In what was surely a moment of insanity, I agreed to meet my husband in Cincinnati (in fact, I suggested it!). But I had to teach on Tuesday night, he had to be in Cincy by noon on Wednesday. It would be a 466-mile trip. So he flew, I drove.
I dropped him off at the airport at 6:00 am (still dark!), filled my tank, and hit the Pennsylvania turnpike. As the sun came up in my rearview mirror I thought, “only eight hours and I’m there!”
One of the perks of driving alone is not having to coordinate rest stops or food preferences with a traveling companion. I stopped at the first rest area for breakfast. I stopped at the second rest area for more coffee without anyone saying, “We just stopped!” I wasn’t the only one, either—I was amused to see some of the people in line from the last place.
After that, it was tunnel, tunnel, road work, tunnel. I kept punching the buttons on my radio but I could feel the boredom taking over. Two hours on the road and I was already bored? I told myself it was just because I knew the turnpike so well and it would improve when I got off.
At the New Stanton exit I headed south on I-70. Maybe it was because I was driving alone, but the local place names started to strike me as funny. Hunker, Wyano, Twilight . . . I took a picture of the sign at the Lover exit and tried to come up with their town slogan, but “Lover is for Lovers” just didn’t sound like it would bring in the tourists.
Finally, I crossed into West Virginia. Yes, I sang “Almost Heaven . . . “ At Wheeling I saw a sign for the “Doc and Chickie Williams Highway, Country Music’s Royal Couple.” I wouldn’t know until I got home that Doc Williams had just passed away a few months before. He and his wife, Chickie, often performed on Jamboree USA in Wheeling and all over the country (see www.docwilliams.com for their entire story).
West Virginia passed in nearly the blink of an eye. I stopped at a Sheetz convenience store and thought, “This could be Pennsylvania except for the beer on sale.” But the beer was also Pennsylvanian--Yuengling!
And then Ohio—only four hours, I thought (not nearly as brightly as I’d embraced the idea of eight hours five hours ago). I tried to convince myself that Ohio would be interesting since it was territory I had only crossed once before, and that was in the backseat of a car squeezed between my mother-in-law and her sister as we headed for a family reunion. But I soon realized that Ohio looks a lot like Pennsylvania, except the font on the road signs is different.
And then I saw a sign. Not something supernatural, but a real sign on the side of the road. It read “Zane Grey Museum/National Road Museum.” Wow! I thought. It’s like Ohio knew I—collector of small museums—was coming. Pennsylvania has a Zane Grey Museum and of course I wanted to compare the two. And I had edited The National Road, a two-volume set on the history of what became Route 40, so of course I had to see that as well.
But I was still on my mad dash across Ohio. I had to be in Cincinnati within a few hours, so I made a note to stop on my return trip. Energized, I kept driving. It was a relief to turn south at Columbus and then finally see Cincinnati ahead. I checked into the Garfield Suites only an hour later than I had planned, which for me is pretty good.
To be continued . . .
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