A Short Drive To Crazy

There’s a whole lot o’ nothin’ between Tucson and Amarillo, and even less between there and Waco. Eleven hundred miles between us and the Celestial City of Magnolia Market. One Cadillac. Two days. Three women. We were on a mission to tear it up in Waco—by eight o’clock every night so we could get to bed. The aftershocks of Mission:Magnolia didn’t create any headlines—we did about as much damage as you’d find on appliances in a scratch and dent store. But it wore us out anyway.

Pam and I pulled out on the road at 5 a.m. on a Monday morning. Somewhere between her house and Amarillo, through no fault of our own, we misplaced two hours. If the sun rises in the east and we were driving east, who needs time zones and Daylight Savings Time? Hmm? Answer me that.

We wasted another ninety minutes following Google Maps’ advice to take highway 54 north through New Mexico. It’s a nice road for a long, Sunday drive. It’s a lousy one, though, when you’re on a mission and trying to make time. It was just one tiny little nothin’ town after another, and you know what that means. Pam’s Caddy nearly fell asleep we were driving so slow.

By the time we arrived in Amarillo to pick up my sister, Lynette, dinnertime was practically over, and it was almost time for breakfast. The next morning, we all slept in until seven. Or nine. I can’t remember. I was in a coma. At any rate, we missed the world-famous breakfast bar downstairs in our hotel—thank the Lord—and made the first Starbucks detour of the day to find sustenance. And iced mochas, a food group all to themselves. Yes, please.

We did it! There we were—all three of us, trapped inside a car surrounded by mounds of luggage. “Where are my suitcases gonna go?” Lynette asked Monday night in Amarillo when she saw the fully loaded back end of the Caddy. We were worried for a second, but the bigger question was—where were we gonna put all the stuff we planned to buy from Joanna Gaines?

Somehow, Day Two’s navigator overlooked how many miles lay ahead of us on our trip to the land of shiplap. I thought we’d be eating fresh cupcakes by noon. Instead, we made Lynette scrounge around in the cooler beside her on the backseat so we could munch on unsalted hardboiled eggs and four-dollar Sargentino snack packs “filled” with about a teaspoon each of broken nuts, craisins, and cheese fragments. Remember the ‘whole lot o’ nothin’ in eleven hundred miles’? Lunchtime was a distant memory by the time we reached our second hotel.

We decided to play a game to help pass the time. When I was a kid, playing car games like Count The White Cows You See Through Your Window was the only thing that kept my parents from leaving us stranded on the side of the road during family vacations. By comparison, today’s mom and dad seem much more advanced. They wear sound-canceling headphones when they travel with children. By the time they pull into Grandma’s driveway, they have no idea how many times the question, “Are we there yet?” has bounced around the interior of the family station wagon.

But are you really a parent if you haven’t been driven to the edge of extinction by children who travel without portable DVD players? Just a little sidebar there. Don’t send me angry emails. Every grandmother I know thinks they had it worse back in the day, but that’s only because all the really cool baby taming tools weren’t invented until our little tribes were in high school. Believe me, I’d have filled the backend of our minivan with DVD players if it would have short-circuited six-year-old whining.

Lynette and I did our best to drive Pam crazy when she was behind the wheel, but Pam’s used to whiners. She can tune out complaining women and flashing blue lights like a champion. “What?” she said every time I asked, “Are we there yet?” She claimed to be hearing impaired, but I know that trick. My husband uses it all the time. Finally, I found the box of conversation starter questions she’d brought along, and read some of the cards to my captive audience.

“If you could pursue any career in the world, what would you be?”
Octopus wrangler. Well, we were teetering on the edge of low blood sugar.

“If you had intro music, what song would it be?”
Ba-by shark doo doo doodoo doo doo . . . Thanks for putting that music in my head. For the rest of the day. All the way to Waco.

And the question that explained everything. “What word describes you and the kind of dog breed you’d be?

“Annoyingly happy,” Pam said. I knew she wasn’t deaf. “Like a Jack Russell terrier—always wanting to sit on your lap. I like to ‘do.’ I don’t like to ‘think.’ Cuz if it turns out wrong, at least you’re doing something.”

Lynette and I exchanged glances. Yep. It explained a lot. Especially that red blanket thrown over her head in the backseat thing.

I had to think for a minute. Dogs. There are so many. Should I go with a red one to match my hair? What type of dog is a slug? “I think I’m hopeful,” I announced. “And sensitive, like a Saint Bernard. Like, I don’t know how to help, but I want to. So, here’s a beer.”

Head nods from the other two women. “Definitely you,” they agreed.

“Okay, Lynette,” I pressed, “your turn.”

“I’m faithful,” she told us after a nanosecond of introspection. “I’m like a mixed breed. You know, fiercely protective but temperamental with a mean streak. And a sharp tongue.”

“So, you’re a pit bull?” I asked.

“Or a chihuahua,” Pam contributed.

Lynette raised an eyebrow. “And I pack heat,” she added.

I made a note of that. Do not annoy the pistol-packing pit bull/chihuahua in the back seat.

We played twenty questions for about twenty minutes and then a couple of us began to whine again. Pam gave up the driver’s seat in retaliation and curled up in the back with that red blanket disguise, Lynette stepped in as navigator next to me in the front, I set the cruise control to “avoid Texas cops at all cost,” and we crawled through one dusty, deserted town after another for the next two hours.

Highway 287 South is a long, lonesome corridor through the remnants of once-thriving communities and a few that are still alive and kicking. The good news there is the towns with a population have open bathrooms. The bad news is they also have cops who hide behind speed limit signs. I prefer the ghost towns, like the one we drove through called Chorizo, Texas, or something like that, where all the windows are made of plywood and even the library is up for sale. I mean, when a town sinks so low that they sell the library, you know it’s time to move on. Especially when the marquee on the only remaining hotel reads, “We offer full hookups.” Time to move on.

Well, it’s not really about the destination, is it? It’s about the journey. The memories. The starvation. The potty breaks. We took a lot of potty breaks because—the drivers were always women. We were in charge. There were no men rolling their eyes. In fact, no men allowed. We were a car full of women, dadgummit, and if we even felt a tiny little bit like nature was calling, we pulled over at the first Love’s station and took care of business. Because we could. Because we’re women. Because there were no men to tell us we couldn’t. And because we were sick and tired of driving.

But all that freedom was expensive. It cost us at least an extra hour on Day Two of The Road To Waco. And quite a bit of what little sanity we remembered to bring along. This time Lynette pulled out the Chatterbox Game, while Pam yawned and stretched in the backseat, alert and oriented times zero but too much a terrier to let us play without her.

“What will the epitaph on your headstone read?” Lynette read.

“She Peed.”

Lynette rolled her eyes. “That’s standard on every woman’s gravestone.”

“Okay,” Pam said, “mine will say, Death Is But The Beginning.”

“Very optimistic, little Jaqueline Russell,” I commented. “Mine would be, I Told You I Was Sick.”

“And Rob’s will read, What Else Is New,” Lynette quipped. She knows us so well.

“Your turn, Lynette.”

“Hmm, I think it’ll be, I’m Watching You.”

“Creepy,” I said, “very creepy. You’ve been watching thrillers again, haven’t you?”

It was all downhill from there. From the positive, feel good inscription, She Loved Well, to the neurotic, passive aggressive Maybe Now You’ll Come Visit Me, You Ba*****s, we breezed through another hour of road weariness writing our own epitaphs, convinced as the sun began to sink low in one of those directions women can never find that we’d all be dead and buried in a remote ghost town in the Republic of Texas before we ever found a place to sleep and something to eat besides hard boiled eggs.

And then it happened.

The road rose up to meet us, the bridge over the River Brazos appeared, our national symbol—the Golden Arches—gleamed, and rusty silos stood silent and welcoming. Closed, but welcoming. “Come back tomorrow,” they whispered, a comforting invitation to our weary, road sick souls. “And bring lots of money.”

Well. At least it wasn’t another ghost town.

We Didn't Die

I think, now that it’s behind us, if you’re gonna drive eleven-hundred-miles from Tucson to Waco by way of Amarillo (to pick up the third member of your girl gang), you should always do it with a crazy friend in her shiny red Cadillac.

“Wackos Do Waco!” Pam cried, toasting our road trip to Magnolia Market with her hardboiled egg and a thermos of coffee. By the time we got home a week later from our adventure in her new Caddy, we needed a mantra just a tiny bit stronger. We settled on one we picked up along the way.

We Didn’t Die.

The three of us—Pam, me, and my sister, Lynette—spent the last six months planning our girls’ trip. My sister booked our rooms, I took up space, and Pam provided the transportation. We split the cost and left our husbands in charge of the dogs and the remotes. It was gonna be awesome.

“My mom drove a Caddy,” Pam told me as she settled into her comfy leather seat, clicked the number “1” on the driver’s door which was code for adjust my everything so I have a personalized driving experience meant for only me, set the cruise control to a secret number somewhat higher than the DOT recommended on I-10 east, and told her onboard Siri to cycle through her favorite songs. “She always said, when you drive a Cadillac, you can make the rules.”

The maverick in me liked that. I hate following other people’s rules. I also hate getting in trouble when my version of rebellion goes unappreciated, but I’ve gotten used to living in a state of internal conflict as long as it doesn’t involve time in the Big House.

We packed up our ride with plenty of luggage and eggs and Luna bars, told our husbands “Hasta la vista, babies,” and hit the road at five a.m. Look out, Waco, here we come! I don’t have the luxury of a number “1” to tap when I cruise around in my aging Tahoe, but when it was my turn to drive her car, Pam let me set the “2” to my specs. Just for me. Nobody else. Yeah. There’s probably nothing cooler than having a Cadillac adjust your seat and steering wheel because it knows who you are. Um hmm, I was important. Second in charge. Pam’s shadow.

Big mistake.

According to my husband—who usually drives across country while I navigate—if I keep up with traffic when I’m driving, I won’t have to worry about getting pulled over for speeding or getting shot by a road-rager for going too slow. It’s worked so far. It works every single week while I commute into Phoenix’s east side for hair appointments and coffee dates and grocery shopping. It worked when we loaded up our Tahoe last fall and drove it nine thousand miles to Nova Scotia and back. And it worked for Pam and me all morning as we drove east away from Tucson last week. In fact, it worked all the way to the New Mexico border.

And then it stopped working. Halfway to Amarillo, halfway through The Land of Enchantment, halfway to the next Starbucks, all that advice stopped working. I think even Siri must have bailed on us. Why else didn’t this super dooper, computerized-everything/please-do-my-thinking-for-me vehicle fail to warn us that a weary highway patrolman was about to shut down the joyride we were having in Pam’s car?

“Great,” she said under her breath as she slowed to a stop on the side of the highway. The officer walked up to the front passenger window and spoke to us on my side of the car.
  
“Ladies,” he said politely, “you’re probably wondering why I stopped you. You were doing fifteen over the limit. You’re on a bypass now—the limit is 55. Slow it down and drive safe,” he finished, looking like he hadn’t had a cup of coffee since he woke up at four that morning and was weary of pulling over red Caddies on road trips to Waco. As he headed back to his patrol car, Pam and I looked at each other wide-eyed.

“That’s it?” we asked ourselves. Then we texted our husbands. 

Just got pulled over in Alamagordo for speeding.
Slow down.
It was an accident.
Was anybody hurt?
I mean, we were accidently speeding.
Oh brother.

“I’m so glad you were driving and not me!” I gushed, relieved I wasn’t the one behind the wheel. It would have been awful to get pulled over in her beautiful car after she let me program its number “2” with my personalized specs. I would have felt so guilty. I’d have been so embarrassed to be the one driving when flashing lights blew up in her rear-view mirror.

I was right. It was awful.

We picked up my sister in Amarillo and hit the road again the next morning. Less than an hour later, we switched drivers. Now Lynette sat in the navigator’s seat up front while I pushed my little “2” on the driver’s door. “So, what’s a safe number to go above the limit here in Texas?” I asked her casually. She’s practically a Texas native, which made her an expert.

“Five over is probably fine,” she told me while Pam curled up in the back seat behind me with a red blanket thrown over her head. In the end, and in my defense, I think that’s actually why the Texas version of Smoky the Bear flipped his light switch in Clarendon, Texas, twelve minutes after I took over as driver and Pam sat snoring in a happy little REM cycle under that blanket.

“Crap!” I said with gusto, or some less acceptable version of the word, as I noticed blue and white lights in the rearview mirror. My exclamation woke up the owner of the red Caddy and she came out of hibernation while I came to a stop in a church parking lot. Appropriate, since I was pretty sure our guardian angels were having a laugh at my expense and I needed a lot of prayer on the double. New Mexico may have sensible, weary patrolmen who know when a girl just wants to have fun, but Texas has never been accused of producing cops who can smile. They’re pretty good at intimidation, though.

“M’am,” the serious man’s voice said while I stared at the gun in its holster conveniently located at my exact eye level. “You were doing 81 . . .” – my heart skipped a beat! – “. . . in a 75 zone.”

Wait. What? I got pulled over for going six over while Felony Melanie in the back seat zipped through New Mexico’s speedway fifteen above the limit?

“Is this a rental car?” asked the man who told us he’d followed us for two miles while I created an extra six miles per hour of chaos in the car sporting personalized stickers on its back window.

“No, sir,” I said with my best penitent manners.

“Are you the owner?”

“No, sir, the hostage—er, lady in the backseat owns it.” Okay, I’m not that stupid. But later I wondered if he’d followed us for two miles because he thought we were transporting either a dead body or an illegal alien under that clever blanket disguise behind me.

He turned his attention to Pam who had by now rolled down her window. “What year is this vehicle?” he asked. Hmmm. Since when do policemen want to know the year of a car they’ve been inspecting for two miles unless they want a closer look at the model their wife wants for Christmas?

“It’s a 2017,” she told him. Finished with my license, his curiosity satisfied about the car’s age, the officer announced this would only be a warning and to sign here. Then he and his partner followed us for half a mile and ditched us to make a lunch stop at the local café.

“Well,” my sister said, as we passed the hungry patrolmen, “we didn’t die.”

“You said five above would be fine,” I accused.

“Hey, I wasn’t driving,” she shot back.

“You’re fired,” I said.

Whether or not the cop in New Mexico sent out an all-points bulletin to his brothers in Texas warning them about the return of Thelma and Louise to Texan highways, we’ll never know. But I’m suspicious. And Pam and I were both paranoid for the next four days until we safely crossed the border back into Arizona where it’s too hot for patrolmen to bother with women who drive six miles above the limit and sport Fire Department stickers on their back windows.

We obeyed every speed limit after that. And nearly every traffic signal. Most of the time. While my sister chuckled happily to herself that, even though bad luck travels in three’s, she didn’t get pulled over for speeding a single time on our girls’ trip to Waco. Of course, it’s hard to get pulled over when you’re the navigator. But it’s easy to get pushed out of the car if you gloat about it too much.

Lynette was right. She never got caught for speeding like Pam and me. But she probably regrets buying those ballcaps we wore for most of the trip.

Pam’s bragged, “I’ll Bring The Bad Ideas,” while Lynette’s boasted, “I’ll Bring The Alibi.” The one she gave me rounded out our weekend trip. “I’ll Bring The Bail Money,” it read, certain we were going to need some. It was all in fun. Right up to the point where a nervous checker announced over a loudspeaker at that Love’s gas station in south Texas that a suspicious-looking woman stood near the front exit.

“What?!” my sister asked in annoyance once we got back in the car. “Do I look like my face belongs on a wanted poster?” It took her a while to see the humor in the situation.

“Well, I didn’t get accused of being a criminal in a gas station,” I said, rubbing it in.

“Nobody sent a security guard over to check me out,” Pam added.

Lynette bit her tongue.

“Ah, come on,” I said, trying to sweet talk her into laughing. “Look at the bright side. We didn’t die!”

“Yet.”

What can I say? If she didn’t want to bring the alibi, she shouldn’t have worn that hat.