Ramblings From The USA - 1
Had a note from John Norton, aka johnboy, this morning saying that he was having some difficulty logging on to CHR from his laptop, and asking that I post at least the first installments of his "ramblings" documenting their trip to date. To that end, installment 1, as sent to me:
Saturday 22nd August.
Our elder boy Rick had come up the other day, so the three of us piled our bags and ourselves into the Calais, to Peter and Trish Rawcliffe’s, picked up Pete, out to Bell Block Airport, where we caught a plane at 10:30 am to head for Auckland, while Pete took our car back to his place,
Thanks Pete!
After an hour’s flight, landed Auckland and boarded another flight to take us to Los Angeles International Airport,
After a 12 hour flight we landed in LA, then took another flight which took us to Oklahoma Int. Airport landing at 6:00 pm and absolutely shattered...we’d taken Premium economy all the way, and Air NZ was the best value; whereas United’s was not worth the extra money, even though we did have more room than cattle class.
Couldn’t find the shuttle to Howard Johnson Express Inn, (feeling too knackered to look too hard to be honest,) so got a taxi to the place.
Into bed, and well asleep before 9:00…only to find that some gormless bastard had set the alarm (that’s the hotel’s alarm,) for 12:00.
Shut that damned thing off only to have it go off again five minutes later.
Sheesh!
This time,
it
will
stay
off.
It’s dead…I killed it.
But it was too late for my jet-lagged out-of-whack sleep patterns…I was still awake at 4:30 am, finally going back to sleep sometime then.
Sunday 23rd August.
Out of bed 7:30, brekky, and hit the road for Perry, booked in to the Super 8, (yep the fella there still remembers us,) then spent the next three hours or so organising all the various things that because of the weight factor you didn’t want to bring from NZ, but aren’t usually supplied by motels in the States; decent sized coffee cups, not paper cups, cutlery, a beer glass that holds more than two sips, ashtrays with a lid, milk for a cuppa, a decent bar of soap, a bottle (not a teensy sachet) of shampoo and so on.
Pizza Hut for lunch back at the motel, and Dick and Susie Smelser turned up with their two, Sarah and baby Kassidy.
Dick drove us over Route 66 a few years back with Susie riding shotgun, and we’ve been good mates ever since, a fine couple who epitomise all that is good about the American heart-land people.
So t was good to play catchup over the next few hours.
They joined us for a hamburger tea at Braums, right next door to the motel, Rosie, Rick, and I thought we’d have an ice-cream in a cone as an aperitif.
Yeah right!
After eating our bloody huge ice-creams none of us could face the thought of a burger.
I can’t get over the fixation Americans have with the size of their food portions; everything, even ice-creams, where what we would regard as JUMBO is their standard entry-level item, can be up-scaled to what we would regard as OBESITY, or CORONARY.
Ramblings From The USA - 3
Tuesday 26th August.
I thought I’d had this jet-lag body-clock thing beat after last night; but nah. Into bed about 9:30 – 10:00…only to be still awake at 4:00 am. And awake again at 7:00 when the alarm went off.
Shakespeare said it: “Sleep, precious sleep; that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care!” or: “To sleep, perchance to dream.”
It’s 25 – 30 years since I last read ‘The Collected Works’, but some quotes stick in your mind.
Anyway…in to Perry the Kumback Kafe (sic) for a quick (not, as it turned out,) bite to eat before meeting with Dick and Susie again for a visit to the Chokosaw Cultural Heritage Museum.
Marilee was serving at the front counter when I walked in, ignored her customer and exclaimed: “New Zealand has arrived! Come in, come in, find a table, I’ll be with you in a minute, Marilynn’s here already!”
So we found a table, ordered breakfast, were soon joined by Marilynn, and spent a happy twenty minutes or so playing catchup before Marilee could get a break, pull up a chair, and join us.
“So that’s where that candy came from! I saw it on my desk this morning, there was no covering note, and it had me wondering!”
Fine people.
We spent a very happy hour or more with them catching up and reminiscing. Rosie had brought some necklaces with pendants inlaid with paua (the NZ abalone,) some time back, and had said at the time “The girls at the Kumback would enjoy these,” and they did too,
They didn’t know we were coming, my Ramblings from Rahotu are sent to Marilynn every month; but somehow she never got last month’s…dunno how that happened.
They’re not on this computer, so will send her a copy when we get back home.
(It seems she prints them off, and they are read to all the Kumback Koffee Klub girls... and to top it all off Marilee wouldn’t let us pay for our meal…thank-you very much for that; it is appreciated.)
Okay…away again, met with Dick and Susie, who drove us to the Chokosaw (pronounced with an acute accent on every vowel,) Indians’ Cultural Heritage Museum up near a town called Sulphur.
It was alright I s’pose in its way…but terribly biased to ‘show’ just how peaceful, industrious, and righteous they were.
Yeah right.
The idea of the ‘noble savage’ of days gone by are a myth; and always have been. They were every bit as venal as the people they were dealing with…it’s an undeniable irrefutable fact that they were selling their fellow Indians as slaves to the Spaniards.
I saw no mention of that awkwardness though…
Then off to the waterfall dubbed ‘Little Niagara’ at Sulphur itself,
It seems its major claim to fame is that it was in a ‘Terminator’ movie,
And Dick stripped down to his shorts and dived from the top!
I didn’t think you would mate!
Good on ya!
Back to Perry and the motel, final goodbyes to Dick and Susie, we won’t be seeing you for another two years at least; so think of us often and fondly, as we will of you lovable daft buggers.
Okay…now for the serious stuff…I/m not going to have a repeat of last night’s sleepless night…so I cracked the top on my rum bottle and drank several really stiff ones.
I got interrupted by a couple of earthquakes…but that didn’t faze me: I was determined I was going to sleep!
And I did.
Nine hours solid.
All good.
Wednesday 27th August.
Away by 8:15, ultimate destination Springfield.
Lunch was a Subway at Coffeeville…I nudged Rick, nodded towards a couple and said “That’s what happens when you marry your cousin.”
Umm…yeah…
And…just outside Baxter Springs…acre upon acre of yellow flowering ragwort!
Unbelievable.
We had arranged to meet up en route with Ken Thomas, a fellow Club Hot Rod member, at the intersection of 39 and 96; from where he would lead us to an untouched portion of the original Route 66.
And he did.
We would never have found it unaided…Paris Springs…old Route 66 itself…glass bowled fuel pumps, a couple of Corvairs, early fifties Nash police car…bloody gorgeous.
Thanks Ken…much appreciated.
And onwards to crash at a motel on the outskirts of Springfield.
All good.
Ramblings From The USA - 4
Well not really, a pet peeve of mine regarding American motels: they supply a microwave. Microwaves imply food, which, in turn, implies cutlery, And food also implies a cuppa. Who, in a civilised world, doesn’t have a cuppa with their tucker?
But no cups are provided, nor even a jug to boil water…and no cutlery
Moteliers must be uncivilised bastards.
And the microwaves themselves…All that a microwave needs is two dials, one for power level, another for time.
And two buttons: one for start, and another to open the door.
So why do they supply a machine that’s so bloody complex you need an honours degree in electronic engineering to drive?
Bah!
Thursday 28th August.
And another good night’s sleep, and without the help of the rum bottle this time too.
Away at last a bit after nine o’clock, trying to get this lot moving is like trying to herd cats; mission impossible.
They can’t seem to realise that an hour wasted at this end of the day is an hour’s options lost at the other end of the day…and so it turned out.
Ultimate destination St, Louis, first stop Lebanon for the factory outlets.
Rick and She went out on a feeding frenzy, while I sat in the car and read several chapters of my book; so everyone was happy.
Next was another similar place…The Plaza…same scenario…
Then head to Rollo and the Stubby Stonehenge.
Time for munchies first though.
Joe and Linda’s Tater Patch caught my eye…the parking lot was full of good-old-boys type vehicles; battered pick-ups and Harleys…always a good indication of good cheap tucker.
And so it proved.
It was good, there was lots of it, it was tasty, and it was cheap.
I managed about two-thirds of mine, got a styrofoam box for the rest, (which was still the size of a normal meal,) and all for just over $30 for all three of us.
Highly recommended.
So on to the henge.
A waste of time; extremely disappointed. It gave a very, very brief synopsis of the astronomical reasoning/science behind the structure, and the stones themselves were too small to be accurate, i.e. they were too small to cast sufficient shadow across the truncated inner circle. The stones were not shrunk to the same ratio as the circle.
So if you’re thinking of going to look at it…don’t bother.
Come to New Zealand…the henge in the Wairarapa is far superior.
And you’re welcome to actually wander right through it, unlike the original in the UK which is off limits entirely to Joe Public.
(And although ours is orientated to southern skies, the principle is the same.)
Right…on to St Louis City Museum…arriving outside it at 4:10.
Remember that hour we lost this morning with all the disorganised dicking about?
Well here it is.
If we’d arrived at 3:10…no problem…but at 4:10…it ain’t bloody worth it.
¾ of an hour to ‘do’ a museum of this size?
Yeah right.
So we found a motel..
