This morning, ironically, I woke up in the city of my birth - Tyler, Texas. Apparently it was more of a town 24 years ago. It was a much needed night of sleep after some 30 straight hours driving on the road. During those hours, however, my mother and I made some 1,800 miles from Pepperell, Mass. to Tyler. We stopped in Long Valley, New Jersey and scaled Schooley's Mt. to discover the house that we lived in back in 92 painted green. We had hoped to find the house that my parents and I lived in for a year in Tyler, but no dice. The alleged location was just off Texas Highway 155 on County Road 1125. The subdivision was not where it was supposed to be and a different one had taken its place. Upon further scrutiny, we noticed that the shades and even the direction of the road changed just off the highway. Alas, it appears the house and the neighborhood are no more.

Police on the highway are like great white sharks patrolling the high seas. The sentiments experienced by drivers cannot be all that different from terrified fish: the sinking feeling in your gut when the cruiser lurches, lights blazing like barred teeth, the ensuing relief when it nabs the helpless victim to your immediate right who was merely swimming along with the school, and the final blissful schadenfreude as you swim on. The great whites increase in size and number once you cross into Texas, and they wear ten gallon hats.