[Coffee]

Okay...at the request of Katy, I just cranked this one out. I have no idea if it's any good, or just hokey...but whatever:

The Hitchhiker

I was driving back from Dallas when the strangest thing happened.

I had gone there for the weekend to see my friend Cliff, and his wife, Kara. Kara and Cliff had been married in June, and I was a groomsman in their wedding. I also sang a Rascal Flatts song for them, which I’d never heard, but whatever, it wasn’t my wedding. Nevertheless, it had been a wonderful affair, and they are some of my closest friends.
Cliff is one of those guys that I can have so much fun with. We can do, literally, nothing…and it’s great. This weekend had been very typical…video games, beer, and a trip to Hooters. We watched the football games on Saturday, and then I headed back this morning.

As I started back, I drove past Dallas on I-75, which becomes I-45 as you head to Houston. I lived in Dallas for about nine months, so I know the town pretty well, and I marveled once again at the fact that Dallas is basically a demilitarized zone south of downtown. I’m serious…you cannot go to any of the neighborhoods south of the big buildings, or you will get shot. Oak Cliff, a suburb, might as well be Baghdad, it’s so dangerous.

Still, Dallas is a pretty nice place. I still have several friends there who are very good people, and who I miss getting to see. Strange as it would seem, I also miss a couple of restaurants…most notably Pastazio’s, which is a fantastic pizza restaurant, and Café Brazil, which is a chain that has great breakfast food and a very generous coffee bar.

Anyway, the drive from Dallas to Houston is a long one, though not as long as it used to be, since the speed limit is 70 now. Back in the 80s, when it was 55, you had a five-hour drive ahead of you. Nowadays, it can be done in three-and-a-half hours…if you are careful and avoid the state troopers. But…it can be one of the most boring drives ever. I mean…no mountains, no water, nothing…just trees and asphalt for 250 miles.

It’s not as though I’m driving down the West Coast or something, and San Francisco awaits. Houston, my birthplace, is one of the most quietly ugly cities ever. For some reason, the Allen brothers elected to found their city in a maze of bayous and marsh, and we’ve been fighting the mosquitoes ever since. Four million people reside in the Houston area, and to be honest, I’m not sure why. The summers are hot, the falls and springs are hot, and the summers are warm. Oh, and I have not mentioned the humidity.

God, the humidity! It’s like living in your tenth grade locker room. When it’s summertime, you will begin sweating the very second you set foot outside. The heat almost feels like it seeps through your clothes, which it probably does, due to the humidity. The 80s were a grand time in Houston, because it is the capital of the Big Frizzy Hair. On the flip side, we have state-of-the-art air conditioning systems in every building, and there’s not much else to do than sit around and eat a lot of queso. Needless to say, I was anxious to get back home.

The drive from Dallas to Houston takes you through many small towns, none of which are particularly interesting. One town I always go by is called Kirvin, which I spent an entire semester in college hearing about, since there was apparently a lynching there in the 1920’s. Not to sound blasé, but there were lynchings in every small town in Texas in the 1920’s. I’m not trying to downplay the horror of our racist past, but I didn’t think that I needed to focus for five months of my life on one particular instance, especially not with a man that cleared his throat after every third word.

Sometime after Kirvin, a little less than two hours from Houston, and about twenty-five miles north of Huntsville, is a town called Madisonville. Madisonville is notable to me because it was always the turnoff from I-45 that you took to get back to Texas A&M if you were coming from Dallas, assuming you didn’t want to use the OSR.

For some reason, on the way back from Cliff’s, right around Madisonville, I noticed an 18-wheeler carrying logs. With all the trees, logging is a big deal in this part of the world. What surprised me is that it looked as though the chain holding the logs on the semi had snapped, and was now dangling down into the road, sending off occasional sparks. Right about the time I noticed the chain, I saw that the logs had begun to shift around on the trailer. I decided that changing lanes and getting away from this truck was a good idea.

As I changed lanes, however, one of the logs rolled off the trailer and landed in the middle of I-45. I didn’t even have time to react; I just plowed my white Camry directly into the large tree trunk. As my car compressed, I noticed that the log’s bark was peeling away, almost like the cedar trees I used to see at summer camp.

I then felt pressure in my chest, and looked down to see my gearshift embedded in my sternum. I guess I thought it would hurt at this point, but strangely, there wasn’t any pain…just that pressure, almost like a chiropractor trying to crack my chest, but failing to do so. Suddenly, I got the sensation that I was floating, and I was standing outside my wrecked car.

So…strange as it would seem, I died on my way back from Cliff’s apartment in Dallas. Now, my only question is how this whole afterlife thing works. I’ve been standing here on the side of the road for about two weeks now, with no indication that I’m going to heaven or hell, or anything like that. About a week ago, I decided to stick out my thumb, and see if that makes it better. If you do see me, try to give me a lift, huh? I know some great restaurants in Dallas.