on Indian reservations.

In
St. Paul, Neb., a guy sitting next to me on the tractor ride to the
drag racing strip randomly asked where I was from. Turns out he'd been
raised in Moses Lake, Wash., not far fromWenatchee where I used to live and work.

In Idaho, I took a small detour to Lapwai on the Nez Pierce Indian Reservation, where I met and interviewed a guy who was sick with cirrhosis of the liver.
Three months later in northwest Oklahoma on a different
off-the-beaten-path reservation, I engaged in small talk with a woman
who tells me he was her step son. She also said he died July 14.
I am glad to have met him and glad to know his suffering is over. If I
hadn't asked the woman her last name I'd never have known.

When I
was in Gillette, Wyo. on the coal mine tour, I was drawn to a cool
young family that had recently moved to the area. I took their picture
and gave them my card. They visited my blog and told me they know the
pastor of the church I visited in tiny, out-of-the-wayOrofino, Idaho.

And while I was in Omaha, Neb., I got an email from a woman who'd stumbled across my website while googling Kenya. She says she was amazed to discover I had interviewed her Kenyan-bound daughter a couple months earlier while I was in Missoula, Montana.

These
small-world connections, along with feedback on my postings and help
from strangers when I experience mechanical difficulties, are what keep
me going. They're like a trail of marshmallows someone left in my
personal woods to tell me I'll be OK and am doing the right thing.

They make me wonder, too, about the surreal stories and connections that exist in all our worlds, yet remain undiscovered.

In the belly of the country

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Kansas is the first state that feels like a story book. I went to Lawrence with relatives and got back late. Took Armani for a walk down a long dirt road. Horses, soil and grass lend top and base notes to the humid air. 

I'd never heard cicadas till I got here. You would not believe how loud they get. I looked up at the funnel-shaped clouds and the stars and couldn't help but click my heels.

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The prairie has a similar appeal as the desert. It puts me, a lowly human, in my place. The landscape fosters simplicity, clarity. 

On the other hand, Kansas planners love their toll roads. There is a fairly high sales tax and an income tax, too. Bigger cities have metered parking, though it's cheap.

There are some wonderfully unique houses here, including a Frank Lloyd Wright and others with unique detailing in Wichita:

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And in Lawrence, I found some yin and yang:

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On the road again…

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Just a quick note to let you all know that I'm taking IMG_2092 off from Omaha today and regular posting shall resume!
Took care of a couple mechanical things with my RV and did a bit of detailing (including trying to remove an accumulated collection of various bug species).
Been listening to a lot of Tom Petty. He's such a great American poet.

Taking a break to meet family

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A lot of my ancestors on my mom's side are from Nebraska, and in Omaha I finally met my great uncle and aunt, Stephen and Jacquelyn Pondelis. They are 87 and 82 and have lived their whole lives here, raising four children and staying active in the Catholic church.

Steve and Jackie

Steve worked 41 years for Omaha-based Union Pacific, one of the largest railroad franchises.
He and Jackie met as teenagers roller skating, but didn't start seeing each other until Steve got back from World War II. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and served "three years, two months, six days, one hour and 10 minutes," including 13 months on the ground in the Aleutian Islands.

Though their children and extended family have all moved away, they have chosen to stay.
They drove me around the city and told me lots of interesting things about the schools and neighborhoods.
There is subdivision built in 1958, for example, where each house has a one-car garage.
Steve recalls returning from the war after telling his mother to sell his car, only to find there were long waiting lists to get a new vehicle.

Some of the houses built in the past decade have triple car garages.
I love how even domestic architecture is a history lesson.

I also learned that Jackie's dad (my great grandfather) used to grow and sell horseradish, which may partly explain why I love the stuff.

She showed me a couple places investor Warren Buffett likes to eat, including this buffet:

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Just imagine him and Bill Gates getting together to play bridge and you've got a nice little image of Omaha. The city was historically known for its railways, livestock processing plants, cornfields and other agriculture. Today the greater Omaha area is home to 838,000 residents and a small handful of fortune 500 companies.

The wonderful thing about Steve and Jackie is that they still have each other and are still in love.
She
makes him lunch every day. They have "ice cream nights" twice a week.
Steve fixes things around the house and is pretty punctual for his 10
a.m. coffee breaks.

It's been nice for me to be a part of the
normalcy while the Ford guys hack away at my RV, attempting to fix some
safety recalls.

Plus they love my crazy little pit bull. What more could you ask for?

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Observations of the midwest in July

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I've made it through most of Nebraska, now, and can finally say I've been to the middle of the country.

I saw fireflies for the first time in St. Paul. It took a second for me to realize what they were. Then I walked up and down the streets, staring at people's lawns like an alien who'd just hit earth.

The other thing I could not imagine 'till I'd experienced it is the crazy humidity that builds up during summer. It makes me wish for a storm to release the atmospheric pressure.

When the storms do come, they are sudden and powerful. In Merna, I was almost stuck in four inches of mud after rain and hail pelted my van like buckshot, waking me up at 7 a.m.

I fell asleep one night in Whiteclay watching a pulsing lightning inferno that for hours illuminated a section of clouds beside the full moon.

The winds here are mighty, too. They pick up speed over miles of plains and have a different presence than the gusts off the coast I am used too.

People in Nebraska often come across reserved and matter-of-fact. I have learned behind that front they are generally very kind.

My time in Whiteclay

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I got pulled over (again!) on a remote highway through the badlands area. The officer told me Washington to South Dakota is a drug trafficking route.
He asked where I was going and I told him I was headed to Whiteclay, had he heard of it? "Yes, I've heard of Whiteclay," he said with a frown. "WHY are you going there?"

He warned me repeatedly to be careful. "It's like nothing you've ever seen," he told me.
In many ways he was right, I guess, though I have been to Portugal and seen poor, disfigured and diseased people begging otuside the cathedrals. And there are many dusty, impoverished towns in Mexico.

What stands out about Whiteclay is how the ugly side of alcohol abuse (which, depending on one's tolerance, is pretty much as crippling as drug abuse) is on constant display.
No one even tries to hide it.
There's a "no open container" law. But the nearest Nebraskan police are stationed more than 20 miles away and they don't come around too much, I'm told.

I tried not to have prolonged interactions with anyone who was obviously drunk, the same caution I'd exercised anywhere.

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But in the morning, during a free breakfast the BonFleurs host in partnership with Hands of Faith, another Whiteclay ministry, I talked, prayed in a group with and shook hands with lots of street people.

A guy who told me his name was Harrison showed me a cool way he tells his life story with a piece of paper, by folding it into a plane that first flies high then loses its wings due to alcohol abuse.
The ripped off pieces of wings spell the word "hell." But the remains of the original paper make a cross and by turning to Jesus, he says, the scraps can be rearanged to spell "life."
After showing me that, he rearranged the letters back to make "hell."

"So, which is it for you now?" I asked and he pointed to the rearranged scraps.
"Are you drinking again?"
He nodded and looked ashamed.

Harrison likes to say he's a perfect screw up and who am I to say I'm better? I've done my share of pavement biting. And from observation, I can tell you Alcoholism is a greedy bitch. Once she gets her claws in you, she tries to not let go.

All in all, I feel blessed to have met him and the others, who by the end of the day were probably lining the main street again like a menagerie of ghosts.

Sober, they were coherant, dignified, respectful. I do not feel they were trying to con me. They were not judging me or wishing me to fail. Sober, they were friends.

On a lighter note… peanut butter is my main food source now

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Practically. I am becoming adept at creating fantastic RV kitchen recipes that require minimal cleanup or refrigeration. This one's a little decadent but it's cheap and yummy. Peanut butter with bananas and chocolate sauce. Aww yeah. Oh, and the bread is Big Sky Montana wheat. It's sold in all the regular grocery stores in Montana and northern Wyoming and has no hydrogenated oils or preservatives. Wish they would ship it to Washington.

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More ‘adventure’

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I got pulled over the other night (first time!) for driving like a dumb girl and turning down a side street from the center lane. The cops (two guys who were probably younger than me) let me go with a warning, but not before a half hour of processing.
After the serpentine belt incident, I'd switched out my insurance papers to have the ones with my emergency roadside coverage more handy. Sadly, the dates on those papers are expired.
And my license was in my camera bag, which is tucked out of sight above the driver's area.
I had to retrieve both things from the inside of the RV and in each case, one officer had to follow me with his flashlight and instruct me to move slowly.
I'm glad they followed process because for their safety, they need to.

I kept thinking about the stories police officers get about a person. A youngish woman in a van from Washington state with a growling pit bull in the back. She doesn't look like the picture on her license. Seems nervous and says she's headed no where specific. But no warrants or signs of drug or alcohol use…

And then there's the story a journalist gets — what a person voluntarily reveals about their history, motivations, relationships. Warrants and a lack of insurance are usually left out of that.

Each method reveals a story and neither is really complete.

Am I the woman the cops see or the one interacting with the people I interview?