The Leisure Seeker Read Free

look at myself in the mirror. I know I look like death warmed over. It doesn’t matter. I feel lighter already.
     
    Up ahead, I spot a building that looks somehow familiar. Low slung and sprawling, its peaked turquoise roof is blanched from decades of sun. There’s a faded horse and carriage on the side of the building. Finally, I notice the sign.
    STUCKEY’S
    On our vacations with the kids, Kevin and Cindy, we’d often stop at those places with their pecan logs and acrid coffee. Sometimes the signs would start a hundred miles away.There’d be a new one every ten, fifteen miles. The kids would get all worked up and want to stop and John would say no, we had to get some miles under our belt. They’d beg and finally when we were a half mile away, he’d give in. The kids would scream yay, and John and I would smile at each other like parents who knew how to spoil their children just enough.
    A semitruck roars past us. In a moment, it’s silent again, except for the wind. “I haven’t seen one of those places in years,” I say. “Do you remember Stuckey’s, John?”
    “Oh yeah,” he says, in a tone that almost makes me believe him.
    “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go. We need gas anyway.”
    Nodding, John pulls up to the pumps. No sooner do I get out of the van than a man, neatly dressed in a beige sport shirt and copper-colored slacks, approaches us.
    “We don’t have gas anymore, but there’s a BP up the road,” he says, his voice raspy, but not unpleasant. He tips his puffy white cap back on his head with his thumb.
    “It’s okay,” I say. “We really just wanted a pecan log.”
    He shakes his head. “We don’t have those anymore, either. We’re just gone out of business.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, clutching my armrest. “We used to like Stuckey’s. We came with our kids.”
    He shrugs forlornly. “Everyone did.”
    As he walks away, I wrestle myself back into the van. By the time I’m buckled up and ready to give John the go-ahead, the man is back at my door.
    “I found one,” he says, handing me a pecan log.
    He’s gone before I can even thank him.
     
    I find out now that Route 66 was already starting to fall apart the time we traveled on it in the ’60s. Much of the old road is closed now, buried or bulldozed, long ago replaced by Highways 55 and 44 and 40. In some places, the original pink Portland concrete is so decrepit you can’t even drive on it. Yet there are maps and books available now that show the old route, turn-by-turn directions, guides to the trailer parks. It’s true. I found it all on the World Wide Web in the library. Turns out people didn’t want to let go of the old road, that a lot of the kids who were born after the war, who traveled it with their parents, want to retrace their steps. Apparently, everything old is new again.
    Except us.
     
    “I’m hungry,” says John. “Let’s go to McDonald’s.”
    “You always want to go to McDonald’s,” I say, poking his arm with the pecan log. “Here. Eat this.”
    He looks at it with suspicion. “I want a hamburger.”
    I stash the pecan log in our snack bag. “We’ll find you a hamburger somewhere else for a change.”
    John loves McDonald’s. I’m not that crazy about it, but he could eat it every day. He did for quite some time. McDonald’swas his hangout for a number of years after he retired. Every day, Monday through Friday, right around midmorning. After a while, I started to wonder what the big attraction was, so I went with him. It was just a bunch of old farts sitting around, chewing the fat, drinking Senior Discount coffees, reading the paper and bitching about the state of the world. Then they’d get a free refill and start all over again when new old farts arrived. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I never went with him again, which I think was what he wanted. Frankly, I think John just needed somewhere to go to get away from me after he retired. Truth be told, I was