I Ain’t In Checotah Anymore

LA/XC-4 DAYS FIVE, SIX, AND SEVEN:  POSTING FROM SONORA, TX

Three-day mileage:  1,079

Total LA/XC-4 mileage:  2,344

Road Music:  Sirius cycle; all my Carrie Underwood, in honor of passing through Checotah; all my Trish Murphy, in honor of my visit to Austin

Weather leaving Memphis, TN:  70 degrees, gusty

Weather arriving Sonora, TX:  88 degrees; bright sunshine

Three-day state tally: 4 (Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas)

Gas money to date:  $179.06

Most enchanting road signs:  Toad Suck Park (Arkansas), right near Hank’s Furniture and Interiors; Okfuskee County, Oklahoma; Fat Ass Ranch and Winery, just west of Austin

Road signs I mis-read from afar:  Clam Restaurant (it was actually “Clean Restrooms”); Word Search (actually “Wolf Ranch”)

One of my secret pleasures on any of my LA/XC road trips is passing through some random town that isn’t random to me at all because I’ve heard the name 1,000 times in a song.  I was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona — obviously.   I was raised in Pocahontas Illinois

— that’s Gretchen Wilson.  On Sunday, I passed through Clarksville, TN:  Last Train To Clarksville — the Monkees, 1966.  But the biggie I was looking for this week was, Where 69 meets 40, there’s a single stoplight town.  Yup, Carrie Underwood, in I Ain’t in Checotah Anymore (#143 on Hank Herman’s Favorite 300 Songs of All Time).  While my stated reason for traveling through Oklahoma was to see my old friend Jim, a professor at O.U. in Norman, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was pretty eager to hit Checotah, as well.

Approaching the town on the interstate, there’s a billboard:  CHECOTAH HOME OF / CARRIE UNDERWOOD / AMERICAN IDOL 2005.  After I screeched over to the shoulder to take a snapshot, I was thinking, hmm . . . this is probably about all there is to see.  My brain on this trip has a constant undercurrent saying,  “gotta make time,” and “hafta stay on schedule,” so there was that momentary

thought of not pulling off on the exit ramp.  But I overcame the urge to be pragmatic, and took a right “where 69 meets 40.”  One of my first sights was a middle school with a sign out front bragging:  “Home of the Wildcats.”

(Where the Wildcats beat the Ironheads . .)  A little bit later I came to that “single stoplight.”  Oh, and on the way toward Checotah I had driven past a large lake (Catching crappy fish in Eufala Lake).  Normal people won’t understand what a big kick I was getting out of all this — and then it got better still.  I wanted to buy a couple of bottles of wine for my visit that evening in Norman, so I stopped in the local liquor store, where there was exactly one bottle of Pinot Grigio (that’s the white I was after) and two choices of Pinot Noir (my desired red).  The proprietor, Laura, noticed that I was lefty, and that we had that in common, and then she added she had her dog with her in the store, after learning I was driving with my puppy.

She introduced me to her dog, a Boston Terrier — who was named Henry!  I know, I know, not so exciting, maybe.  But I did tell Carol on the phone that I enjoyed my detour through Checotah just about as much as I enjoyed the Grand Canyon.  (Hyperbole is my calling card.)

And yes, I went on to Norman to see Jim.  (Sorry to treat you as an afterthought, Jim.  But, I mean, Carrie Underwood?)  Made it in time for a late Mexican dinner with Jim and Janet at Tarahamara.  (I left Kemba in the capable hands of Radar and Ducky, Jim’s dogs.)  We caught up on what’s new, and told each other stories we’d undoubtedly told each other 150 times before.  But the highlight came Wednesday morning: a mini campus tour of O.U. conducted by Professor Avery.  As

most of you know, I’m a college campus addict.

Left Norman at noon on Wednesday for Austin, TX.  If you read Kemba’s debut post yesterday, he gave me a hard time about those horses that scared the _ _ _ _ out of him in Memphis, and for not finding a dog park there.  I’m hoping I made it up to him with my resourcefulness in Austin.  Barely out of the car, I took him over to the state Capitol grounds — one block from our motel — and chucked the ball around till he was panting and crying uncle.  This activity wasn’t technically allowed, but if the guard caught me,

I was prepared to say that I was from CT and didn’t know any better.

And then yesterday morning I did well by my puppy again, scouting out another fine fetch location: a nice, quiet, enclosed quad on the U.T. campus.  This was en route to lunch with Trish Murphy, the ultra-talented singer-songwriter who performed at a milestone surprise b-day party for Carol in Austin back in 2012, who has no fewer than four songs on Hank Herman’s Favorite 300 Songs of All Time list, and is, simply put, one of my very favorite people on earth.  We had a dynamite lunch at Black’s BBQ on Guadeloupe Street, just north of the U.T campus, and resolved all the world’s problems in just 90 minutes.  I also had the pleasure of introducing Trish to the little red duck dog.

Spent the remainder of the afternoon driving west to Sonora, TX, my outpost for the night.  Town’s too small for a legit dog park, but Kemba

and I worked out at the local rodeo grounds-slash-ballfield.  That dog’s got wheels!  See pix.

Today:  On to Somewhere TX — or maybe  even New Mexico, if I get on a roll . . .

RANDOM ROAD NOTES:

•  I do find myself talking to myself a good bit these days

I PLAN TO POST AS CLOSE TO DAILY AS POSSIBLE WHILE KEMBA AND I ARE ON THE ROAD.  BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY:  MAN PLANS, GOD LAUGHS.   OH, AND BTW, YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM.