Dad and I are a driving machine. We are up and away by 5:30 Denver time. We have a little food and water and three commuter cups of coffee. (Dad lifted a cheap one from my brother-in-law. I've also relieved him of some little carrots and a few slices of lunch meat. And a couple of bananas. I have a few breakfast bars. My idea is to buy a block of cheese somewhere and maybe crackers.)

I drive south toward 'the Springs' as they say here. I stop just shy of New Mexico at a rest stop and we go to the bathroom and eat a banana and a breakfast bar. I pull into a station and get gas. I drive on to Raton and, just outside it, hand over to Dad.

We are watching the road for interesting things. Some antelope are spotted in a field. There's a lot of nothing.

We reach Texas and point ourselves south toward Odessa.

Driving, switching, nibbling we take up the miles. We never speed by more than a mile or two. We are steady, we limit stop times. We drink water. At a sad little station and convenience store I get gas and a block of Colby cheese and a small box of Ritz crackers. Dad carves cheese with my SAK (Swiss Army Knife) and we eat it and the lunch meat and crackers on the run. I drink a soda along the way and Dad even buys a large coke somewhere. I read papers when he's driving. We discuss other people's driving and their 'rigs.' We are silent. I scan for a radio station with a good signal and listen to some country. I found this great jazz station in Denver and I'll miss it. I am restless a little. I see a path up a hill or something and wish I could get out and exercise.

I call my aunt when I get a digital cell signal in Brownfield. "Drive carefully. Sometimes people get here before they are supposed to," she says. Dad and I will laugh about 'getting there before you are supposed to' for days.

But south, south we go into the teeth of the sand and desolation and the stentch of the oil field. We are getting closer. We turn onto the final road to our destination, Imperial, Texas. A black cloud is gathering. Further West there is obviously rain. A few drops spatter on the windshield.

We pull into Imperial and find my aunt's manufactured home. We pull up and are greated by her and another aunt, a uncle and a cousin. They've come to rendezvous with us for another desolate town. We have been on the road eleven hours and forty-five minutes and have traveled 705 miles. We are a driving machine. We relax with the folks. They make some dinner.

Over dinner the lights flicker and then go out and don't come back. A storm starts to brew in earnest. The lights return and then leave again. My other cousin's husband comes (they live within shouting distance) and then she shows up, arriving home from her nursing job in Ft. Stockton. Flashlights are dug out and candles lit. The rain rages, some hail falls. Wind blows. The lights return. I go with my cousins to the one's house nearby. They have a manufactured home. The neat spare bedrooms are empty, kids gone off for jobs and marriage, unlikely to return. My cousin's husband digs out some flashlights to take to bed. The lights go off and on again. They will go off again after I go to sleep, witnessed by the clock I carefully set blinking when I wake.

This place seems lost on the planet, battered by wind. I'm glad Dad and I didn't linger over a cafe lunch and dinner. We might have been driving in the teeth of that storm. However, there is a comfort and relaxation here. An insulation from the world.