There is nothing, absolutely nothing, for miles and miles along NM 39 from Abbot to Tucumcari, that is not dry and deserted. Woody Guthrie never sounded so good as I cruised the rumpled two-lane past crumbling homestead cabins and splintered windmills. I actually felt Woody, Ralph Stanley and Blind Willie McTell power my silver Nissan Murano with the yellow TOURNM license plate through the fierce winds. I stopped at Annette’s in Roy for coffee and pie. That’s where Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant had their big date in “Did You Hear About the Morgans?”
No pie, which was a good thing and a bad thing. My mouth was set for it, but I planned to violate my New Year’s resolution of no unnecessary sugar. “Unnecessary sugar” is that which is used outside of chocolate. Yes, I was traveling with my yoga mat.
I asked Annette how long a drive it was to Tucumcari, the capital of Route 66 neon. “You’re almost there!” By that she meant I only had an hour and a half drive ahead, through this sea, no, this ocean, of bowed dry pale grasses, all the way to the cloudy, somewhat blue sky, through Logan. I could have sworn I saw Andrew Wyeth’s Christina, crawling toward a home, a home that no longer exists.
I’d never been on that road south of Mosquero. I thought my drive through Logan would complete my quest of visiting all 100 towns in New Mexico, but when I got there I saw a sign to Nara Visa. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been there.
Woody’s tunes resonated with the Big Empty. His was the music the souls that still haunt this place, in humble roadside graveyards, souls who once struggled to survive on this hard, parched land, heard. He was their voice.
It was a musical experience unlike any other.
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