Welcome To Oregon

WelcomeToOregon
Originally uploaded by JaneDoughnut

Wish you were here.

Idaho

Idaho is a martian place, filled with shiny tin buildings, struggling brush, and farms that are growing either potatoes or dirt. It's hard to tell. The sky is filled with dust. It's orange. I think there may be mountains in the distance, but they fade into that rust-colored haze.

---

Last year, the harvest consisted of twelve pounds of potatoes and nineteen tons of rock. Confused buffalo raped all their cattle to death and the cat died of leukemia. Lightning caught the barn on fire and storms flooded the septic tank, spilling sewage into the toilets, bathtub, and somehow, the refrigerator. The county social club wouldn't let them in after that, because they smelled like street people. Their only son ran the tractor into an exposed electric cable, killing himself and destroying the tractor. So when the state ran them off their land in order to extend the Interstate, the Dogleys didn't have much reason to protest.

They accepted a $250,000 check and packed up their belongings, unsure of where to go, but not really caring.

Anywhere but here, thought Ma.

I just hope this truck will make it out of Idaho, thought Pa.

Of course, Pa had no way of knowing the truck was just as pleased to be leaving, and it hummed happily all the way to Colorado. The Dogleys bought a brewery and lived happily ever after.

 

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Kudzu

Were it not for the kudzu, Phillip might have believed it was just rotten luck.

On the day he was scheduled to leave Mosley, a tornado hit the power plant. Any business without a generator was out of business. This included his bank, his storage unit, and of course half the gas stations in town.

Oddly enough, this wasn't the first time such a thing had happened in Mosley. Tornadoes rolled through almost every May, right after the high school graduation ceremonies. Heck, it had happened right after his graduation ten years ago, and delayed him for so long he'd missed his chance at going to college in New York.

And every September, copious amounts of snow fell, generally at the airport. Mosley held the Louisiana record for annual snowfall by a good 14 inches. And was regularly setting new ones.

Determined to stay on schedule, Phillip sacrificed the possessions locked away at the self-storage unit, called in every debt ever owed him to collect cash, and filled up at a ghetto station notorious for diluting its gasoline with canola oil.

While backing out of his driveway, he ran over the debris of his neighbor's picket fence and destroyed the back passenger side tire. An hour later, after unloading his trunk, pulling the spare out from under everything, changing tires and reloading, he found a detour out of town that was relatively tornado-aftermath free.

He wasn't even surprised when he found himself behind a long line of cars on the northbound Interstate. An 18-wheeler had jackknifed and turned over, and authorities found it nearly impossible to move. Bulldozers were being diverted from tornado damage to deal with the accident. The driver of the rig swore he had swerved to avoid a naked child running through the street and, in his confusion, somehow flipped all those tons of steel. No one else would admit to having seen the mysterious toddler.

It took three hours to clear the road enough to let one lane of traffic through, on the shoulder. This resulted in several more flat tires and delays as people drove through the broken glass and metal.

All of this, no matter how unlikely, Phillip could have accepted. Oh, he was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, but eventually he would have accepted it as a string of mean coincidences. Until just inside the city limits, the road dissolved into a green mess. The road was blocked again. Pulling right up to it, Phillip made out the vines and leaves of kudzu. Kudzu was leaping from the trees and climbing out of the ditches. Kudzu was having a party in the middle of the Interstate, holding hands and singing and daring anyone to try crashing.

Well, this was not the day to test Phillip.

He was heading north one way or another.

He pushed the accelerator down to the floor. Singing Red Rover, Red Rover, send Phillip right over. The odometer hit 88 miles an hour as Phillip flew at the vines, into them, and no one in Mosley ever heard from him again.

 

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Oh Beautiful

Spacious Skies

Amber Waves of Grain

Purple Mountain Majesties

I haven't even made it to the fruited planes yet, and I think I've fallen in love with America.

More pictures as we have time.

Running Late

Every morning, I drive forty-five minutes to work. It's too expensive to live in the city, and I prefer the solitude of the empty roads radiating from it. But it doesn't help my chronic tardiness.

On this particular morning, I was in such a rush that I couldn't even stop to grab any music, leaving me alone with my thoughts, which consisted of repeating variations on dammit I'm going to be late again.

i can't believe i haven't been fired yet
you'd think i would have outgrown this
turn green turn green turn green
dammit i forgot my lunch

Until my internal rant was interrupted by a loud POP and my car began to jerk to the left, right, and left again. I braked hard, pulled onto the grassy shoulder, and examined the damage.

"Fuck!" I shouted, any hope of making it to work by 10AM evaporating. Both front tires were ripped to pieces. "How the hell does a thing like that happen?"

As if in answer, my tapping foot came down on top of a nail, which pierced my rubber sole and the bottom of my foot. I swore some more as blood filled my shoe.

"Are you okay?"

I jumped, though of course I was already hopping, at the small girl who had appeared beside me. Her hair, dress, and skin were all similar shades of beige, and her big brown eyes glittered.

"I'm, uh... where did you come from?"

She pointed wordlessly behind her. She was a creepy little kid, but with no other traffic on the highway, I was glad she'd appeared.

"I'm fine. I hurt my foot, and I've got two flat tires. Do you know where I could find a phone or a gas station?"

She paced around in small circles, carefully avoiding a dragonfly corpse on the ground. "My mom will help. My mom always helps when people get in trouble out here." She began to skip away, then turned around. "Come on!"

I followed her through the buffer of trees that separated the highway from the tiny neighborhood. Every time I brought my right foot down, the blood-soaked shoe make a squishing noise, and the ball of my foot started throbbing. But I figured I at least had a good excuse now for not making it in to the office.

She led me to a cotton candy colored duplex and motioned for me to follow her through the door. It opened into a dark foyer, the kitchen visible through the open door at the end of the hall. A woman of the same beige tones stood at the sink washing dishes. Little Creepy ran through and tugged at the hem of Mrs. Creepy's apron. I almost expected to hear Mommy mommy look what I found can we keep him?

The woman turned around and smiled.

"My name's Chris, ma'am," I said. "I'm sorry to barge in on you, but I had a little car trouble, and your daughter said you might be able to help out. If I could just use your telephone..."

"I've already called, Chris."

"Huh?"

She laughed; a tinny, false sound. "Lisa said someone was in trouble on the highway, so I went ahead and called a tow. They should be here in about thirty minutes. You want some coffee while you wait?"

"When did she tell you about me?" I sounded more accusatory than I meant to, and she looked a little alarmed.

"Right before she ran out the door to find you. Lisa just has an ear for that sort of thing. If you're outdoors you can hear the highway perfectly from here."

We eyed each other suspiciously while Lisa poured us imaginary coffee from her plastic kitchen set. "Careful, it's hot," she warned me, handing me a tiny purple cup.

"Thank you," I said seriously, lifting it to my lips. This calmed both me and her mother down. "What was your name?" I asked the woman.

"Liz Kitchings," she said, extending her hand, smiling, finally looking like the harmless and helpful middle-aged woman she surely was.

"I appreciate you calling a tow for me. Could I use your phone to call my office?"

When I came back to the kitchen afterwards, Liz and Lisa were both gone. After looking around for them, I decided I should leave a thank you note and walk back to the car. I set it on the kitchen table next to Lisa's cups and left through the front door, leaving it unlocked behind me.

The tow was waiting for me when I got back to the car. He was a sturdy, blond-haired man in denim coveralls, and he paced anxiously back and forth as I walked toward him. "I'm sorry you had to wait for me. I was at a woman's home just past the trees making a phone-"

"Liz's," he said.

"Yes, she was very helpful."

"She always is," he said, with an indescribable look on his face. It was then that I noticed the mason jar in his hand, half-filled with nails.

"What the fuck is going on here?" I said, taking a step back.

"I'll pay for the tires. I'm sorry. I'll take care of it. I just... needed to hear her voice."

"What?"

"Liz. She calls anytime someone breaks down out here. Makes small talk, tells me about her morning, what Lisa did to make her laugh that day. It's almost like they never died. Like maybe she was just running late."

 

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