HOM: Blurred (Re)Visions

A lot of the trip is a blur of bookstores and highways in my memory, with the details long ago lost & gone. White line fever. Tunnel vision. Whiteout. Whiteout? Well, yes, North Dakota was an actual whiteout. All I can tell you of the state is that it was flat & white and lacked detail. Visibility at best was only 1/2 mile or so. Blizzards all the way through. In April. We spent our second night on the road in Minot, after a quick stop in Williston looking for books. We visited a huge mall in Minot, and I made another purchase for the Datsun. I'd learned that the "wide open spaces" in eastern Montana and the Dakotas didn't make for great radio reception, at least not in a storm, so I bought a Pioneer radio with a cassette player and some tapes to go with it. Conversation is nice, but hour after hour in a small cab gets boring and the music would help stifle the arguments. I installed the radio in the truck dash that night at the motel and peeved a few neighbors that were trying to sleep,but since I was moving on in a few hours I ignored them. Yeah, I was selfish. Williston. I took the wrong turn-off in the snow and bounced through a narrow ditch. I learned that this woke Bec up when she poked her head up into the cab with a "Gosh, Dad! Did the truck fall off the road?" Not quite, but close. The next exit was the right one. It ended up being a long day. TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)