joegoda | Nano Day 3 - No title as of yet...

For Capi, my reader:

As I headed out of Tulsa, the signs were good. The weather read clear skies ahead and it looked like, except for a bit through Colorado and points more north, the temperature was going to hold in the mid-fifties to the high sixties. Colorada and points north were tending to the high thirties to low fourties. It was gonna be chilly and that meant that I was extra glad I was sleeping in motels and bringing my jacket. Of course, weather being weather meant that it could and probably would change at any time.

The details of traveling on the open road can be incredibly boring, or they can be incredibly interesting, depending on who's doing the telling. Most of the trip Tulsa to Enid, and from Enid to Woodward contained nothing much, just lush greenery that had started to change their colors. It's a general misconception that Oklahoma is a dry and dusty place, without color and containing nothing but the most dull of folks.

That is most assuredly not the truth. Oklahoma has greenery all over the place. Granted, there are spots where the land is a bit barren and there are fields of soy and winter wheat that cause the countryside to look fallow, but in general, the sloping hills and the green of the prarie grasses are quite lovely. I have been pretty much all over the state and you can find every single terrain in that one state that you could find in all the other fifty. That is, if you don't count the ocean and the glaciers. Oklahoma has more shoreline than any other state, due to the large number of man-made lakes.

The Oklahoma sky has, in my opinion, the best blue. It's a soft, baby eye blue, and sometimes looks as if it could be scooped up and served as a sorbet. This was the sky that hung above me on my adventure.

Once I left Woodward, I pulled into the stretch of Oklahoma where you just sit back, hold the wheel, and let the car do all the work. Long, long stretches of road with nothing in your way except the other traffic. Houses purched along the way were back an acre or so from the road, so I could see them, but they weren't close enough to see much detail. There were a lot of white and yellow houses, with roofs of dark brown or black. There were also a lot of mobile homes, sitting alone, as if they didn't like the company of anyone else.

That could very well be. People in Oklahoma are some of the friendliest I've ever known, always quick to help a stranger, fast with a smile or a handshake or a hug. They also play very close to the chest. Yeah, they may like you, but that doesn't mean they trust you. They may help you, but they'll count the silver in the drawer when you're gone. It doesn't make them bad folks, just cautious.

When I got to Woodward I was tired and I was thirsty. I had been on the road for about three and a half hours and it was time to stop. I have driven a single fifteen hour stretch before, but I was much younger then, and besides, this trip was for me. I felt I owed it to myself to take my time, enjoy what the road had to offer me and see, really, what was out there. Besides, I find the most enlightening things when I stop unexpectedly.

Woodward, Oklahoma is a pretty small town, having a population just under twelve thousand. It's also where 412 turns northward, running through Fort Supply and then westward again, heading towards Guymon. It's a nicely kept little place. Fairly clean streets, happy people, or as happy as they can be. 412 is also called Oklahoma Avenue as it runs through Woodward. I pulled over at a shamrock station to fill the car and asked where a decent place to eat and rest my butt would be.

There were a couple of suggestions, but the one that stuck in my head was the Polly Anna Cafe. It was on ninth and Main, about two blocks off of 412, and just about a mile westward from me. That was just fine. As I was looking for something positive to come out of this trip, I figured that a place called Polly Anna was just the place.

I filled the car, pulled back onto the road and went looking for a sign that said ninth street. I always have trouble with this because there are cars behind me, and I just prefer to not get in their way. It's just a thing with me. I don't like being in someone's way, just like I don't want them to be in mine.

I found the turn, headed north about 2 miles and there she was, the Polly Anna Cafe. Home Cooking, though I seriously doubted they had cooking like mine. Through the windows I could see a number of patrons, sitting and chatting and eating. Polly Anna was a popular place, but it looked clean and friendly, so I pulled into the small parking lot, locked my car and went in.

I found a booth, not too far away from the register and sat down. The table had the expected red and white checkered tablecloth, and the booth was one of those old fashioned booths that look like it was once the back seat of an old chevy. The red naugahyde was worn and even cracked in some places. There was a peice of green electrical tape over one of the tears. It struck me as odd that the owner used green instead of red, but strangely it didn't look out of place.

I pulled a menu from its place among the salt and pepper shakers and the metal napkin holder. The front of the menu proclaimed Polly Anna - Home of Home Cookin'. I was hoping it was just edible, because my stomach was making sounds telling me that if I didn't eat now, I would pay for it later.

I scanned the menu as the waitress, a big boned woman with long brown hair, brought me a glass of water. Now, to me, this was an amazing thing. In most of the restaurants I've been in, nobody brings you water unless you ask for it. In fact, it had been years since water was brought to the table before the order was made. I looked up at her face, a broad face showing her native american heritage of high cheekbones and sparkling brown eyes and thanked her.

She looked surprised and asked me what for. I told her that the last time water was brought to me before I ordered was probably back in the early seventies. She laughed and said she remembered those days, when life was more simple. She explained that the owner of Polly Anna's was an old coot and he believed the customer came first, followed by the water, then the order.

She asked me if I was ready to order and I nodded. I ordered the beef brisket dinner, with a side of mashed potatoes, brown gravy and green beans. I also ordered a side of cole slaw and a cup of coffee, black. I read her name tag and as she turned away, I thanked her again, and this time included her name, which was Sue. The name tag didn't say Susan, or Susie. It just said Sue. She winked at me and said "Any time, sugar." and went to deliver my order.

Names are important. Not just to those of us that go around naming things, but to the things themselves. It has been said, in numerous movies and books, as well as legend and lore, that names have power. To know the true name of a thing is to have power over it. That is one of the reasons why I always check name tags and always get the name of the person that is helping me, even and especially if it's their job to help me. I have found that when you address a person by their name, they instantly become more friendly, more helpful and are more willing to do just that little extra for you. Names are important, not only because they keep everyone from being named Fred, but also because it gives the sense of individuality. Granted, it's a false sense, but illusion is one of the most important tools we have in our arsenal against the mundane.

I sat in the booth, biding my time until the order came, thinking about my life, watching the people and considering my journey. I am, by nature, a lazy person, and would rather not take a journey that I don't want to or have to. Most of my trips have been because I had to. Either some family member needed something only I could do, or it was for business, or it was simply because it was time to do my annual guilt trip to see my mother. Rarely had I ever done a trip just because I wanted to. I think it was because I was always afraid that the money I used on the trip would be better spent some other way, some more useful way. I had made a trip to Santa Fe in New Mexico once, just to see one of my adopted siblings, and it was one of those spur of the moment things where I just packed the car and went. Quite a bit like this one, actually, except I didn't have any sort of mystical signs telling me that I needed to go.

Sue brought my order to the table, carrying the tray in that incredibly expert way that only long time waitstaff can do. I've seen one woman carry full dinners to a table of eight, including drinks. The only thing I could think of when I saw her balancing the three trays was that she had definite control of her localized gravity as well as superb muscular control. She was a little bitty thing, too, probably weighed in at about 120 or so. Sue, on the other hand, was probably closer to 190 and was only carrying one tray with two plates and a cup of coffee. Still, she manuvered between the tables and chairs and outstretched legs as nimble as any NFL player.

She sat the plates down in front of me, asked me if there would be anything else. I looked up at her broad face and brown eyes and smiled my charm smile. "Nope," I said, "Every looks just fine." She smiled back, touched my arm, and wandered off to take the next customer's order.

The dinner was quite good, actually. The brisket was well seasoned, and there was a bottle of barbque sauce on the table so I could control the amount that went on. The green beans were crispy and tender, an oxymoron that was very tasty. I think they used a bit of bacon fat in the bean water for seasoning. The potatoes and gravy were soft without being mushy, and the gravy had the soft silky taste of meatloaf. I asked Sue, when she drifted by, if it was meatloaf gravy and she looked surprised. "Yes, it is. How did you know?"

I told her it was because nothing tastes quite like meatloaf gravy. I also told her that if that was how the meatloaf tasted, I would be sure to order some next time I was through.

She asked me when that would be, and I told her that it would probably be in a few weeks. I told her that I had plans to go to the Oregon Vortex, and that I would be passing by here on my way back. She asked me where I was from, and I told her I was from Tulsa.

She nodded, smiled and said, "I went to the Vortex, once, a long time ago. Back when I was married to my first husband." She looked around for her boss, I guess, and not seeing him, sat down in the booth across from me. "It was pretty weird, let me tell you," she continued. "I mean, it had the normal things you'd expect in a place like that. Touristy trapy, if you know what I mean. Buildings that slanted weird, and there was this neat thing where Bobby looked shorter than me. He wasn't, though. He was six foot six." She went quiet for a moment in rememberance. "It was neat though. Had a weird feel to it, too. Sorta like when Alice went into the rabbit hole." She slid neatly out of the booth and stood. "You be safe out there, you hear? Weird things happen on the road. There's a lot of crazy people out there." She reached up and brushed a stray strand of hair away from her forehead. "How long do you figure it will take you?"

I told her my trip route, explained that it was one of those adventure things, just for me.

She sighed. "I wish I could do something like that. It's been so long since I got out of this hell hole."

I told her that from what I had seen of Woodward, though it hadn't been much, it looked like a pretty nice place.

"Oh, it's nice enough for a small town," she said. "But the thing about small towns is you either have a whole bunch of the same, or you get weird things happening. It always seems that the smaller the town, the weirder the crime." Someone was calling for her. She turned to them and raised her index finger, asking for just a moment. "Anyway, sugar, you be safe out there, and when you come back through, I'll get you some meatloaf, on the house. Okay?"

I thanked her and told her I'd make sure to stop by on my way back. She winked at me again, told me to make sure that I do, and off she went, stately steamship that she was, to see to the needs of her other guests. I watched her go, smiling. Names are important. They get you want you need, even if they don't always get you what you want.

Time was creeping up on me, and it was just heading towards two in the afternoon. I had about six more hours of driving to go before I reached Trinidad, so I finished my dinner, left a five dollar tip for a seven dollar meal and got up to leave. As I passed Sue on the way out, I touched her shoulder, thanked her again and told her that I'd remember her. I told her I'd bring her back something from the Vortex. She smiled like an eight year old at the fair and blushed. I told her goodbye, left the restuarant and drove back onto 412. I pointed the van's nose westward and pressed on the accelerator.

I turned on the radio, and heard the line from Springteen's Born To Run that goes "Baby this town rips the bones from your back, Its a death trap, its a suicide rap"... and knew it was a song for Sue. I promised her I would remember her, and I still do. She was one of those shining souls you meet on the road.

The sun was beating down as best it could as Fall fell, not quite measuring up to the heat of an Oklahoma summer, but strong enough to keep it from being more chilly than was tolerable. Still, I turned the heat on just a bit, to blow the dust out of the vents. I knew that once the sun went down, it was gonna be cold, for sure and true.

I turned Northwest on 412 and blew past Fort Supply, a sleepy little almost nothing of a town. With a population of not quite four hundred, it was more of a hamlet than a town. Turning back West I almost, but not quite, missed May, which coincidentally was the home town to Tom Cullen, the half-wit in Stephen King's The Stand. After that, it was open road and a few store fronts until I slowed down through Guymon. Oklahoma towns are notorious speed traps, and when the sign says 35, it means 35.

Like most of these tiny towns, Guymon's slightly under eleven thousand population depended on folks getting stopped to fund their city works. I wasn't going to be one of them. I did love the feel of the place though. History oozed out of every window, and ghosts of the past whispered past my windows as I left Guymon in my rear window.

A little hour later, Boise City, another Oklahoma speed trap pretending to be a town, slipped out of sight. Boise City, besides being the spot where five different interstates highways met, is a dying place. Everywhere were the sad signs of decay and depression. It saddens me to see places like that, where the young have decided the world offers better opportunity in larger towns, and their family, their mothers and fathers stay behind because it's where their parents lived, and their parents before them. There wasn't any visible signs that the town had gone to the dogs, it was just a feeling, just an aura about the place. It was friggin' depressing, really. I was glad to be shed of it.

A bit less than an hour later on a Southwesterly drive and the border of Oklahoma had passed under my wheels. Three miles into New Mexico, I came to the only part of the drive that touched Texas. The absolute, most Northwestern tip of the corner of the Texas Panhandle brushed against 412.

It's not that that I don't like Texas... no, actually it is that I don't like Texas. It has a smarmy sort of egotistical sense about it that I just don't like. I have known a number of people that used to live there. My very best friend in Tulsa was born there, and my wife was born there. Good folks. It's the land itself that doesn't feel right. And that's an oddity in and of itself. Whenever I'm in Texas, the longer I'm there, the better I feel. There's something there that just affects the ego, and makes one feel as if there is really and truly nothing that couldn't be done. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just something that feels not quite right. It's an illusion. Like being on steroids. Or maybe some really good drugs. Illusion, but not reality. I think, since I tend to be very honest with myself, that is where the crux of my issue with Texas lay. The state of Texas causes me to lie to myself, and that is one sin I can't tolerate.

Clayton, New Mexico, the first town on the Santa Fe Trail, was rather cool to be in. The sun had gotten fairly down on the horizon, and had sunk, leaving it's ruddish reminder that it should, all things being equal and the Universe being a good place, be back tomorrow. I didn't have time to spend in Clayton, but it looked interesting. I made a note to spend more time on the way back. I did stop in at the visitor center, however, and picked up some information. Clayton sits at the foot of the Rabbit Ear moutains, named after a Cheyenne Cheiftain.

As the rest of the world started to move westward, the area around where Clayton would be was one of the spots for stopping and restocking before crossing the Seneca and Corrumpa creeks. It was here that Cheif Rabbit Ear and his braves would ambush the wagontrains and it was near here that the Spanish Cavalry decided the Rabbit Ear had become too much of a bother. They killed him and named the Mountains after him. Yep, Clayton was definitely an interesting place.

The mountains nearby have a lot of crystal feel to them, quartz and some turquoise and tourmaline. I could smell it. These mountains resonated some serious energy. It would be a good place to recharge, toss of some negative energy and continue on, once whatever was up ahead was done with. Course, if it was just a fun thing, then Clayton would be a cool place to just hang around for a hour or so. Good places to recharge are hard to find.

I changed my mind at this point. I was going to follow 412 all the way to Springer, but decided it would just be cooler to follow the old Santa Fe Trail. I turned North onto interstate 87 and headed to Trinidad, about 2 hours away. It was getting darker, which is rather silly to say, since it was already night, but trust me on this. Night in the mountains is a darker night than you'll find pretty much anywhere else. Maybe the nights in the swamps are pretty dark. Maybe they're even spookier than in the mountains. But mountain nights are nights when you tend to truly believe there are Gods and Goddesses and they do indeed walk the Earth.

To keep some of the spirits that I don't believe in away, I turned on the radio, to see what it had to say. I had to laugh. Right out of 1969, when I was in the Boy Scouts, working to build what would become the dam that built Lake Skiatook near Tulsa, straight from my childhood to the middle of the dark night was playing "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum. How very cool, and how very appropriate.

Driving at night through very dark terrain allows you to see the world through different eyes. Me, I like night driving. I look around while I drive, see houses and towns in the distance and liken them to stars that have fallen from the sky and settled on the Earth. In someways, I like to think we're all like that. Stars that have fallen. It's very beautiful, and quite possibly the closest I've ever come to feeling pure peace in my soul, if I actually have a soul. Night driving, with clear roads, and only the occasional moron heading the other direction with their brights on. Other than that glaring irritant, I had a wonderful time driving the two hours.

I passed a number of near empty hamlets and drove through the towns of Grenville and Des Moines, all put to bed and mostly sleeping, just letting the night lights of their fallen stars reflect so I could see them. I stopped at the one stopsign that existed in the town of Capulin where 325 bumps into 87, and then continued northernly until I got to Raton, where 87 stopped and 25 took over, heading pretty much due north.

Raton is the northern most sign of true civilization until Trinidad. It's still not much of a town, only about seven thousand folks live there, but I was tired and just a tad hungry. I stopped in at a truckstop and got a refill for my coffee, a hot dog, and a pack of cigarettes. Yes, I smoke. Get over it. I'm not obnoxious about it, and I'm not worried about dying before my time. Nobody dies before their time. Pure and simple.

I stood outside of that truckstop just inside the invisible border of Raton and breathed the air and watched the traffic sssshhhhzzzz by. There was a hitch-hiker across the road. A young woman, by the looks of her, maybe twenty-five, maybe a bit older, maybe a little younger. Definitely too young to be out and hitching by herself. She was holding a sign up to every car that passed her. I squinted and tried to read it. When I got it a bit more in focus, it said "Vortex or Bust!"

What the hell? I rubbed my eyes and looked again. This time the sign read "Vegas or Bust!", which made a bit more sense to me. Vegas would be a place someone would want to go to, even hitch to, but Vortex? I don't know if there IS a town called Vortex, and the coincidence that I was going to a place called Vortex would be a bit much for even this very strange Universe. Still, I rubbed my eyes again, trying to get the road dust out of them, and tried again. Sure enough, it still said "Vegas or Bust!" Heading in the entirely wrong direction from me.

Now, I don't pick up hitchers as a rule. Nowadays, you never know what they may be like. Crazy people are all over, and though I have a really good 'Snakes in the Head' sense, there are always those out there that seem normal until the wrong word or the wrong whatever sends them reaching into their bag and next thing you know, out comes the chainsaw and you become a statistic.

Still, this young woman was just asking for trouble. She shouldn't be hitching at this time of night, on this highway, not that it would be any different on a different highway during the day time. I went into the truckstop, bought a cup of coffee, went back outside and crossed the road over to her. She looked at me warily. I called out a hello, I brought you some coffee, thinking that would be my way of saying "Hey, I'm not a kidnapper, really."

She was indeed young, barely any lines on her face, and she stood with that sense of nervous ease when you think you're immortal. When not holding her Vegas sign, she also had her hands wrapped around her, and I could tell she was shivering. No wonder. All she was wearing was a light sweater, a t-shirt and jeans. And boots of course. Fancy leather boots with fringe around the top. Other than that, she was wearing not a whole lot to keep the near 40 degree weather from hypotherming her skinny body. She looked like she weighed just a bit more than 120 pounds, but not much. From what I could tell she barely had any hips, and barely had any breasts. If her face had not contained the maturity that it did, I would have sworn she was about fifteen years old.

When I got closer, the light from the truckstop and the light from the moon up in the clear sky reflected from her eyes. She looked like a feral cat in her eyes. Human eyes reflect differently than animals, and hers had a whole nuther look to them for a second. Then I blinked and it was obviously just a trick of the light. She had long brown hair that fell straight back from her forehead, a wide mouth with thin lips, and her eyes, though wide, were almond shaped. Her eyebrows appeared to be higher on her face than most people's, and gave her the appearance of being always surprised. I held out the hot coffee for her.

"It's a bit late to be hitching a ride, isn't it?" I asked gently, still trying to not frighten her.

She blinked at me, slowly. I mean, she blinked slowly. Her eyelids came down at a one-two beat, then held closed for a one-two beat, and then took that long to go back up. Weird. I remember thinking that it was possible that my spidey sense read me wrong on this one. And then she smiled. Her lips pulled away from teeth that on her looked absolutely perfect, but on anyone else would have looked... dangerous. She had fangs.

Not vampire-like fangs. Vampires are stupid. The concept of the undead, whatever that means, walking among the living, and drinking their blood? Please, people. The only thing that even comes close were some of the parties I used to go to when I was much younger, and I will not go into that.

She had fangs like you see on some folks where their incisors were a bit long and rather pointed. On her, it worked, and was actually quite attractive. And a bit shocking. The only thing I could figure was that I was getting tired. I still had a bit to go before Trinidad, even though it was only about fifty miles away. I didn't want to stay in Raton. I had been here once before, about twenty-three years ago. It's a nice place to stop at a truckstop in, but I certainly wouldn't want to sleep here.

She reached out and took the steaming cup from my hand. Her voice was soft and low and very, very musical when she said, "Thank you. It is a bit chilly."

I looked up and down the road, looking for traffic. What traffic there was, and there wasn't very much, moved by without slowing down. "I don't think you're going to have much luck tonight." I looked at her and smiled my charm smile. "Going to Vegas?"

She nodded. "Las Vegas, New Mexico, not Nevada. It's only a couple of hundred miles down the road. I was going to meet up with some... friends who were going to help me get to Oregon."

A big red warning sign went up in my head. Blood rushed up to my head and my ears sung from the pressure. I'm sure I must have stammered. "Oregon?"

She nodded again. "I live there. I haven't been back for a very long time, and I need to get home soon."

I swallowed. "You've been away to school? College?"

"Oh no," she laughed. "I've just been out traveling, to see what there is out here." She covered her mouth when she laughed, a very cute thing, and she tilted her head down when she did it. "You know how it is, sometimes you just have to go adventuring. To see something new. To get out of your shell."

I certainly did. Coincidences were starting to pile up, and very quickly. Makes me wish I had some sort of sign to guide me, but unfortunately all I had was my instinct. Well, perhaps not so unfortunate. I have very good instincts. I just needed some room, some time, to get calm enough to be able to listen to them.

"Say," I coughed. "Would you be interested in a hot dog? Something to eat?" I looked at her smiling, young face, and nodded in the direction of the truckstop. "I don't think you're gonna get a ride anytime soon, it's cold out, you look hungry, and I have a cell phone you could use to call your friends." I tried smiling my charm smile again, but somehow I don't think it was working all that well.

It took a long time for her to answer. Long enough that I was starting to shiver myself. Then she nodded sharply and said, "Sure. Just promise me you aren't an axe murderer or something."

"I promise," I said. Leading the way across the road, I said to her, "I just want you to know that I don't pick up hitchhikers. It's just not something I do. Well, okay, I did once, a long time ago. But still... it's just not safe."

"Oh, I agree," she said. "I've been to New York and back and I can tell you that if I was any more East of here, hitchhiking would have been out of the question."

"Then how did you get here?" I asked as we got to the other side of the road.

"I walked a lot," she said. "Sometimes I would stay in one place for a week or so, maybe a month, make a friend and they would give me a ride to the next town. I got here from Kansas City. A friend of mine was going to Dodge City to visit family, so I hitched a ride with her. I walked the rest of the way." Her voice was wonderful. It had a quiet sultryness to it that I couldn't define. She also had a bit of an accent as well. Something maybe slightly Yugoslavian. But very soft.

I held the door open for her and felt relief at the warmth inside the building. It wasn't very large, and there were only a couple of places to sit down. We made our way to a small corner, pulled up some chairs and I went to get her some food.

I came back with two hamburgers, two orders of fries and fresh coffee. I sat them down and took the chair across from her.

"You know," I began, "I had an uncle that walked from Pennsylvania to Oregon with five hundred dollars in his pocket. He never learned to drive, so he walked or hitched rides wherever he went."

She nodded, and through a mouthful of burger said, "Yes, exactly so." She sipped some coffee and let it wash her mouth out. "I never learned to drive, either." She looked out at the road. "I'm not so sure I want to. Besides, I don't think I should."

"Why is that?" I asked.

"You might say it is for religious reasons." She brushed back that stray hair again, and I noticed her ears were very delicate, and had a slightly pointed appearance. "None of my family even owns a car."

I sat there, across the table from this very strange young woman, looking at her. I wanted to ask her the question, and the question was incredibly stupid. It was a question I had never, ever asked anyone, and it was a question that should not ever be asked with any sort of seriousness attached to it. But I had to ask, and so I did.

"You're not elvish, are you?" And immediately felt like the incredible moron that the question warranted.

Now, before I go further, let me explain. I do believe in the little folk. I have talked to them, and drunk their nectar. When I was a tiny boy, somewhere around the age of five or six, I lived in a very old house that had a very old tree out front, and a very, very old tree out back. There was also a lilac bush, and I would play on the front porch of the very old house and sometimes I would listen to the whispers that would come from the lilac bush and hear whispers answer back from the tree in the front. And in the tree out back, I would would lay in the branches for hours and hours, just being, just listening. Stories were told and rumors were passed and I got to know them, and they got to know me. The little folk, who I would never see, told me their tales and one night I left an empty cup in the bough of the tree out back. The next morning the cup was half full of liquid, very sweet, as if it were nectar from a rare flower. I drank it all.

Yep, it might have been stupid. It might have been bird pee. Doesn't matter. I was a child who believed in brownies and faireys and elves and I knew that I had talked to them and that they had left a magical drink for me in the bough of one of their favorite trees.

I believed in little folk then. I believe in them now. There is more, sayeth the Bard, in heaven and on Earth than are drempt in our little philosophies. Just cuz I'm an old guy doesn't mean I don't believe. I'm a cynic, but I cannot deny what I have experienced. And I don't disbelieve in magic. In fact, just the opposite. It's magicians that I don't like.

Regardless of all that, when she heard the question, her eyebrows went even higher on her forehead than they had been before, and she laughed. Not a quiet laugh, little twitters that means that a person is amused. This was a loud, bellyfull, Ethel Merman sort of laugh. Everyone in the truckstop turned to look. It was not an obnoxious laugh, and in fact, caused more than just a couple of smiles from those around us. It was infectious and I found myself smiling broadly. It took a few moments for her laugh to trickle down to a giggle, and the giggle to peter out to a chuckle. Finally she wiped her eyes and answered.

"No, I'm not an elf. I'm a human as you are." She squinted at me and asked, still smiling, "You are human, aren't you?" And then she broke out in laughter at the look on my face. "Of course you are," she said. "Only a human would ask such a question." Smiling, she took another bite.