Solvency, Morning Edition and Kenny Chesney's Secret War Wound

In Borger, Texas there was an actual Wells Fargo bank! I waited out the sunrise in a charming, most unlikely but utterly welcome espresso house, counting down till I once again became solvent – on paper, at least.

Then I drove 130 miles through a dust storm to catch up with the circus. (Locals wouldn’t called it a dust storm – locals would call it “the weather.”) Only radio I could pick up between crackles was country western. In a way this was a relief. I’m not a big country western fan, but NPR’s ceaseless Morning Edition prattle – suicide missions in Islamabad (guess what? there’s a new one!), the end of the recession (what, you haven’t noticed?), Obama’s political capital (basement, lingerie!) – seems utterly irrelevant to the landscape I see rushing ahead my windshield while Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh et al dodder so far into the realm of dire apocalyptic pronouncement that I feel like my IQ seeping out of my ears just listening to them.

Some things I do like about country western. I like the music outside the words, the fiddles, the slide guitar, the wah-wah pedal. I like that the songs have narrative. But honestly if I have to hear Carrie Underwood shriek about cowboy Casanovas or Brad Paisley tell that poor guy, “That’s life,” one more time, I’m gonna SCREAM. There's one I actually kind of like -- Kenny Chesney pretending to be Brad Pitt’s brother.

So why did Renee Zellweger ditch Kenny Chesney anyway, huh? Does he have a secret war wound -- ahem! -- down there? Or is he just gay?

What Lies Ahead

Season ends in exactly nine days.

And I don’t have a clue what comes next.

I know I have to get a job, but I don’t know what I’ll do or even where I’ll do it, if it comes to that. In the two months before I left CA, I worked for the Census and designed and implemented an elaborate website for Bill’s business – HTML, graphics, javascripting etc. Enjoyed both job and project. Made decent money.

But my peripatetic resume is a liability as far as gainful employment prospects go, and my age is even more of one – I’m old. Old! I could be your grandmother. Or your great-grandmother if you’re from Oklahoma.

Does anybody ever feel old? Because I certainly do not. I feel like I’m riding the same bus as my long ago 15 year old self. I have better impulse control now but in all other respects we're traveling towards the same destination. Haven’t jumped my own narrative continuum. Still like what I always liked. Haven’t become an entirely different person even if my skin cells and muscle cells do regenerate themselves every seven years.

I look old though. Haven’t dyed my hair for six months; when I look in the mirror – rarely! – there’s a stern, gray-haired lady peering out at me from the other side, a gray-haired lady with a Leslie Stahl haircut, in need of serious dental work (another employment liability) and a style consult with Tim Gunn. What do 57 year old women wear anyway? Honestly, I have no idea. Philippe Petit’s ex-girlfriend in Man On Wire (who must be pushing sixty) wore a kind of layered look on top – white chemise, pink shirt, gray sweater – but they never showed her from the waist down. Are jeans inappropriate for women my age? I kinda think maybe they are but I wear them anyway.

I guess as soon as the season’s over, I’m gonna dye my hair and buy some clothes.

Turns out the gypsy life suits me. No future. No past. Just the endless pageant of the road. Yesterday’s Town, Today’s Town, Tomorrow’s Town. I miss Max, I miss Marybeth. I miss really long showers. I miss Trader Joe’s. (I do not miss Whole Foods.) I read a lot of books. I take a lot of photographs. I figure out ways to keep up with Mad Men, Survivor and Project Runway on the fly.

The book has evolved while I’ve been writing it. (justpat's idea.) It’s still about the Rise and Fall of the Little Store but now it’s also about the road trip I embarked upon afterwards to keep myself from committing suicide. It’s got an elevator pitch: when Patrizia DiLucchio’s business went belly-up, she did what every red-blooded American girl wants to do in those circumstances: she joined the circus. Every cluster of towns had its underlying narrative – the southwestern Missouri chapter thus, in addition to being observations about the towns themselves, will also be about guerilla battles between insurgent factions which is how the Civil War played out in those parts, the scars still visible a hundred and sixty years later; the Kansas and Oklahoma border town descriptions will be all about the Cherokee Strip land run. Etc, etc. Little chunks of American history. The Little Store saga is told in flashback.

There’ll be descriptions of circus life too and here I only wish there was more of it to describe. Except as I say, this is not a particularly collegial group of people. In fact, they’re purt-ty dull.