"So it's some sort of SUV thing?"
"Not really."
I didn't recognize the name of the vehicle that was available for pick-up in Memphis and drop off in Kansas City. Hertz didn't have a photo of it in their picture book at the desk.
I headed out in the parking lot as the sun was getting low in the sky. The humidity dripped off the trees along the walk way. I found spot A-37 and there was my... "car that was really a truck". If she had said it looked like Brink's truck with windows all the way around I could have picked it out without any help. I threw my carry-on in the back compartment and climbed up in the front seat thinking "I wonder what people rent this sort of thing?"
I couldn't see past the windshield wipers and had to crawl out and look under the seats to figure out how to scoot them up. I was able to budge it a little and decided to drive the thing around the parking lot for a minute. It was like driving a mini u-haul and if I leaned forward enough I could see the front hood.
I stopped back at the rental desk and asked if they had anything else. The clerk tapped away at her computer, no cars but there was an SUV. With directions to I-55 I headed out of Memphis.
The setting sun cast an golden glow over the Mississippi River. From the height of the bridge her lazy meandering and muddy swirls looked nonthreatening yet yesterday she claimed 13 lives when the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed. I thought about those people and wondered why them, why that bridge and why not the one I'm driving over right now. Questions no one on earth can ever answer. With tears blurring my eyes and a silent prayer for the families a radio station commemorating the 30th anniversary of Elvis's passing played his rendition of "How Great Thou Art" as I drove off the bridge into Arkansas.
The landscape from Memphis to St. Joseph is defined by beautiful rolling hills, pastures of Angus cattle, swaying corn fields, the golden arches in St. Louis and the dramatic rock walls that border I-70 at the Missouri River bluffs in Columbia. But, the culture of each small region can just as easily be defined by the radio stations. After listening to mostly Elvis tributes, "Heartbreak Hotel", "Love Me Tender" and "Kentucky Rain", the music was mostly blues through Arkansas. At the boot heel of Missouri it changed to country western with a few Christian stations thrown in.
I reached Perryville, MO about 11 pm and it was beginning to feel reminiscent of the Eagles "On a dark desert high way…” except for a few 18 wheelers, “My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim. I had to stop for the night.” I got a room at a Best Western. It wasn't "Hotel California" and I was on the road again at 5am. The music was still a mix of gospel and country western. The small town disc jockeys broadcast the latest obituaries, including name, date of death, time of funeral service and, “Wilma Mae was a teacher at Lee Grade School for 35 years.”
In St. Louis I was finally able to tune in a few rock stations then at Arrowhead Stadium I hit Missouri's home of rock–n-roll, Kansas City. Max and Tanna are still doing the morning show on KY102 (Kansas City's original rock station) and Moffit and Frankie are still there on 101 The Fox (radio home of the Chiefs). I thought these people were old twenty years ago.
Flipping between the two stations I was sure I had been driving backwards in time since renting the car in Memphis. It felt like the summer of 1977. If I had looked over to the passenger seat my old high school friend Susan Davis would have been sitting there with her freckled nose and pretty smile dressed in button fly Levi's and Nike tennis shoes (the ones with the light blue swoosh) as we listened to "Turn the Page" (Bob Seger), then "Dream On" (Areosmith), and "Sultans of Swing" (Dire Straits), followed by more of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd, and the Eagles. Finally I was home!
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