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!

Day Seven - Music!!!!

Today has been an exceedingly good music day - and the speakers on the Mustang are now resting after a hard day's work which began with the Blues leaving Houston.

Bluesmen have great names and this morning's selection included some of the most varied and interesting:

Roosevelt Sykes
Sunnyland Slim
T-Bone Walker
Floyd Dixon
Otis Spann
Lightnin' Hopkins
Sonny Terry
Memphis Slim
Little Milton
Big Joe Williams

And my favourite (at least as names go)..... Furry Lewis....

I was wondering what name I would take if I were a proper Bluesman..... Would I be in the Blind Lemon school or the Town + Slim.... Or maybe I could be a Screamin' / Howlin' / Bawlin' / Crawlin' kind of Bluesman?

My choice was between Crawlin' Blind Pig Surname and Big Detroit First Name - but I'll need to work on the guitar and the voice before I earn my spurs...

After a good burst of the Blues from the US, it was then time for Nine Below Zero - the all British Blues Band. Their all time classic album - Live From The Marquee (their first professional album) is full of high energy, adrenalin pumped electric blues and includes the Nine's versions of some classics such as Sugar Pie Honeybunch, Woolly Bully and Got My Mojo Workin'. An amazing sound and up tempo as I headed up I-45 and then through Dallas. (Great skyline in Dallas)

Then one of my favourite guitar men - Mark Knopfler (formerly of Dire Straits) - whose solo work just keeps on getting better and better. Today I listened to Sailing From Philadelphia - which includes duets with Van Morrison and James Taylor. A mixture of rock, blues and country it is a great album with excellent lyric writing from Knopfler matched by his uniquely subtle and impressive guitar sound. Great stuff. I'm saving his more recent solo album - Shangri La - for the last leg in California as some of the songs were inspired by places there, as well as being recorded in the original Sixties Shangri La Studio in Malibu - and on original equipment as well!

Then a flashback to the end of the 90's and the album that summed up that decade - Urban Hymns by The Verve. Apart from the well known tracks like Bittersweet Symphony, The Drugs Don't Work and Lucky Man, there are several other blinding songs which are really powerful from the ballad Sonnet to the more abstracted Catching a Butterfly and Space & Time. Out of context with the rest of the day's music but totally appropriate to that particular section of the road and to my mood.

And then on to two hours of the Rolling Stones - who have a strange connection with The Verve. [I warn you in advance - this is the province of music nerds - but the violin part of Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve was actually "borrowed" from a riff written by Jagger and Richards in the 60's. The Stones' manager, Andrew Loog Oldham sued The Verve and won all the royalties from Bittersweet Symphony for The Stones. The Verve didn't make a penny from that song....]

Anyway! All the Stones classics right through the sixties and into the seventies. Speakers nearly blew up in the car and Mick, Keith and the band saw me through to Oklahoma and into the wide open plains again. Probably the greatest rock and roll band in the world today and after 40 years in the business.

It had to happen on this trip at some point. The Poet from Minnesota - Bob Dylan. I began with his best album - Blood On The Tracks. Written just after his divorce from his first wife Sara. A tremendous album. Full stop. So much range and variety and so many emotions - not to mention musical styles from ultra folk (Tangled Up In Blue) to hard core Blues (Meet Me In The Morning). I'll never get bored of this album.

The only thing to follow Dylan's best album is his second best - which used to be Desire - but since last year is perhaps his latest album - Modern Times. Bluesy, jazzy, splash of country and a new Dylan sound with a rougher voice, plenty of piano and a firm rhythm section make this a real treat. While it is something of a departure from what one would expect from Dylan, his trademarks are there in terms of social comment (Working Man's Blues) and the quirky poetic style of the lyrics.

Tomorrow's music is going to start with Tom Waits (who I was saving for California - but who I cannot resist listening to as I head off on Route 66 in the morning). It'll be his first album - Closing Time - from 1972. Still one of his finest records and that voice.....

The best description of Tom Wait's voice was from an American music critic who said that Wait's voice sounded "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car."

I'm looking forward to it already!

Day Seven - Houston, TX to Oklahoma City, OK

After a much needed rest in Houston, I headed back up I-45 towards Oklahoma aiming to get back on Route 66 by the evening.

The road going up was less full of "Used Armadillo" but I did see the most impressive road kill to date - a wolf. Whoever hit that wolf must have done some pretty serious damage to their vehicle - unless it was one of the myriad of 128 wheeler trucks that seem to own this stretch of road in Texas. I am assuming the only bigger road kill I may see will be a "highway worker" - probably lying next to a cheque for $10,000 (or at least if it was in Missouri - here in Texas Highway Workers may be free - who knows?)

Remarkable place names abound in Texas - again displaying the American fondness for appropriating place names from other cities or even entire countries. The Lebanese from Lebanon, Missouri are sure to be relieved to have some brethren in Texas. I am talking of the Palestinians from Palestine, who live not far away from a town called Italy, Texas. That in turn is near Athens, Texas which is in the same time zone (i.e. within driving distance) of Paris, Texas - made famous by the great Wim Wender's film of the same name....

Bizarre to say the least.

Interestingly, while in Houston I chatted with a Palestinian immigrant (from Jerusalem - the original Jerusalem - not the Jerusalem that will inevitably be located near Shitsville, Nebraska....). He told me there were around 125,000 Arabs in Houston and that life had been good to them - the majority being Lebanese and Palestinian (again, the genuine article). However, they were all now considering another place as their next stop climbing the ladder of prosperity and security. A place in the Middle East which offers them the best of America - opportunity, freedom, comparative safety - but without the bigotry, racism and distance from home (both literally and in terms of being far from their culture). That place? Dubai - of course.

In fact, I noticed a distinct similarity between Dubai and some of America's larger and more prosperous cities like Houston. Large immigrant population, an economy which has had to diversify and a growth of urban and suburban districts springing from the ground with "perfect" gated communities living in a Truman Show like environment where even the Town Square and "neighbourhood" have been instantly and artifically created to give a sense of comfort, home and security.

Of course communities don't grow like this - they need time and an opportunity to grow their own identity away from the schemes and dreams of architects, master planners and entrepreneurial real estate developers.

Interesting that the American Dream is beginning to become tarnished enough for some immigrants to want to return to where they came from....

Anyway, I guess there is one country whose name the Texans won't steal to name a new city . . . and that country would be Iraq....

Day Six - Layover in Houston, TX

Lazy day so far catching up with sleep and ensuring my bacon count is high enough.

American coffee sucks. There are no two ways about it. It's black water. Weak, flavourless and utterly pointless. No wonder so many places give refills away for free - it would be criminal to charge for it. Having drunk a bucket of the stuff for breakfast I am now off to plug into Starbucks and get a hit of the real stuff before heading into Houston central to see a client on a social visit and then GET ME AN I-PHONE. AMEN.

I considered Darwin's theory of evolution last night before sleeping and came to the conclusion that there is a new way of testing his theory on the highways of the USA. Road Kill.

I have been closely monitoring the road kill on the roads so far and have seen dogs, cats, rabbits, small rodents and numerous Armadillo. (Is Armadill-i the plural of Armadillo? Does anyone care?).

By my reckoning the Armadillo has evolved the least and fundementally failed to adapt to its environment based on the fact that they are leading two to one against any other species in terms of becoming road kill across the US.

Indeed Armadillos must be only marginally less dumb than the bald headed, tattooed truck drivers who squish them with their 48 wheeler monsters which tear down the highways like weapons of mass destruction.

Incidentally, in Missouri there were road signs on the side of the Freeway stating the following:

Do not hit workers.
Fines of $10,000 or loss of licence

I was shocked that the average American motorist had to be REMINDED not to run down innocent labourers fixing the highway . . .

"Homer, remember not to mow down any workers today while we drive to the West . . . "

"Doh! Oooops - sorry Marge."

"Homer! I guess it was only one, so it doesn't matter."

Even more alarming is that the penalty for hitting a worker is just $10,000 or losing your licence! No jail time or public persecution - extraordinary. [On a side note, I was reading USA Today this morning and there was an interesting article about a young man who was sentenced to ten years in jail in Georgia when he was 17 years old for "receiving oral sex" from a girl aged 15. What a country! Run down a worked on the highway and get a $10,000 fine. But a blow job and its 10 years in jail. . .Jesus wept.]

Fortunately I have not seen any "workers" joining the ranks of the Armadillo - but then the trip ain't over yet!

Now, that i-Phone . . .

Day Five - Tulsa, OK to Oklahoma City, OK then a detour to Texas....

Today began bright and early at 5.30am when I awoke and couldn't get back to sleep. Must have been my body reacting to the steamed broccoli I had managed to locate and have for dinner the previous evening...(To be fair the broccoli came with a garnish of a baked potato and a 12oz top Sirloin steak...ahem)

Anyway, after cleaning out the breakfast buffet of bacon and coffee I set of from Tulsa and travelled original Route 66 for about an hour along narrow windy roads until getting bored with going slowly and headed off for the turnpike to Oklahoma City which follows the Route - but not religiously. A bit like me.

Oklahoma City is oh so pretty - as the original song lyrics of Route 66 say. And they're not wrong. The city is very pretty with some very nice old churches dotted about and a nice sense of scale. The outskirts were ugly by contrast and I saw rather more of them than intended as my GPS - Janice as I like to call her - got all confused....

I then headed south towards Texas through some lovely countryside at the southern end of Oklahoma before hitting Texas proper and on to Dallas where the traffic was terrible.

There was a way of avoiding the traffic - The President George Bush Turnpike - but I refused this option on principle. Particularly galling was the idea of paying to be on a road of that name....

Anyway, I toughed it out and nearly ran out of gas before hitting the main freeway south to Houston.

The Texans are crap drivers. Full stop. They hog lanes, they drive at stupid speeds (either too fast or too slow) and they duck and dive in traffic. BUT - this is Texas and so I refrained from advising them of their errors as I believe I am quite allergic to bullets and they dish them out down here with massive generosity.

Music today has been great - Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris on their recent country collaboration album - "All the Roadrunning". His great guitar and rough voice - her amazing clear and tender voice (considered one of the all time great female country vocalists).

Then all the JJ Cale music I own for hours - starting with Call Me The Breeze which had me turn the volume up to full and through Cocaine and After Midnight to Drifter's Wife and so on. Cale is a troubador in the original sense of singing story tellers. Simple, subtle and THE perfect road music for America.

Finally a return to some Sheryl Crow and repeat plays at full volume of "Run baby, Run" - definitely being added to my list of all time classic road anthems and then The Dixie Chicks again. They come from Dallas but have been demonised in their own state for making a derogatory remark about President Bush (see yesterday's post) so I thought I would support them in the Lone Star state they call home by playing them loud and proud in the car (albeit at the risk of getting shot by an angry Texan).

My main observations of the day are that America is very big indeed. I drove nearly 600 miles today and on the map what I drove is a rather short and unimpressive little line.

And, oh yes, Americans are VERY fat.

I had a quick bite at a roadside burger emporium - NOT McDonald's I hasten to add - and the combined weight of the four staff must have been close to a metric ton. I have never seen fatter people in such a confined space - hardly a great advertisement for the products they serve. But fat people - and I mean REALLY fat people - are everywhere in the US.

They live on junk food, do no exercise and turn into greasy behemoths. Apart from almost instant revulsion at the fattest - you end up feeling sorry for them. It seems like they just don't know any better. Moreover, the difficulty you have finding something wholesome and healthy to eat in this country is staggering - particularly by the roadside which is a mass of fast food dives and burger stands.

Anyway - I am beginning to form some first conclusions about America and Americans today which I will elaborate on tomorrow or the next day....

I am taking a "day off" from the trail tomorrow and doing some shopping in Houston and seeing one of my clients whose headquarters are here. Then Thursday it's back up to rejoin Route 66 and head further west....

Hasta la vista....