Delusions of Night Driving
Article & Art by Ra Omar
I remember first driving my car in the dirty evening sunlight from Memphis to my home in Little Rock. I bought it from a friendly old couple who wanted a new car with cooling seats to survive the Southern summers. It’s one of the most precious things I own: a Toyota Avalon with a V6 engine that is smooth and powerful at the same time. When I step into the car, the gently worn faux leather embraces me. More than enough legroom and buttery steering and acceleration makes driving it a form of therapy.
I don’t know if intrusive thoughts on long drives are a common phenomenon among most males. Juan Chicoy is the protagonist from John Steinbeck's novel, The Wayward Bus. He transports drifters and travelers in his barely-running bus in California's Salinas Valley. On his drives he thinks, wonders, creates scenarios and judges their possibilities. Among his scenarios is his meticulous plan to leave his family and business, and escape to Mexico. The idea of escape can be a powerful one. It is attractive to souls bullied by the complexities and dryness of daily life. Unfortunately daydreaming about escape has been a recurring theme throughout my life. I get to live this reality of escape for about a day on my drives back and forth between college in Colorado and my home in Arkansas.
The drives never start in the plains. When I leave Colorado, the highway is skirted by the beautiful Rockies. What a sight the mountains are, especially in the winter, when the plains are white and the mountains are dotted with patches of snow. Arkansas does not have a lot of snow, but the hills and mountains there are much greener and more hospitable towards life. A couple of hours into my drives I enter the realm of the dry and dusty plains of Texas, Oklahoma, and, for a brief period, New Mexico. They are not fun. However, the barrenness of the land is made up for by the niceness of the people. Even though sometimes I worry and keep up my guard in those towns because of my beard and skin complexion, the gas station people are generally nice. One gas station in New Mexico will always have two attendants chilling outside no matter the weather or the time of night and they’ll give me tire pressure consultation for free. The plains look bad during the day. The harsh sunlight bullies my eyes with the sight of yellow nothingness up to the horizon. It ties up my attention and offers nothing pleasant to think about. However, this irredeemable landscape becomes somewhat amusing when the sun goes down.
The highways seem to get calmer as the skies turn red in the late evening. The rush hour crowds at this point have reached home and are probably having dinner in front of their TVs. From this point I share the road mostly with freighters. At this point I’ll get some dinner, fill up gas, and stretch my legs before I start the long night drive. As the day turns into night my playlist changes from upbeat to mellow and melancholy. The harsh plains of the panhandle put on a surreal light show. The windmills disappear, leaving only their stark red lights blinking in unison across the horizon. How beautiful the dreadful plains look hidden in obscurity. I pass silhouettes of sleeping farm equipment, grain silos and quiet oil refineries gently smearing their fumes in the air. I look out at the sleeping moonlit wasteland dotted with oil rigs. I like night driving because it’s a time of introspection and delusion. College, family, friend groups, and society expect nothing from me at that time. The gas station attendant treats me like a traveler that he’ll never see again and I feel the small talk I share with them at this hour to be of the highest quality of human interaction. I use that time to hide from the world; a world that constantly expects so much from me and I have to perform.
It is a time of delusion too. In the back of my head I wish for an unwanted encounter with who knows what. Sometimes I check the clothes piled in the back seat to see if a sneaky stranger is waiting to choke me with piano wire. This one time I could’ve sworn I was looping in time-space when the dashboard on my car flickered and I ended up passing the same “Sweetwater Creek” three times. If there’s any aliens reading this, my night drives would be a perfect time to pick me up and give me a tour of your ship.
The isolated semi-agricultural landmass of the Texas panhandle is not the most reasonable place to be driving at night. If my car breaks down I’m pretty screwed. The region’s climate is not known to be kind to travelers. Violent hailstorms, cold fronts, and strong winds can really ruin someone’s day (or night) if they get stranded. The sparse dispersal of gas stations and man-made shelters along the route make it more hazardous. Detached and dimly lit state highways don't make for an ideal place for fellow drivers to show their kindness towards stranded motorists. I got a first-hand experience of this when a seal in my engine-bay hood came loose and I unsuccessfully tried to attract an extra helping hand at a crossroad. Looking back, being a rather large brown guy with a disheveled beard waving at strangers in the middle of the night probably didn’t help my case either. That’s why on those drives any little noise or driving abnormalities puts me on edge. But I just take it as extra motivation to take great care of my car in my free time.
As life gets complicated and challenging, I get pulled towards the memories of my night drives. I want to go on my drives the same way a middle-aged man would dream of his fishing trips under the constant demands of his overbearing boss and unsatisfied wife. I think of those memories of lacing through strangely lit freighters in a hostile landscape while being protected by the budget-friendly luxury and reliability of my vehicle. I really have to shout out Toyota for making the most reliable cars in the world and making the lives of cash-strapped college students and questionable insurgent groups easier. The reliability of my car garnered the nickname “V5 Avalon” from my friends when a spark plug failed during a trip in Arizona and we used it to limp back to college, driving about a thousand miles with a blown out cylinder. The thought of my night crossings become my escape when life gets hard. I find peace in the idea that no matter what life throws at me, whether it be failing a class, filing annoying paperwork, or talking to tax professionals, the dark and bumpy state roads of Texas and Oklahoma will be waiting for me when the semester is done.