Arrival

I pulled out of Dallas about 2:30 yesterday, earlier than I expected, and headed north. It was sort of weird because all of the times I've made this trip, I usually get up at the ridiculous hour of 4 a.m. and drive straight through. It's sort of disorienting for me to be driving through, say, Bellevue Texas during daylight hours.

I planned to car camp, meaning I was going to pull over and sleep in my car with the back seat folded down. I had a sleeping bag and everything. I read somewhere that Walmart doesn't mind if you do this in their parking lots. So my entended ending point for Tuesday evening was the Walmart parking lot in Childress. The trouble was that because I left so early, I got to Childress during daylight. And there's nothing to do in Childress except shop in the Walmart. So I drove on north and abandoned the car camping idea. I stopped in Claude, a tiny town south of Amarillo, and pulled into the L.A. Motel, one of those independant one-star joints that nobody ever seems to stay in. I paid my 35 bucks and took the key to room 210. And I have to say, it wasn't that bad. Seemed clean enough, the bed was big enough and the shower worked. Those were my only requirements. But a story my co-worker Mark told me kept going through my head. Several years ago, Mark and his son were on their way home from a camping trip and stayed at a similar small independant motel. He too said it seemed clean enough. But the next day, he and his son both started getting itchy because there were some sort of bugs in their beds. So of course, I've been self conscious about this all day and have been hyper-sensative to every itch I feel, thinking it's the result of insect infestation in room 210. Really, I think I have what LaMont and Grady dreamed up during and episode of Sanford & Son. To get rid of Grady's cousin Emma, who showed up at the Sanford residence and started freeloading, LaMont and Grady acted like they had the "Junkman's Itch." Emma got lost. And I'm pretty sure I've got it too.