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Through the Windscreen

Story ID:3142
Written by:Virginia Allain
Organization:none
Story type:Travel
Location:El Dorado Kansas USA
Year:2007
Person:October Road Trip - Florida to Kansas
Through the Windscreen
Through the Windscreen
Through the Windscreen
Through the Windscreen
Through the Windscreen
Yellow drifts of wildflowers, clear wide rivers
Logging trucks push past us
Dothan, Montgomery, Tuscaloosa
Two-lane road edged with red dirt
Enticing pit BBQ shacks
Alabama in October

Empty roadside stands with faded signs
BOILED PEANUTS, PEACHES, PLUMS
Plain country churches, white steepled
Mounding, creeping kudzu obscures the landscape
“The heart of Dixie” – Alabama

Route 82, divided highway stretching endlessly
Columbus, Winona, Indianola, Greenville
White clumps of cotton litter the roadside
Dust blows across the fields from oversized farm combines
Cotton fields spread across level delta land
Blue, red, yellow tarps top truck-sized cotton bales
Mississippi in October

Muddy Yazoo River
More kudzu covers fences, light poles
Like topiaries gone astray
Flat, blue-glittering fields for fish farms
Few cars, few trucks to share the road
“The Magnolia State” – Mississippi

We cross the Mighty Mississippi
Dumas, Pine Bluff, Little Rock
City traffic, I-40, Conway
This state could use some rest areas
Arkansas in October

Delta gives way to wooded mountains
Unexpected wineries with French and Swiss names
Deep red sumac catches the eye
Clarksville, Fort Smith, Fayetteville
I-540 north, the Ozarks with pretty valley views
Lots of Wal-Mart trucks, Bentonville
Compact cedar trees, rocky ledges
“The Natural State” – Arkansas

Neosho, Joplin, Carthage, Nevada
Few trucks on divided Highway 71
Exposed layers of limestone, eroding, crumbling
Open rolling hills with tiny white wildflowers
High clouds, a skim milk white
“The Show Me State” – Missouri

Highway 54, two-lane
Trees hug the rivers or follow a fence line
Windbreaks planted since the Thirties
A dust trail signals a car’s approach
On a graveled side road
Kansas in October

Giant rolls of hay huddle in field corners
Faded white barns, tidy red barns, sagging barns
Cattle knee-deep in farm ponds
Fort Scott, Iola, Eureka, El Dorado
Oil pump jacks like giant grasshoppers
Windmills silhouetted against the big sky
“The Sunflower State” - Kansas
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