Ohio Girl

In the second grade I had a teacher named Miss Roush. On lucky, Friday afternoons, when she was as inpatient for the weekend as her students, she would abandon her lesson plan and hop up on top of her desk. She took this time to talk about a trip she had taken the previous summer. Her and a friend and a beater of a station wagon spent three months road-tripping around the country.

As she talked about the trip her legs would start to swing. She talked about eating nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to conserve funds. Something that sounded great to us second-graders. She talked about sleeping in the back of the wagon at roadside stops and all the strange people they met and all the sights. As she talked she got more and more excited. As she got more excited her legs swung faster and faster eventually thumping against her desk-front.

The thumping matched my heartbeat. I was excited as she was. And there was something about the look on her face—a Buddha sort of bliss--that made me want to follow in her tire treads more than anything.  I made a promise to myself that I would road-trip to all 50 of the United States.

I am as excited as a second-grader to report I have now reached 48! I still have Alaska and Hawaii (for which donations are gladly accepted), but 48 out of 50 ain’t bad.