The Long Way Home

photo illustration by jeff

Traveling on I-95 is mind-numbingly boring. Like, so boring that the birch beer and buffalo cheese curds sitting in the backseat cooler  had lost their magic way back in Jacksonville, and the sign promising old junk at exit 33 couldn’t jolt us awake. By South Carolina, Jeff could hardly bend his arms, his fingers frozen into lobster claws. We failed at the alphabet car game because we could barely remember letters. And then, in the distance, a giant black cloud hovering over a needle-like tower: South of the Border, our kitsch oasis on the highway desert. We could postpone weaving lanes to avoid tractor trailers, eat some dogs, play a few rounds of skeeball to get those arms moving again. We never did figure out what caused the fire that slowly enveloped SOB, but it just topped the evening before our long drive home.

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crossing the border to north carolina