THIS AIN’T KANSAS

Route 66 is full of kitsch tat, leftovers, curios and bric-a-brac. Exactly the kind of shit that Natalie loves.

Antique shops full to the brim with rusted old school lunchboxes, old licence plates, signs, 78rpm records (like the ones my mum gave me as I’m the only one in the family with a working “gramophone” - you know, the ones which you can’t play unless you have a hole-extension) dolls, gollywogs, broken bikes, kid’s cowboy pop-guns, 1940’s games and hundred year old photographs which make you think about dead people’s lives and just how ugly women were at the advent of photography. In actual fact I do quite like looking at all that stuff, but not all the time… for me the geography and people of the land are more important… The Knight Rider lunchbox was pretty cool though, but maybe only as it reminds me of my own Hasslehoff-like, thousand yard stare when I’ve had too little sleep, which is becoming nearly every night.

And we all know what happens when my insomnia hits…

Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, the year that Natalie was born and replaced by five Interstates, or Superslabs. Sometimes we take the replacement interstate and sometimes the old Mother Road which arcs into Kansas briefly. We hopped off Interstate 44 and onto the 400 to follow Route 66 passed a banana bridge constructed in the 1920’s; before the road came into being. We whizzed passed it at high speed.

In Kansas, we stopped in Gallena before making our way into Oklahoma, unfortunately missing the Spook Lights of Joplin. Strange balls of light that levitate above roads. Not cos we got lost, but because we arrived in daylight. However, that said sometimes the old route is not signposted at all, leaving it to your own imagination and internal compass. As a result we have taken wrong turns and bumped along farm tracks, while dark storm clouds gather over coloured carbon copies of Aunt Em’s farm.

If we saw a Tin Man, he would definitely feel at home in our giant baked-bean can. If he was searching for a heart, the lion for courage and the scarecrow for a brain, then what the hell am I searching for?

I’ve come to think I’m searching for something to search for…

Or something worth finding.

I think I found her.

Is that just plain old crazy?

Need.

Sleep.