Back in the car...

It’s like a way of life now. We have the packing down to a slick art. We each have our duties. We are never late for checkout. The days are planned. It is all pretty smooth, efficient and agreeable. Several friends raised their eyebrows at the idea of the two of us spending six months shut in a car and one friend made ominous predictions that it could not be done.

Of course we have differences. We could not be more different. But this is an exercise in common purpose and shared experience and it seems to undercut differences to what I’d describe as occasional quibbles.

So today dawns mild and overcast.

We have not had too many of these but chances are the days are going to get a lot cooler.

Our travels have taken us across the top of the country in the height of summer, down the east coast and now, as the weather moves into autumn, across the south where the the idea is that the temperatures will be mild.

The Radisson porter in Austin offers to help Bruce load the car but he has it streamlined now. Not even I am allowed to put a finger in this pie.

My job is the double-checking hotel rooms to assure we leave nothing, leaving tips and sorting out accounts with reception.

And off we go through a quiet morning city.

Onto another great big highway, through another vast urban sprawl, under more towering overpasses. Interestingly, here they have added a veneer of designs upon the great cement struts, an attempt at aesthetic

in the overpass underworld. I like it.

Past restaurant chains - Fudruckers, the Savvy Rooster, Cracker Barrel, In-n-Out.

Mini storrrrrage, sings Bruce as we pass yet more more mini storage facilities. I long have fantasised about doing a coffee table book on American mini storage. The great consumer society. The moveable population.

The traffic thins out as we pass the great strands of car yards which border cities and towns across the land.

Oh, look, a clearance sale of portable homes. I love a bargain. But where would I put it?

Now Rock Springs Behavioural Health Hospital. Interesting. For drug addicts and alcoholics? Obesity?

A scrub-your truck yard. Mini Storrrrage!

Northwards we purr, now our imaginations set alight as we overtake a Crime Scene Unit van. What awful horror is its destination? Don’t listen to Bruce. Decapitations and blood spatter. Gruesome boy.

Chains of trucks are ahead, stuck behind an oversized load. We take our place in the jockeying queue. It’s a bit hairy. Much patience required. Big trucks have to pass bigger trucks. Little cars like ours are tucked in between. The obstacle load turns out to be huge concrete beams, the sort they use for bridges. And there’s the monitor vehicle up front with its flashing lights - and a woman driver.

The road stretches out and out and out ahead.

Lots of trucks.

Bruce’s favourite thing. Road works.

Trucks.

It takes a lot of concentration in heavy truck traffic.

Roadside there are more flags and car yards, power poles, overpasses, mini-storage.

More bloody roadworks.

What a mess of fixing is happening on these interstates, grumbles Bruce.

A town called Temple passes by and near it, another of those mega petrol stations.

The roadworks go on for miles.

It is like threading a needle, driving between the bollards and cement barriers. Not fun.

A spectacular flock of starlings wheels across the field over there.

And here comes another big strip of commerce, signs red and yellow, signs for everything, food, accommodation, fuel - and Waco.

We swing into Waco, that town of which one seems to have heard nothing good. It was the scene of the mad Branch Davidian horror.

Heavens, the Live Oak Classical School looks rather lovely. And what’s that huge tower looming over the town?

Waco seems quite small. Just a tight little main street and not the prettiest burbs. I don’t exactly take to it. In fact, I am ready to leave the moment we drive in.

Oh, a huge Dr Pepper premises. What the..?

Dr Pepper’s world HQ is in Waco. Waco is the home of Dr Pepper. Well, it has to be the home of something.

Off we go, past signs to Lake Waco, past lines of signs, a strip mall, a Pawn & Friends store, mini-storage, a suburb of bland little brown houses, open land, and ploughed fields.

Now driving is easier. Out in flat farmlands, 85 miles from Dallas.

Good grief. Do you see that? What is a carpet store doing out there all alone in the middle of the fields?

A sign announces Bush’s Chickens. We smile.

And another sign bids us Welcome to West Texas.

Desultory farmland surrounds us. But of course there’s some mini storage, too.

Now the farmland is ploughed, signs of green sprouting from some of the fields. Winter wheat, maybe?

Time for food. Tall road signs announce Carl’s Corner. We pull off. It is a petrol station and restaurant pretty much in the middle of farmland nowhere. There are old fellows in denim overalls, complete in their classic hats, filling their trucks. It’s the real Texas thing. We fill up, too. The restaurant is

called The Iron Skillet.

Surprisingly, one finds it by walking through a colourful convenience store and into sweetie and souvenir room where a couple of old gals behind a counter point and tell us through there.

Through there is a large dining room with a huge three-sided buffet counter.

More old chaps in denims look up from their food as we strangers come in.

A very gnarled and skinny old girl

in classic black and white waitress dress welcomes us and takes our drink orders. Coffee for Bruce. Iced tea for me. She has her hair in jeune-fille pigtails. Her voice has the deep rough crackle of a seriously damaged smoker. But she couldn’t be kinder.

As for the buffet. I never saw its brilliant like of fried chicken, fried liver, stews, macaroni cheese, potatoes, and greens. And the huge salad bar which encompasses chopped eggs and olives, cheeses and dried cranberries, beet salad, greek salad, potato salads, and every sort of lettuce and lines of assorted dressings.

And then the huge tureens of soup. Soup and salad special, $6.95? You're kidding. Big iron skillets are supplied on which to pile food. And deep terra cotta bowls for the soups. I have a beef and cabbage soup which is unspeakably delicious. Superb. The old girl comes up and asks if everything is ok. I swoon at the soup. Oh yes, we do good soup, she crackles.

As we leave, paying our tiny tab to the women in the sweetie room, I buy a few of the handmade chocolates at their sweetie counter. They turn out to be chocolates competitive with the best in the world.

Who would ever have imagined such a spectacular sanctuary of welcome and good food out there among the fields of Texas?

Ah, America.

Back on the road among the farmlands. Is that a loo block on the roadside? Odd spot.

Salvage yard in the fields. Hmm.

Cop Buffalo Creek Baptist Church. It is a huge farm barn.

Waxahachi turnoff. Scarborough Fair. Good grief, an English-style village.

A huge, busy antiques junk yard.

We’re on The Purple Heart Trail, says a signpost.

Passing a bland roadside suburb and bumping along into more lousy roads and roadworks.

Corsicana. A huge medical centre stands at a major highway intersection. And a refinery.

Texas.

This is the state where they can openly carry guns.

Funny, I haven’t spotted any gun stores.

Suddenly we are on a neat multilane highway running through very neat shopping strips. This looks very healthy and prosperous. What a transformation.

The usual out-of-town lineup of accommodation appears at the roadside and here come more overpasses, layers of them.

School buses trundling along and, there it is!

Towering buildings ahead of us. Within no time at all, we have scooted right into their midst. Hello, Dallas! What are a neat and handsome city you are.