A television in the hotel lobby was set to the local news. A local school board had unanimously voted to begin restricting graphic novels, and to remove language promoting diverse authors and free library access. Time to go! I booked it to the northeast.
Everywhere I looked, I saw Cherokee Nation license plates. I hadn’t realized it, but I had stayed overnight in the reservation. It seemed exactly the same as the rest of the Tulsa suburbs. I wondered if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing, or if it just is. I drove down Route 66, out of the Cherokee reservation, and was promptly pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. He very politely informed me that I was going 60 in a 55 and issued me a warning. I straddled the speed limit all the way into Kansas.
I stopped in Pittsburg for lunch, hoping to go to one of several fried chicken restaurants the Food Bible refers to as “legendary”. In true small-town fashion, they were all closed until dinnertime, so I found a brunch restaurant instead. To my surprise, the decor and the staff were very, very progressive—and the food wasn’t bad, either. I was inspired to further investigate the town.
Pittsburg was already decked out for Christmas, and banners hung from the streetlamps in support of the local state college. The shops on the main drag were fascinating. In addition to the dentist, the contractor, and the mattress store, there were trendy boutiques, yoga studios, and upscale pet groomers. But two in every five storefronts were empty or filled with construction machinery. The streets were clean and the buildings were in good repair. I left town with more questions than answers.
Another long chunk of driving took me past sundown and up to the edge of Topeka, where I’m staying the night. As an added bonus, I’ll leave a puzzle I solved earlier today, which I found delightful.
- English is filled with words that start with one letter, then have that letter as a double letter later in the word. Examples include “nanny”, “tattle”, “pepper”, and “sassafras”. The puzzle is: find three words that fit this condition and start with, respectively, the letters c, h, and k. All of these are things you could pick up on a road trip. I have seen all of them, picked up many of one, and thought about picking up another. The third is a no-no.
Haven’t had time to work on the puzzle or even think about it. But it looks like fun to work out a way to solve it. There’s got to be a logical approach; just guessing at words is not going to get it. Anyway, I have not given up on it yet. Jeff wondered why you liked OK and he mentioned something about them being very rigid there. And then you posted it: the sheriff’s warning about doing 60 in a 55 zone. We are too much used to the way highways are patrolled (or not) in the northeast. No one goes the speed limit! It would be insane and unsafe. I would say most people go at least 5 mph over the limit. I go 2 mph over it and people blow their horns at me and tailgate to make me go faster. Now that you are in Kansas, though, just don’t go too fast! Love, Grandma