If there’s one thing I’ve noticed since I’ve been on the road, it’s that, when one is on the road, one tends to notice a lot more stuff than they otherwise would.

I think it has to do with not being bombarded by adverts all the time.

No TV, no radio, no news. I listen to recorded books as I drive and just notice stuff. Maybe a lot of it is because Trixie isn’t around.  When I am with her on a daily basis, I have to focus all my noticing energy on her hair so that I can remark positively if she changes it, or else suffer the consequences.

I left Planet Fitness at about 1:45 this afternoon and noticed that, at that strange hour on a Saturday, all the surrounding eateries were devoid of customers except one – Taco Bueno. They had a line at their drive-thru that wrapped around the building and their lot was full. Weird.

In case you’ve never noticed, ever since my discharge from the army, I don’t stand in line to eat.  The paranoid kook in me…ok, that IS me…thinks it is some kind of ploy. I won’t eat at, say, Cracker Barrel unless they seat me right away, which they never do.

I am suspicious that there is plenty of seating but they make everyone wait in the gift shop to get them to spend money.

Also, I won’t buy a pair of shoes from a shoe store that doesn’t have their wares all on display because I have never asked a salesman to get a pair from the back without him returning to say they don’t have it in my size and he then wants to show me something else. Not sure what he is up to, but I just leave. Of course, I notice that this has put me way off track.

Anyway, I broke my own rule and queued up.  The tacos were great! I ate my fill then cussed Taco Bell for being. Just being.

Enough about noticing stuff. I’d rather go back to being oblivious.

I was in Broken Arrow, OK today and I thought to myself, “That’s kind of an awful name for a place in the heart of Cherokee Nation.”

So, I checked my sources and drove to somewhere more American – meaning, based on a television program from my youth.

The truth is though, the TV show was based on a book – maybe a series of books. I don’t know. I never read it. Or them. Or whatever. But, that’s ok because I never watched the TV show either. But, I do have the home version in game form. (pic related)

I don’t feel bad for not watching it. Recently, when I was at Graceland,  in the King’s TV room they listed his favorite shows (pic related)

and he didn’t watch it either.

Curiously, they also listed his favorite movies…

“Smokey and the Bandit” came out, like, a few minutes before E allegedly died. No way there would have been enough time for it to make it onto his all-time great’s list. Busted.

The problem this left me with is, when I got to this prairie in Kansas, (pic related)

I didn’t really know what I was looking for…you know, other than a little house. So, I took pics of everything.

Here is the childhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder…

It really is tiny. But, I don’t know if it was featured in the show or not. And, that is the history that matters.

Here is a post office…

And a schoolhouse…

And a wagon…

They have a sort of a museum here, but they close for the season on October 31.

There really aren’t any neighbors to speak of. I wandered around and finally found a young girl with curly blonde hair. She was Amish or something, I’m guessing because she was dressed kind of funny. She looked like a sneering version of the kid on packages of Blue Bonnet margarine.  Anyway, she wasn’t helpful at all and rather unpleasant actually.

Though she looked nothing like her, I got the sense that this is what good ol’ Trixie was like when she was 10 years old or so.

I ramble on.