.
After Amarillo, I had mostly smooth sailing, mostly along frontage
roads of I-40, which was once The Mother Road—Route 66. Almost no cars travel the old way, now that
I-40 gets them there faster. But for me
on a bike, the frontage road and the old road are mostly smooth and without the
irritation of cars.
Shamrock is the last town in Texas and a day off for Mother’s
Day. Even though I’m not a mother, they assumed
I am at McDonalds, and gave me this rose, as to all the women coming there for
morning coffee or to chat. Strange that
McDonalds has replaced the old local cafes that once served locals and
travelers on Route 66, but it has.
A single blade for a wind generator travels through Shamrock,
and the locals pay it no mind. Thousands
have come before it.
And there’s a quaint, old part of town—but not really, it’s a
huge mural trying to attract visitors to a town that has no more reason to
exist. Most shops have already closed
and others look like boards will go on the windows next week.
Texas ends and Oklahoma begins with not even a sign to say
so.
The first town in Oklahoma is Texola with the Tumbleweed Café. Margaret, the owner, talks about her travels
to the only customer in the café, and she talks about the weather. Baseball-size
hail, tornados, severe rain, and flooding roll off her tongue like poems at an
open reading. She
seem proud to live in a place where weather can kill you on half-an hour’s-notice
and where many a house and car has succumbed to the ravages of severe
weather.
Swallow City under a bridge
As I write this, the weather report says “Thunderstorms
possible at 6:30pm.” It’s now 3pm and
they have moved that warning from 3:00 to 6:30 and changed it from “Severe
thunderstorms” to “Thunderstorms.” Oklahomans
revel in their weather forecasts, like watching a action-filled movie. They talk about cousin Sam caught out in a
hail storm, and “By God I’d better get the car inside; don’t want any hail on
my car.”
I stepped outside the motel room in Weatherford just now to
take a picture looking southeast, the direction of incoming clouds. I stopped here early today because all this
weather talk had me worried. It doesn’t
look severe, but it’s hard to stand in the 30mph wind.
After Texola, I spent last night in Elk City, a town that
seems thriving. I asked at the café this
morning in Clinton, the next town along this march through Oklahoma, why Elk
City looks thriving, while Clinton is mostly closed and abandoned. “Oil’s gone,” the waitress said. “It just stopped all at once—drilling,
trucking everything.” “What about wind?”
I asked. “Oh we’ve got plenty of wind. Texas has wind farms, Weatherford to the east
has wind farms, but the politics here prevents it.”
And after leaving Clinton and approaching Weatherford, I saw
the difference. Both towns lost their
oil industry, but Weatherford is installing wind generators, just like Texas
has, and the town is booming.
The map below shows the places I have slept, prepared by
Michael Angerman. Click on the link
below to open an interactive version of the above map, where you can zoom and
pan.
