pressing their noses against the windows and grown-ups shaking their
heads and grinning.
Mom waved at the crowd. "You know you're down and out when Okies
laugh at you," she said. With our garbage-bag-taped window, our roped-
down hood, and the art supplies tied to the roof, we'd out-Okied the
Okies. The thought gave her a fit of the giggles.
I pulled a blanket over my head and refused to come out until we were
beyond the Muskogee city limits. "Life is a drama full of tragedy and
comedy," Mom told me. "You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a
little more."
It took us a month to cross the country. We might as well have been
traveling in a Conestoga wagon. Mom also kept insisting that we make
scenic detours to broaden our horizons. We drove down to see the Alamo
—. "Davy Crockett and James Bowie got what was coming to them,"
Mom said. "for stealing this land from the Mexicans"—and over to
Beaumont, where the oil rigs bobbed like giant birds. In Louisiana, Mom
had us climb up on the roof of the car and pull down tufts of Spanish
moss hanging from the tree branches.
After crossing the Mississippi, we swung north toward Kentucky, then
east. Instead of the flat desert edged by craggy mountains, the land rolled
and dipped like a sheet when you shook it clean. Finally, we entered hill
country, climbing higher and deeper into the Appalachian Mountains,
stopping from time to time to let the Oldsmobile catch its breath on the
steep, twisting roads. It was November. The leaves had turned brown and
were falling from the trees, and a cold mist shrouded the hillsides. There
were streams and creeks everywhere, instead of the irrigation ditches
you saw out west, and the air felt different. It was very still, heavier and
thicker, and somehow darker. For some reason, it made us all grow quiet.
At dusk, we approached a bend where hand-painted signs advertising