Continuing my road trip north on Highway 83 — America’s Heartland Highway, from Texas to North Dakota.
Mile after mile of mostly flat to gently rolling farmland. Acres of corn, soybean, wheat and sunflowers.
And bugs.
As I drive between the endless fields on this less traveled two-laner sitting on my soft leather bucket seat, gently gripping the ergonomically shaped steering wheel, there is a constant splatting sound on my front windshield. Thousands-upon-thousands of bugs, from flies to grasshoppers are ending their short little lives on ARGO’s front bumper, grill and windshield. So many that it obscures my vision of the road ahead.
I’ve used up the window washer fluid attempting to reduce the bug-buildup. A yellow warning message is now flashing on the instrument panel in-between the speedometer and tachometer, letting me know the washer fluid tank is near empty.
Ahead is a “town,” which consists of a single gas station. Like many stations in rural areas, it also includes a tiny version of a grocery, hardware, entertainment-center and auto supply store. This one even has a soft-serve ice-cream machine. And guess what, they have cases of window washer fluid stacked up on the right side of the door. Only a dollar for a gallon. Perfect.
As ARGO’s tank is being topped off with diesel, I scrub the windows clean with the station’s long-handle squeegee. Then I pull the black hood release lever under the dash, pop the safety catch under the hood, raise it to locking position, and happily fill the plastic washer fluid tank with the gallon of dollar cleaner.
If this were a movie, it’s the kind of moment when I would be whistling a tune watching the fluid fill the tank. Except, I can’t whistle worth a darn.
Anyway, feeling so good about the whole thing, I close the hood and go back inside the station to buy an ice-cream cone to celebrate my accomplishment. A roady cone.
All is good … till I walk back outside. Underneath ARGO’s engine something is dripping in a steady flow onto the concrete drive, forming a pool of liquid. Oil? Diesel? I touch the liquid with my index finger; smell it. Dang, it’s the vinegar smell of washer fluid.
As I hold the cone in my left hand while licking the cold sweet vanilla cream, I raise the hood with my right hand enough to see the plastic washer fluid tank I just filled is nearly empty; depleting rapidly as I watch. Poking around underneath I discover a hose clamp came loose … apparently when I filled the tank to capacity with the gallon of dollar-cleaner. It’s now, a dollar on the ground.
Maybe, revenge of the bugs? One of them lived long enough to pull this stunt. I wouldn’t put it past ‘em. Like in one of those suspense thrillers where you think the bad guy is dead, but he’s not.
So, I spend the next twenty-minutes with my tools reattaching the hose and fastening the clamp. No easy feat due to the location of the hose under the tank, with only a small space where I can reach my hands down to do the work by feel. Finally, success. The hose is attached good enough for now.
I go back in the store, buy another gallon of window washer fluid for a dollar, fill up the tank and shut the hood. Nothing is leaking as I study the underside.
Now I am back in the captain’s chair, with a clean window in front of me, on the road again in a perkier ARGO, brimming with diesel and washer fluid … and me filled with a hastily eaten vanilla ice-cream cone.
I drive to the next small town in Nebraska. Forgive me, but I’m leaving the name of the town out at this point, since I’m going to share some gossip about a few of the locals; a guy named, Walter. And Walter’s wife.
Like nearly all small towns, there are too many empty store front plate-glass-windows, behind which, once were enterprising retail stores run by moms and pops. The backbone of the community. That back was broken by the big box stores, the internet and younger folks moving away.
This town seems to have a bit more life than most. I’m just basing that on the fact a few people were walking on the sidewalk along main street. They were talking to each other. More activity than the other rural towns I’ve passed through.
One store front catches my eye; a bakery. It’s mid-morning and I haven’t had breakfast yet. Driving in front, the sign says they’ve added a coffee shop. Bakery plus coffee works for me.
I park ARGO on the next side street. Walking up to the front door with my schnozzola on alert.
Let me pause here, and apologize, I just like to say schnozzola, a.k.a. “proboscis.” Reminds me of the old comedian, Jimmy Durante, a TV favorite of my grandmother. I have fond memories of my grandmother and me laughing at his jokes together. Who doesn’t like a funny guy with a big schnozzola.
So … my schnozzola leads me through the front door of the bakery, filled with the aromas of dark coffee brewing, combined with another come-hither-whiff: apples and cinnamon in the latter stages of baking.
Inside the bakery, I feel a bit of disappointment as I look through the glass of the wood framed display case. There is little remaining in the way of baked items. Most of whatever was on the shelves is gone. Little spots remain indicating the shelves had probably been filled earlier that morning with real goodies. A danish-type thing with cinnamon remains, so I point to it.
The sign on the back wall lists a selection of coffees, patterned after you-know-who. The conglomerate with the round green logo on every other street corner in bigger cities providing a supply-line to poor pathetic caffeine addicts, like me.
I look over the listings of macchiato, espresso, cappuccino, mocha-blend and such. Standing there waiting for the lady in front of me to order, I’m thinking how, not that long ago, you only asked if the coffee was fresh or not. You were happy if had been made in the last few hours and was reasonable warm. And, of course, it was only a fraction of the cost.
“I’ll have a latte with a half-shot of caramel,” I say.
The shop is small, but there’s a wide opening cut in the left side wall, opposite the counter, opening into a dinning room in the adjoining building. Tables, chairs and a few booths are set up for about thirty to forty people. A sign says they have live music on weekends from time to time.
I put my backpack down in one of the rear booths. A quiet space. I’ll be able to write. Maybe read.
A man and woman are at one table on the far side talking.
At a table toward the center, six men are having coffee and jawing. They stopped talking when I walked by, now they are talking again. The acoustics of the room carry the men’s voices my way.
Four of them are slim men with disappearing butts. One is on the heavy side; another one has a beach ball tummy hanging well over his belt buckle. I am assuming, of course, he had a belt buckle.
A new guy walks in, joining the group.
“Where you been?” one of the guys says to the new arrival, “we missed-ya last few days.”
“Had to get my medicines adjusted,” he answers.
“Oh,” says another man who is sporting a camouflage ball cap with the logo of a bridge on it, “you okay now?
“Yep, but had to go to the hospital for a day … just to do it.”
“You go here?” Another asks, “or the new one down the road?”
“Here.”
“Not sure I’d go to the new one,” another guy says, “with what I’ve heard.”
“Yep, think they’re understaffed; still working the bugs outta the new one.”
I’m trying to tune out the exchange. Starting to settle in over my hot latte. Stream rises up as I take in the caramel overtones coming from the thick ceramic cup. Smells woody-sweet.
I like my coffee dark roasted. Like to joke that it “needs to be strong enough to walk across.”
That line gets an understanding smile and a nod from a fancy coffee shop barista. From a truck stop waitress, well, she’ll just look at me expressionless. Either way, I enjoy these tiny human interactions prior to receiving my morning java fix.
The door opens in the middle of the store-front of the dinning room. A group of six ladies walk-in off the sidewalk. They appear to be in their fifties and sixties, wearing muted casual dresses with matching hairdos.
All seem to be talking at the same time, over each other, as they make their way past the table of men, continue towards me, look around, then select a table near my booth.
No more silence.
I attempt to focus on my coffee. Still a bit of steam rising. I take a small sip. That’s always an “ahhhh-moment” for me; the first taste of freshly brewed coffee. Especially in the morning.
The ladies are chatting away. I don’t normally listen to other people’s conversations, but this one I can’t avoid. They’re talking loudly.
“I wish I could have seen my gallbladder after they took it out,: one of them says.
“You’d want to see it?” A puzzled friend questions in surprise.
“They said it’s full of stones. I’d love to see what that looks like.”
“What I wonder is,” another said, “after they take out your gallbladder how do you digest?”
The question goes unanswered.
Another woman asks, “But what about the new stones? Where do the new stones go? You know if you don’t have your gallbladder anymore….”
That question also goes unanswered. The conversation switches to one of them buying a vacation home in Colorado.
“So Mary, how was your trip to Colorado. You get situated?”
“As you know, we bought a smaller home, like I told you about,” Mary shares. “Really cute, just perfect for Ralph and me. And they told us it would be empty of the other people’s furniture as soon as we closed on it. But when we took our first load, we couldn’t believe it, their furniture was still there.”
“Oh, my God, you got all the way there,” a friend asks, “and the people hadn’t moved out yet?”
“Full house! What were we to do. We didn’t know. Called the Real estate lady, and she didn’t know either. So there we were with our furniture and nowhere to put it. Real estate lady called us back latter, saying they needed another week.”
They continue on about the furniture and how to handle such a calamity.
Now the conversation is back on health issues, and with a twist. Someone named Walter is in the hospital.
“He was all blowed up,” says a lady who visited Walter yesterday at the new hospital. “They had to get the swelling down.”
“Is Walter going to be okay?”
“As long as he gets four hours of sleep, he’s okay.”
A lady who hasn’t spoken yet says, “This is just between us, but I thought you’d want to know….”
They lean in closer to each other. Whispering. I pick up enough to know they are not talking about Walter now, but Walter’s wife. It’s some heavy gossip. In order to protect the innocent I won’t repeat it here.
I’ve observed, that the more important the gossipy news is between friends, the softer the volume of the voice relaying it.
Hushed tones continue as they share stories about Walter’s wife, and poor Walter in the hospital.
Of course, these ladies might as well be shouting into a radio station microphone, printing it in the newspaper, or putting it out on social media. In a town this size it’ll be general public knowledge before noon, passed person-to-person, each time with the warning: “This is just between us, but I thought you’d want to know.”
Gossip, from the mouth of a skilled tittle-tattler, can gut someone they don’t like, clean the meat off their bones, and serve ‘em up stone cold dead before the victim finishes their morning coffee.
Time to move on down the road for me. I leave a tip on the table; sling my backpack over my left shoulder. As I turn opening the door to leave, I see both the group of men and the women stop talking, look at me and watch me walk away.
These morning coffee talk conversations are not peculiar to small towns. They go on every morning all across America. Probably the world. Mostly retired types solving world problems, along with bitching and griping about their phone bill or car repair or whatever wrong they want to be righted.
To them, I’m just another stranger passing through town. Not from around here.
And it’s on down the road I go. Discovering America one story at a time.
JohnButlersBuzz.com