Where's Jack?

Your Favorite Restaurant

Everyone has a favorite restaurant – maybe even more than one.  Perhaps there is a restaurant that is perfect for a quick family meal, or the little mom-and-pop place where you take out-of-town company, or a romantic spot for an intimate dinner for two.  You might even have a favorite restaurant in another city.  Whenever travel allows, this perfect combination of menu and atmosphere always requires fitting a bistro, or a café, or even a diner into the itinerary.  For me, I crave a specific taste, a flavor that combines a splendid splash of memories, tastes, and wilted lettuce.  Yes, I admit it, I am a sucker for Jack In The Box tacos, and since the chain hosts no establishments near me, I constantly equate them with my traveling adventures.

My first taste of the low-cost, low-prep, skinny, greasy-bottomed, crunchy-topped snacks occurred at the franchise adjacent to my elementary school.  My addiction began after I left Arizona and the least-ethnic Mexican food no longer became readily available to me.  I began to plot the locations where I could find that friendly clown in other cities and towns that I frequented.  Both St. Louis and Los Angeles have outlets just at the end of the street from the rental car lots.  Heading west on Interstate 10, at the first exit inside the Texas state line, I found another branch.  Like little taco oases on the path to wherever I may be headed, Jack In The Box greeted me, welcomed me, and gave me a little moment of remembrance to my childhood and to previous expeditions, as well as a quick nibble to keep me satisfied as I hit the road.

Another Sense Of Direction

Stuck in construction traffic on the south side of Lake Tahoe, I have already added a couple hundred miles to the odometer, crossing Donner Pass, touching the waters at Sutter’s Mill, and helping push a stranded traveler out of the snow.  An adventure like this doesn’t need the hum-drum of bumper-to-bumper vehicles.  My saving grace, off the road to the left, I see my beloved Jack.  I pull in, I order the two-for-a-dollar special, and I sit with my laptop and my tasty, unhealthy treat watching for the traffic to clear.  When I landed in El Paso, (see “El Paso, El Paso,” January 2013) Jack held a position across from the airport’s entrance as I turned east.  He always knows right where to be when I need him.

Crossing from Lewiston, Idaho into Clarkston, Washington, Jack again makes an appearance.  I make a mental note, as I have just finished breakfast, and after my brief dart into Oregon (see “I Owe Oregon,” February 2013), I return to his side.  As I sit enjoying my crunchy, greasy, messy flavors, I leaf through my beautiful atlas (see “Traveling With Boys,” November 2011), I place a check-in call with my brother, who also embraces my JITB affliction, and I plot the lengthy afternoon drive up and over Lolo Pass through the Bitterroot Mountains.  With his charming ad campaigns, his bouncy, bobbing antenna toppers, and his irresistibly tempting tacos, Jack In The Box accompanies my adventures, just like my musical soundtrack, the wind in my air, and the beckoning of the open road, making taste another vibrant element of the journeys I have taken.  His low-cost corn tortilla snacks may not be the gourmet selection of more refined palettes, but I connect that taste with the memories of dozens of drives, each one of them savory and simple, but full of spice, aptly affordable, and a taste I frequently crave.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park (Part 2)

 

 

 

Guadalupe Mountains National Park (Part 1)

 

  

 

El Paso, El Paso

Bee Sting

Travelling on business implies frequent-flyer miles and expense reports, but my father’s regional accounts just as often meant driving from one college campus to another persuading academic scholars and research fellows that the scientific equipment his company offered superseded any other current technology.  In the twentieth century, top-of-the-line technology changes daily, but in the mid-seventies, when criminology could be branded closer to “Quincy” than to “CSI,” my Dad knew his stuff and his Southwestern road trips sustained our family and occasionally served as the back drop to our summer vacations.

When his traveling road show took our family to the western tip of the Lone Star State, we visited Carlsbad Caverns National Park (see “Hidden Beauty” from March 2012), and several other places that I recall savored of beauty and adventure, places where the sites provided more than ample reward for the time in the car, and places that I would visit again with my own children.  And then there was El Paso, Texas.  I have one vivid memory of the town across the Rio Grande from Juarez: my first bee sting.  Let’s just say the sting of El Paso stayed in my memory for quite a while.

Smoke Across the Border

 

I admit there are cities I plan to see, but flight schedules and itineraries often negate the opportunities, like Oakland and Spokane, Pittsburgh and San Antonio.  And to get to Carlsbad Caverns, El Paso or Midland would have to serve as the rental car pick-up and drop-off point and little else.  Recalling my first experience in El Paso, I site, just  seriously contemplated Midland, but price trumped memory and so my flight touched down hours from my final destination. Once I exited the plane in this 600K+ city, I was refreshingly surprised to find rental cars on out the doorway of a delightfully small, yet fully-functional, well-themed terminal, and a charming place from which to depart on my three-day adventure.

 

Across the river into Ciudad Juarez, smoke from a distant fire rose into the smoggy horizon, yet to the east, I drove past a dozen landmarks I had eyed from my airplane window: wind turbines, and mountain peaks, green pastures and sharp bends in the road. As I approached El Capitan of Texas and the highest points deep in the heart of

Guadalupe Mountains National Park, I witnessed and recorded an entirely unique view of this corner of the oversized state, and carried away a distinctly altered view of the city with which I often associated unhappiness as a child.  And when I returned to the border city forty-eight hours later, the smoke still rose on the horizon beyond the Big River.  Perhaps some things linger longer than they ought.

Learning To Drive

On The Open Road

I think my passion for driving stems from my pent up years when driving was just out of my reach.  When I turned sixteen, my parents owned a standard transmission automobile, and despite my father’s occasional weekend efforts in the Intel parking lot, the car knew I had no business driving with two feet.  After I turned eighteen they finally purchased an automatic, and then proceeded to drive our entire family to the Midwest for our exile in the snow.  Using one foot made the process easier; the snow, however, took me out.  This happened just after they purchased a brand new car for my older sibling; my regards to any fellow second-born siblings.

On the drive from southern California to Illinois, I had my first chance behind the wheel on the open highway from Tucumcari, New Mexico.  For the first time in family history, neither of my parental units sat behind the wheel.  Dad took the navigator’s bucket seat, and for the benefits of legroom, Mom took the center position in the back seat.  From her perch in what I more commonly refer to as the, “Oh Shit Seat,” she gaped straight out the window at the semi-trailers and experienced drivers with whom I shared the two east-bound lanes of Interstate 40.  And as one of my favorite movie lines quotes, “I do not believe she drew breath,” from the time she climbed in the back seat until I brought the vehicle to a stop in Amarillo, Texas.

Self Teaching

I do believe every driver should be able to drive a stick shift, myself included.  Once I mastered the
automatic (“mastered” being a relative term), I decide the best way to learn to drive a standard transmission involves a simple two-step process: buy a standard transmission car and sell my automatic.  I call this approach, “Forced Stick-Shift Driving 101.”  I do not recommend it.  I make the smart choice and purchase my brand new car in the middle of the Michigan summer so that I do not have to learn to drive with two feet and navigate that evil, white substance that Mother Nature throws down upon me.

Much like my experience across the Texas Panhandle, I climb behind the wheel and hit the road to teach myself my latest skill.  I begin with a short excursion to Lake Superior (see “The 5^th Lake” from March 2012) and continue adding on the miles until I see all five.  Just to be absolutely certain of my ability with the stick shift, I drive a little farther past Niagara Falls.  And on to Gettysburg.  Then I swing through the District of Columbia, and on to Norfolk Naval Station.  I opt for the Outer Banks and use my new skill to drive onto the Okracoke Ferry.  By the time I reach the Florida shoreline I think I may have the two-foot maneuver under control.  Just to be sure, I drive back to Michigan by way of Springfield, Illinois.  Maybe my passion for driving is less about driving, and more about learning.

My Son’s Mecca

Coke Karma

It’s no mystery that I love Coca-Cola (see “Vapor Trail” from December 2011).  Yes, I am fully aware of its properties that enhance my waistline and decalcify my bones.  I don’t care.  If someone makes a healthy drink taste like Coke, I’ll drink it, but until then, keep it to yourself.  On a return trip from Birmingham to Florida, Son #2 and I overnighted in the Atlanta area just to visit the World of Coke.  Of course it is possible to purchase those green signature bottles of caffeinated bliss at the grocery store, but getting the free one (and by “free,” I mean the one that is included in the cost of the admission) at the end of the tour tastes better than any Coke I’ve ever had…well, save one.

Just after school ended in 1985, I had some useless reason to wrap up my work on campus and went downstairs to the soft drink machine only to find it empty.  Sure the old machine behind the cafeteria emptied slower, because rarely did anyone go back there; but in Arizona the temperature rises just above stereotypically hot, and the school saved money in the summer by not running the evaporative coolers for the handful of people wrapping up their loose ends.  So I trudged behind the building to the area where, much like the classic Sigourney Weaver film, no one can hear you scream.  Since the old machine required exact change, I came prepared, but not prepared for the moment of magic that followed when the coins released the beautiful beverage: old Coke!  Not the horribly received “New Coke,” or even the “retro” rebranded Coca-Cola Classic, but the original, before the marketing mayhem of the Coke-yet-to-be-branded.  If more change filled my pockets, I would have emptied the machine.

A Pilgrimage

I journeyed to my own personal Mecca (see “The Mile High Club” from December 2011) and not to belittle the true religious site on the Arabian Peninsula, everyone should have a place that marks the most special geographic pilgrimage they can journey in their lifetime – the site that fills their soul with happiness; every memory of the trek to their own personal nirvana from dreaming to planning to going to remembering should continue to inspire feelings for a lifetime.  Consider it the number-one place on your bucket list.  During his years in high school, Son #1 comes awfully close, but not quite close enough, to his mecca.  As a parent yearning for an excuse to travel, I make the final leg of the journey for him.

While on a band trip to Dallas, I crash the party, flying into Big D much to the jealous dismay and consternation of the chaperones who rode nearly twenty-four hours on a bus filled with high school students.  I hop in my slick vehicle, since the nice rental-car folks upgraded me to a Mustang, for a one-woman voyage to Waco, Texas.  Waco, often recalled in the phrase, “The Siege at ___,” lies partway between Dallas and the Lone Star’s capital and proudly boasts

Baylor University.  Founded in the same year as the California Gold Rush, Waco’s true “black gold” comes with its own secret recipe in a bottle similar to the gorgeous green swoosh that I adore and cherish and, on that hot Arizona summer day decades ago, savored.  I enter the Waco building, perhaps not filled with quite as much historic notoriety as the Alamo, but with as much meaning and importance to my son.  This simple building stands as a testament to another legacy of carbonated refreshment, and it marks the end of my pilgrimage for him.  And of course I journey back to my son, like Moses descending Mount Sinai, delivering to him two bottles of the nectar from Deep in the Heart of Texas: the original formula, sugar-cane-sweetened Dr. Pepper.  Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?

Breathing Windmills

Blowing through Texas

No one prefers the middle seat on the airplane.  Most adults will tell you their preferred seats are the aisle options.  When traveling with kids, grownups put the little ones in the middle seat between two adults, but if given their choice, most kids want the window seat.  Most kids and I.  Looking out the airplane window resembles life-sized Google Earth, and I pride myself on my ability to insert my own mental markers for waterways and highways, dams and deserts, and large landmarks, dozens upon which I have gazed from ground level.

On the dusty fields of Texas, windmills silently perch above the valleys getting the privilege of facing and enjoying an expansive view of the sunset.  While driving US Highway 62, the slender white pillars appear small, peaking high above the eastern horizon.  These massive industrial turbines thrive on the powerful, hot winds off the Guadalupe Mountains and give back their energy to the communities over which they stand watch.  As stately and statuesque as the sentinels appear in the distance, my point of view from seat 12F altered my perspective on their height.  They remind me of strategically positioned pinwheels across the brown landscape, playing in the breeze and tickling the sky while the pumping Texas oil wells drill and scratch against the earth’s belly.

Charging Against Windmills

Wind drives across the continent, howls over its western mountain tops and up the open Plains through Tornado Alley.  Yet in the peaceful, gentle autumn of Connecticut pre-fab signs banged into yard after neighborhood after subdivision rallied against wind power and its toxic influence on its environment.  As I passed these twelve-by-fifteen individual protests, less than three months after the Deep Water Horizon spill thrust its watery environment into a streaming webcam of streaming oil, I imagined those guards along the Lone Star rims sagging in sadness at the objections planted against them.

Just a month prior I sneaked around a curving corner of the smooth Appalachians and surprised myself when peeking out from the top of the hillside, visible out the rental moon roof, stood a white industrial turbine.  Unlike their ten-gallon cousins, the West Virginia windmills, while equal in height, dotted the occasional dulled mountain peaks, rather than an energy-generating army lined up militarily along a ridge.

Lulled in by their individualism, I pulled up next to one, gazed up through the automotive skylight and watched its gentle, slow rotation.  Turning off the engine, I stepped out of the car, stretching my legs in protest against the drive from Pennsylvania (and the jaunt across northwest Maryland).  The full height of my arms reaching above my head still minimalized me against the coal-free energy giant.  With each rotation, the immense blades pushed the air with a soft, deep woosh, woosh, woosh that breathed life into the simple structure, and into the world around it.  And more than a year later from thirty-thousand feet as I gaze at the line of playful pinwheels, I imagine their gentle inhaling and exhaling across the dry, drifting Texas landscape.