Lumi
After nearly a year of ownership, I finally feel that I've bonded with my car, even giving her a name, Lumi. While she is a Chevrolet Lumina, in my mind I have named her after the Snow Queen as she appears in the comic book Fables, where her real name is given as Lumi. (Apparently, lumi is the Finnish word for "snow.") I will never forget the Mousemobile, nor forgive the Goldbricker for the Mousemobile's unceremonious demise, but I can hardly blame Lumi for failing to be the Mousemobile. Also, I really enjoy typing the word Mousemobile.

So, now begins the annals of Lumi and The Last Angry Man.

Golgotha
Texas is the worst state in the Union. Florida is the second worst, though until I had personally experienced the limitless horror of the Lone Star State it was long-counted as the very worst of the worst. I am not prepared to definitively condemn Oklahoma as the third worst state in the Union, but I do know that the I-44 corridor is saturated with a concentration of misery encountered nowhere else. Given the attitude of the federal government to the Indians in the 19th Century, it is no surprise that we packed them off and sent them to Oklahoma; it is a shabby, godforsaken place, fit for neither man nor beast. I call it America's own Golgotha.

Last week, in preparation for the drive to St. Louis, I took up the Goldbricker's offer to pay for the repair of Lumi's air conditioning. The offer was made last summer, when he refused to sell me the Mousemobile and instead insisted I purchase from him Lumi. Why hadn't I had the AC repaired before now? In the decade I drove the Mousemobile, I grew accustomed to driving without automotive air conditioning. Sure it was unpleasant, but such is the nature of summer in North America. Yes, the unpleasantness was magnified in the kiln that is Texas, but so myriad are the miseries of this terrible place that one more seemed of little consequence. But my principal motive for taking action now was to have the AC up and running for when the Mountian drives Lumi back to Michigan in just over a week's time. My own suffering in that sweatbox is one thing, the Mountain's discomfort is something else entirely. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, the repair for which the Goldbricker paid was insufficient to render Lumi's AC functional; so, upon the morrow I shall again drop her off at the garage and give the mechanics a tongue lashing they shan't soon forget. (Or at least as much of a tongue lashing as my cold- and cough-ravaged throat can deliver.)

So, I drove to and from St. Louis without air conditioning. It was hot, it was sweaty, and it was an experience I'd just as soon never repeat. I don't think there was a single cloud in the sky between Fort Worthless and the Soulard neighborhood of the mighty city by the mighty Mississippi, and more of that trek occurs in Golgotha than in either Texas or Missouri. Golgotha is ugly; the trees are stunted and wind-ravaged, the plains are blasted and fruitless, and the exposed rocks possess known of the beauty of their cousins in the Appalachian Mountains. Golgotha is a blight on the face of the earth.

But Golgotha's horrors do not end with Almighty God's disfavor, oh no, the people of Golgotha do much to enhance the suffering of the unsuspecting traveler. In Golgotha, beverages of all kinds of more expensive than in either Texas or Missouri. In Golgotha, buildings are hardly air conditioned; so, if the weary driver steps into a McDonald's expecting to find an oasis of cool, crisp air, he shall instead find the same hot, damp, foul air from which he fled. I can only assume that in the winter the Golgothans don't take the trouble to heat their dilapidated structures. And, of course, Golgotha is home to that most un-American of highway varieties, the turnpike. But in Golgotha, even the turnpikes are worse! The traveler is not charged based on how far he travels, he is charged a flat rate for traversing intervals that for all the world appeared utterly random to my eyes. Never leaving I-44, these thirty miles are a turnpike, but the next sixty are not. These forty miles are the Will Rogers Turnpike, but the same road, as it passes through Tulsa, is not. At least when oen suffers the insult inherent in setting foot (or tire) in the horrible State of Ohio, there is some method to the extortion scheme they call turnpikes. In Golgotha, there is neither rhyme nor reason, there is no method to the madness. Should I endure for a thousand years, I should pray to Almighty Gd that I never again find myself in benighted Oklahoma.

But the worst of all was the two hours during which I covered precisely fifteen miles. There was, in the words of an Oklahoma Transportation Authority worker, "a wreck," at approximately the same location as the freeway reduced from two lanes to one due to regularly scheduled construction ('tis the season). In a car with no air conditioning, the roaring wind is the only thing that keeps you cool. And this looked to be the single greenest patch of Golgotha, as all around my more or less stationary conveyance were endless trees and lush bushes and the sound of a thousand thousand cicadas singing their incessant song. But this was not the worst.

Slowly, haltingly progress was made, and I happened upon on off-ramp with a restaurant, but no gasoline station. Oddly, though this was not a turnpike section of I-44, this was a limited access off-ramp, exactly the sort of thing one expects and encounters while traversing anti-American turnpikes. Needing a beverage to replace all the fluids I'd perspired away while mired in this redneck Dagobah, I exited. As I did so, I spotted a filling station! I had at this point about 1/4 of a tank left, which I would have in the fullness of time learned would have sufficed, but at the time it seemed a definite possibility that this highway-cum-parking lot might extend all the way to Oklahoma City, approximately thirty miles ahead. And Dana Carvey's impression of President George H.W. Bush taught us all the value of prudence; so, I, along with many of my fellow motorists, sought the opportunity to top off our fuel tanks once the presence of the filling station was revealed.

Though the station was busy, I was able to acquire a full load of petrol and cross the threshold of the idiosyncratic gate leading from the "approved" part of the off-ramp, the part sans gasoline, to the county road and fuel station/convenience store. I parked at the restaurant, but declined to purchase a beverage once I saw the exceeding length of the line. I did however avail myself of their water closet. Upon exiting the restaurant and maneuvering Lumi to reenter the snail-paced traffic on the freeway, I saw a pair of workers, seemingly Golgotha state workers, closing the gate between the proper exit and the adjacent filling station. But, wait a second, how were motorists supposed to purchase needed fuel if they could not reach the gasoline station? This exit was the first I'd encountered since traffic ground to a halt ninety minutes and four miles behind. People were, through no fault of their own, stuck in a traffic jam that moved just enough and just often enough to prevent engine shutdown from being a viable option, and here were minions of the State of Golgotha conspiring to prevent them from purchasing the fuel they'd need to keep sitting in this mess, leaving those motorists no choice but to eventually become stranded on the side of the road, in the dark, in an area with almost no freeway exits,i.e., no access to civilization.

Driving this country's highways and bi-ways I have seen many strange and inexplicable examples of governmental incompetence, but never before had I seen state workers actively working to the detriment of defenseless travelers. Way to go, Oklahoma, you've set a whole new standard in malfeasance.

Armed with the knowledge that Golgotha's agents were not merely apathetic, but truly against me and my fellows, I knew not what to expect, but fortunately this was the last of the horrors. The flow of traffic gradually built speed as we left the construction zone behind, having never seen even the slightest evidence of a wreck. Once I exited I-44 for I-35, Oklahoma ceased to be Golgotha, which is why I direct my ire at the I-44 corridor and hesitate to declare the whole state the third worst in the Union. Such was the misery of my passage through Oklahoma that I experienced a slight and tremendously fleeting sense of relief once I was safely back in Texas. Or, more to the point, once I had safely traversed and survived intact all that Golgotha had thrown at me. Soon enough, Texas looked as terrible as ever, but I was pleased to find that the former BTW South had not been burgled in my absence.

Hat Day!
Last week, I was on the road; so, I feel no need to make up the missed Hat Day. Today, I wore my porkpie and lamented my current lack of a soul patch. I love Hat Day!

The Queue
Progress through Moby-Dick is slow, but steady. I have recently finished Father Mapple's sermon (Chapter IX "The Sermon"), which inspired me to read the Book of Jonah. I wish that I'd read the Bible more carefully back in undergrad when I took all those religion courses. But, we all know how everything ends up getting merely skimmed, how we all get caught up in the hustle-bustle of any given semester. I'll probably reread the back half of Jonah a couple more times before I reshelve my Bible, to try and really understand the meaning therein.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
The Ditty Bops, "Sister Kate" from The Ditty Bops (T.L.A.M.)