Tim Barton
Equipment Editor
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There was a little place in Minden, Iowa, where Snowbird and I stopped from time to time on our way out to Denver or on the flip back to Boston. It was just across I-80 from the fuel stop where they had cheap diesel. It offered bad coffee and a stack of Suzy Qs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Snowbird didn’t eat Suzy Qs.
We would haul our sorry selves across to this little place and eat and watch the TV above the bar. Nixon was on this night, and he was telling the world he was not a crook, but he was going to resign anyway and do us all a favor.
Snowbird and I ran 80 plenty in those days, and I can still see the long, rolling hills and the road galumphing across them like a run-over snake. Vietnam was the war then, the war the whole country fought and fought about tooth and nail on campuses and in the jungle. There is another war now, another invasion of another country, but from the distance of 30 years, the old war and the new war seem very remote.
In the meantime we live our lives and try to make a living, and time just keeps on making itself up as it goes along, making history and headlines that very seldom affect our daily lives. If you run 3,000 miles a week, you probably don’t have time for much but headlines anyway, and the world can go right by you. You can live your life reading headlines and never get the whole story. Even the headlines of your own life are all you may ever get.
We slept for a few hours. The salted sheep hides we were carrying from Denver didn’t need to be in New Hampshire just yet. We got up about 4 a.m. and headed east across the run-over snake. We got to about Atlantic before we stopped for some decent coffee. And there she was, The Headliner, walking through the place like Marilyn Monroe with her little daughter in tow. Snowbird said what was a girl like her doing in a place like this. She was so beautiful – headliner beautiful.
We drank coffee and lost track of them. I guess we figured the lady got back in her Lincoln, or whatever she might be driving, and headed back to Hollywood. But when we got on the big road, there she was walking east. Snowbird said to stop and see if she needed a ride since she didn’t seem to have a Lincoln, and she was headed east, away from Hollywood.
