Indiana > Ohio > West Virginia > Virginia > North Carolina
I took I-90, 94, and 43, but after Chicago I did what I should have done to start and drove straight south toward warmer temps, down to Lafayette and then Indianapolis on I-65. That’s how I got to this rest stop, where I wake up and hit the road 5 mins later, stopping for gas at a station with an attached McDonald’s. I grabbed a coffee and a McMuffin, and while I was waiting a guy came in steaming. He was wearing a country-western shirt with jeans tucked into his cowboy boots, and he was holding a McGriddle at arms-length like it was a turd. I thought he was going to throw it at the cashier, but he tossed it on the counter in disgust. I admit my first thought was, “Don’t throw that away, I’ll eat it,” which is usually my way of thinking when I’m around food. But the situation had changed on a dime, from waiting for my coffee and McMuffin to waiting for conflict. Everyone got tense.
He said “you fucked up my order. I ordered a McMuffin.”
Then he turned away from the counter, this wiry guy, wound tight, all elbows and knees. The McDonald’s people got right to work on his McMuffin. I made eye contact with him as he turned around to pace and he yelled “how the fuck you fuck up a McGriddle for a goddamn McMuffin!” I thought about saying, ‘well, they both start with Mc,’ but that didn’t seem likely to get a laugh so I kept my mouth shut. I don’t even know what a McGriddle is.
I’m not sure how a person can get so angry over a simple, honest mistake like that, something that costs you a couple of minutes at most. Plus, you’re mad at things that start with “Mc.” You can’t take yourself seriously if you’re eating play food. But maybe he thought they were going to contradict him, tell him ‘tough shit, pal, you ordered that McGriddle, alright, and we have you on camera. We can play back the video right now, hot shot.’ Maybe he was heading off that kind of potential for interrogation by being the aggressor. It’s hard for me to understand treating other people like that, with such absolute contempt. Then both our McMuffins somehow came up at the same time. I was a little pissed suddenly that I’d been waiting 5 minutes and his redo took 45 seconds. I should have told him I waited 5 times as long as he did to get the same thing at the same time. He might have felt better.
I walked back to my truck at the pump and at the next pump over his lady was just coming out of the gas station. She walked up to him smiling and they gave each other a quick kiss and then hopped in their flatbed and hit the road with a cute dog hanging out the back window. I wondered if she’d seen that side of him yet.
Later in the afternoon near Jackson, Ohio, I stopped for gas and the station, A&A Truck Stop, had a little diner attached, which wasn’t obvious until you got inside. It had a vibe of locals and regulars and suddenly got very busy right after I arrived. This was the first place I started to hear drawls and y’alls, which is always nice. I love a southern accent. A group came in and when the waitress came around one of their number said “I seen chili dogs in the winder. I’ll take two with onions.”
Oddly, in the corner of the diner, there was a bitcoin machine, like an ATM, that said “Buy & Sell Bitcoin,” which I’d never seen before. It surprises me that an out-of-the-way truck stop in southeastern Ohio would be the target market for the latest get rich quick grift, but maybe they were thinking truckers get tired of life on the road and might want to blow a ton of money. Video poker must not be legal here, so cryptocurrency is the next best scheme.
Anyway, I felt like breakfast even though it was afternoon and ordered ham and eggs and biscuits. On the road I had started to see as many signs for biscuits in this area, and later into West Virginia, that it rivaled Wisconsin’s cheese signs. I saw one sign that said “Biscuit World.” That was a world I thought I might want to live in. I was in the land of biscuits now, coal and biscuits, and that was alright with me, except for the coal part. Pretty soon half the tables needed bussing and a customer, a woman of about 60, got up from her table and started helping clear them. “I used to work at McDonald’s for 9 years,” she said. They didn’t care what her resume’ was. They were just glad for the help.
In West Virginia the traces of snow cover finally began to fade. When I crossed over I listened to John Denver’s “Country Roads.” In Ohio I listened to Gillian Welch sing “Look at Miss Ohio.” There’s probably a song for every state I’ve driven through, every state on the map, every country in the world and maybe every city, but those are the ones that came to mind.
Near Hugheston, West Virginia, I drove by a cemetery on a steep hill, and the graves just kept climbing up that hill, hundreds of yards, both wide and long. Hugheston has a population of only about 500 but that graveyard had thousands of people. It seems like you usually see cemeteries on flat ground but maybe that’s just in my head because the Midwest is flat and we get buried parallel with the land. I’d be worried if I were buried on a steep hill like that. I kept thinking they might start to slide down over time.
Issue: Something is wrong with the electrical in the camper and the battery drained in the night. I woke up at 5 a.m. to sub-40 degree temps in the camper, but I had a lot of blankets and went back to bed for a couple hours until I couldn’t stand it. I dislike working with electricity.
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