Old New Friends

So there I was in Wahpeton, North Dakota on a Friday evening, pretty sure I had just wasted three days of driving, a long way from home. I sure wasn't going to stay in North Dakota, and I didn't see any good reason to go to Ham Lake, Minnesota, as I couldn't legally pick up the truck there without a Bill of Lading. And I sure wasn't gonna hang around there until Monday burning motel money, not after my unprofitable trip out.

So I decided to head back down to Omaha and spend the weekend hanging out with my uncle Pat, who's my godfather and one of the coolest guys alive. By the time I came to that decision, it was dark and I realized that I wasn't going to make it all the way back down to Omaha in timely fashion, so I decided I'd head back down I-35 to Brookings, South Dakota, which was my Mom's (and Pat's) hometown.

First I had to get my car clean, though. Pulling it behind a bobtail semi (don't you love trucker jargon? That means cab with no trailer...) for 1700 miles meant every bit of road grime imaginable now covered the car. This car is actually dark blue:



The guys who took delivery of the truck offered me their pressure washer, and I got an amazing amount of the accumulated grime off, and then I drove into town and found a gas station with a car wash and cleaned it again. It needed it! It felt good to have my car looking somewhat more reputable.

Then I headed back out towards the Interstate. By now it was dark, and getting foggy to boot. As I headed south, I slowly came to the realization that this wasn't just fog, it was freezing fog, and my car was icing up! As was the road!!! Running my defrosters full blast took care of the windshield, and I slowed down a bit when I felt the road begin to get a little slick. I'm pretty sure I was the only one who bothered to, though, as cowboys in pickup trucks kept blowing past me going OVER the 75 mph speed limit. Maybe that's what keeps the population down out there...

Upon reaching the South Dakota line, I pulled off the highway at the huge glitzy Dakota Magic Casino (owned by the Dakota Sioux nation), having been told by the guys in Wahpeton that they had cheap hotel rooms there. WRONG! There was nothing cheap there. So I drove on to Brookings, where I found a high school chorus competition took all the cheap motel rooms. Exhausted, I bit the bullet and stayed in a very nice $95 room at the Holiday Inn and Suites. Ouch! I vaguely recall walking across the street to Applebees and eating dinner...

Saturday morning I slept in (hey, if I was going to spend a lot of money, I was going to ENJOY it!), and about 11 am I drove into Brookings to find it a quite nice town. It's home to South Dakota State University, and reminded me a little of my former home of Fort Collins, Colorado, another college town. Downtown, the main drag was much as my Mom described it, and after cruising the main drag, I pulled in at Nick's Hamburger Shop, a place I've been hearing about from Mom for, oh, my entire life!

Nick's is a classic pre-WWII hamburger joint, much like the original White Castles or our own DC-area version Little Tavern, but with an interesting twist: the burgers are fried in a large, rectangular pan with four-inch raised sides with about a half-inch of grease in it. Almost but not quite deep-fried. Locals actually ask for their burgers with "more grease", and some even ask for the buns to be dipped in the grease! Much to my pleased relief, the burgers were quite tasty! I met Dick Fergen the owner (see his picture below), who remembered Mom immediately (she's been gone from Brookings for 57 years, but she was a real looker!) as well as my uncle Pat, who he went to high school with. He took over the place back in 2004, and has certainly poured a lot of love and work into the place. In the admittedly unlikely event that you ever find yourself in eastern South Dakota, I give Nick's a strong recommendation!



Before leaving Brookings, I let Pat know I was headed back down to Omaha, and I also sent a message via Facebook to Fran, who was the prettiest girl in my 7th grade class some 38 years earlier. We weren't actually close in junior high (puberty briefly robbed me of my ability to talk to girls, and like I said, she was REALLY pretty!), and midway through the 8th grade a desegregation redistricting sent me to a different school and I never saw her again. But her BFF Susie went to my school and I got to know Susie better a few years ago when we organized an ad-hoc 30 year reunion of our graduation class (the "Reunion Committee" had disintegrated), and when I joined Facebook last year and Susie became one of my FB friends, I saw Fran's name in her friends list and sent her a friend request, and much to my delight, we've become long-distance friends since then.

And Fran sent me back a reply to my "I'll be in Omaha" message with an invitation to dinner with her and her guy Blaine.

So, with that to look forward to, I pulled out of Brookings, right into a nasty little blizzard! Right away, I found myself in a traffic jam as we came upon a 5-car pileup just south of town (one vehicle upside down in the ditch!). After getting past that, I slowly made my way down through South Dakota, thankfully popping out of the storm at Sioux Falls, and I arrived in Omaha around 5pm. My GPS led me to Fran's house, and feeling a little bit like my junior high self, I knocked on the door.

...Which was opened by Blaine, as Fran was off buying beer for my visit! Blaine's a cool guy, quite friendly to a guy dropping out of his girlfriend's distant past (as I'm a short, chubby, bald guy, I can't imagine he felt very threatened!), a musician (well, a drummer, but...;-))who has a GOOD day job (he's a process engineer, involved in making those cool centrifugal testing rigs you see them spinning DNA on "CSI"), and he welcomed me into the house and introduced me to their two sweet dogs (a pair of bulldogs from a dog rescue operation they support). Fran arrived shortly, and we had a really great dinner (Fran cooked us steak, roasted potatoes and roasted asparagus) and a wonderful visit!

Fran was a delight, and in very short order we were like old, dear friends. As we caught up on each other's lives, we discovered an uncanny amount of similar experiences, and both agreed that if we hadn't been sent to different schools, we would have absolutely been great friends by the time we got to high school. It was wonderful sitting in the kitchen talking, and as the time passed, I started seeing flashes of her 12-year-old face!

Once again, the Internot made possible connections between people who otherwise would never be in contact.

After fond goodbyes and promises to visit again, I headed back to my uncle's place. I found a place to park about a block away (Pat and my aunt Sandy live in the VERY cool "Old Market" neighborhood of Omaha), and Pat met me at his door with a "how would you feel about having a beer with your uncle?" I replied that I couldn't imagine any possible response other than "GREAT!"

We walked over to The Upstream Brewing Company, a really excellent brewpub a few blocks away, and had a few beers and a pleasant conversation about what we were both up to. Pat recently retired a second time (he was president of a large architectural firm, then owned a very cool European bakery and cafe in the Old Market), and now he was spending his time helping artist Steve Joy with his work and with transporting and mounting his stuff at shows. Joy's studio was just around the corner, so Pat took me over and showed me some of his stuff. Fascinating!

After a good night's sleep, Sunday morning found me back behind the wheel. I had decided to go home, and figured I might as well go by Goshen first, to turn in my paperwork and see what kind of accommodation I would get on the fuel issue on my just-finished trip. So I drove across Iowa and Illinois and back to my uncle Tom's house in South Bend, where I again spent the night.

Monday morning early found me back at the terminal in Goshen, where much to my displeasure I found their "adjustment" sorely lacking. I averaged about .36/mile after paying for all that fuel, and their policy is apparently to make sure the drivers get a minimum of .40/mile, so I was paid the difference. Wow.

Even so, I then went to Dispatch, figuring I'd see if they had anything going east (might as well get paid to drive towards home, right?), and while I was standing there, I heard dispatcher Paul speaking into a phone saying "I have a load for Salisbury, Maryland". Well, that's about twenty five miles from my house, so I waited for him to get off the phone and asked him about it!

Alas, the load (that's what they call the trucks/buses/RVs we transport) wasn't in Goshen, it was in Laredo, Texas! Still, I was interested as I knew they paid a higher rate for those loads, and indeed, Paul indicated that it paid over .70/mile. Sold! I arranged to take it, and left immediately to drive down to Laredo (1500 miles away!).

The drive was uneventful. I headed back over towards Chicago, and then south on I-57 to I-55 to West Memphis, then west a little ways, stopping for the night in Forrest City, Arkansas. The next morning, I headed west on I-40 to Little Rock, then I-30 to Dallas, then south on I-35 to Austin, Texas (one of my favorite cities!). In Austin, I stayed with Elizabeth and Ben Hunter, who I met on an earier trip when I had Thanksgiving dinner with them and Ben's brother and sister-in-law Michael and Pam Hunter (Mike is yet another friend of mine from the Internot!).

Wednesday morning found me heading south towards the Rio Grande...