Day Three of the Move

It's been two days since we left the state of California behind us. I already miss the balmy summer air and the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay that I used to walk to on Saturdays to think about things. It's day three and we've only made it as far as the sad excuse for a city, that is otherwise known as Winnemucca, Nevada. We picked up a hitchhiker back in Reno and my parents spent the entire time that it took us to get to Winnemucca, talking the poor guy's ear off. When the guy stuck his thumb out he had no idea what he was in for. People usually tell you to watch out for who you pick up, but I bet that guy will be more careful when it comes to hitching rides in the future. My mom had gotten hooked on the whole Grapes of Wrath comparison and decided that the rest of us were just as interested in how the road trip taken in the book compared to the one we are on now.

In the beginning of the book Tom Joad hitches a ride with a trucker, in his efforts to return to his family's farm. Now that we had a hitchhiker of our own, my mom was practically bouncing in her seat with excitement. I listened for a solid half an hour about how today no one stops for hitchhikers, and that it's a lost art. I kid you not, she really did say lost art. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes at her and I think that the hitchhiker felt the same way because he was out of the car in no time once we reached Winnemucca and I distinctly remembered him saying that he wanted to go as far as Elko. Not that I really blame him, if I could have left without my absence being noticed, I would have.

Don't get me wrong though, Winnemucca was nice in a different sort of way. There was a lot more open space than I was used to seeing and all of the shrubs in the endless fields just outside the city, prepared me for what I expected to see in Oklahoma. At night, seeing the city lit up against the backdrop of mountains was breathtaking, but it wasn't like I was going to tell my parents this. After all, I had a point to stick by, two points really. The first being that we never should have left California to begin with and the second being that we shouldn't take the scenic route because there was nothing worth seeing anyway. It wouldn't look good for me to start changing my opinion on the move now, I had to stand firm in what I believed in. I also have to find some way to get my mom to stop talking about that dumb book. She doesn't seem to understand that I didn't read it for a reason.