Day Seven - Clinton, OK

Parked up for the night in Clinton, Oklahoma.... Centre of precisely nowhere....

Actually Clinton is home to the Route 66 museum which I am going to visit tomorrow morning before I head down the original road to Amarillo and back into Texas again through the Panhandle.

I have noticed an odd but distinct contrast between Oklahoma and Texas. While they both share several things in common - such as huge wide open spaces, road kill (I at last saw a couple of squished Armadillos on the road today, confirming their place low down on the evolutionary tree), huge steaks, very bad breakfast substances (grits anyone?) and a fondness for giant pick up trucks that are actually bigger than houses - they differ a great deal on porn. Yep - the two neighbouring states could not appear to be more different when it comes to the matter of pornography.

You see in Okie the highways are lined with billboards every 2 miles with advertisements speaking out against porn - saying that is corrupts mind, body and soul and destroys families and communities etc. In fact the only rap that porn doesn't get in Oklahoma is possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction. (Which, come to think of it, would make a GREAT title for a porn movie.... But I digress....)

No - in the "Clean State" of Oklahoma (that is the official state strapline by the way), porn is bad, sad, unwanted and just plain evil...

But across the state line and it's a totally different story with "Adult Movie Stores" literally lining the highway all the way to Houston. And with giant neon lights and billboards advertising promos with "buy two dirty movies and get a truly filthy one for free"...

I wondered whether these shops have captured the market in frustrated Oklahomans who dash across to Texas to get their jollies before returning to their towns and villages and to their church meetings on the evil sins of the flesh. Or perhaps Texans just don't give a shit about the niceties and put these stores where they need to be - close to truckers and travelling executives.

Who knows - but the contrast is quite striking. Maybe this is why so many Armadillos are found dead on the road in Texas - they're all trying to cross over the highway to the other side where Kenny's Adult Movie Centre has the free 6 O'clock showing of Annie Does Amarillo (the Armadillo remake of Debbie Does Dallas)...

Anway - back to Clinton (funny how that name follows sexual pecadilloes....hmmm).

 am staying at the exquisite "Days Inn" motel. I asked for the most expensive room in the house - and it rather frighteningly only came to $69....

Having got to my room I was VERY glad I didn't opt for a cheaper room....

This was classic American motel stuff - the motels in the movies where the bagman gets off-ed by the mob and the cops find him cut into pieces in his motel room. The kind of room where a 3rd grade hooker way past her prime ODs on smack and they find her 1 month later.... It is not a nice room.

But it is a smoking room - my first so far on this trip since Chicago - and that is a good thing.

It also has a TV that is the same size as my car - another bonus. And a coffee machine so I can make ridiculously poor quality American coffee in the morning and pretend I am being caffeinated....

I dined in the equally charmless "The Branding Iron" restaurant - a place which has only the following good points:

1. The steak was fresh and cooked well.
2. They put enough ice in my Pepsi.
3. It was cheap.

Other than that it was possibly one of the worst dining experiences of my life. Mainly due to the total lack of ambience (usuallly a TV blaring out a Dukes of Hazzard re-run would be a strong negative - but in this place it really lifted the mood) and the "customers". There were about eight other people eating there - whose combined IQ could not have exceeded 37.

A construction worker and two young guys - maybe his sons. They had iceberg lettuce, gherkins, okra, redcurrant jelly and ranch dressing for salads and something that looked like sick in a bun (with fries of course) for their main.

A couple sitting near me who - it transpired from their conversation (or perhaps that should be monologue as only the girl talked, while the guy ate his burger, drank beern farted and grunted) - actually came from Clinton and this was a "night out" for them. Fancy dining and so on.... Jesus wept!

A woman who wore a T-shirt advertising some kind of fertiliser from Tennesee - who ate a salad and left. Probably a good move on her part.

And then two semi-literate teenagers who had been hanging around reception when I checked in and who had joined me in spectating the downfall of Brandy -the on-duty receptionist who blew ALL her fuses while trying to enter my Dubai, United Arab Emirates address into the Days Inn computer system. Poor girl. I could have said  I'd just flown in from Mars and it would have made more sense to her...

I feel sure I will catch some diseases from this motel - if I am not shot dead during the night by one of the customers of The Turf Club - the country and western bar also attached to the hotel. I had almost stopped in for a cold beer there until I saw the clientele inside. Brutal rednecks would be an understatement - and the quick peek inside that bar has moved me to consider renouncing alcohol forever and becoming a Mormon....

Tomorrow Amarillo and then on to New Mexico - which I am rather looking forward too. Especially the food!