Morton's Gap, Kentucky

A fine enough day, I awoke this morning at 5:30 restless and unable to sleep thanks to some odd, pleasant but unsettling dreams (hmmm). The night was spent in Webster City after picking up some washers and dryers from the Electrolux plant here. It seems that Iowa has a monopoly on appliance assembly. (Maytag and Amana are/were also located here). I had hoped, last night, to pick up that load quickly and jaunt down to Grinnell, where I went to college to visit a friend who is still living there but this was not to be and I spent a nice long time at Electrolux and when I was finished drove only down to the edge of town on US-20 and parked for the night.
This morning I drove from Webster City, Iowa to Altoona, near Des Moines, where I stopped at the Bossellman travel center to look clean for breakfast with my Grinnell friend, which was a sort of consolation prize for not getting to spend the evening. Breakfast was fine at the A&M, a place that tries for bizarre roadfood-esque ambiance but the effect is a bit too odd and a little creepy. I had some biscuits and gravy which, despite being a bit overly viscous were tasty and certainly filing. The food tasted better than I remember likely because I was not miserably hungover. It was also cheeeeep and I was reminded, and astounded by the thought, of how little money I must have had in college. I had parked down by the interstate at a new Kum and Go (the actual name of a Midwestern gas/convenience store) which had some truck parking. Grinnell is about 3 miles north of the interstate so I biked into town imagining that I must have been crazy to do this, as I often did, up a 4 lane 55mph road with only a loose gravel shoulder. There was, on the way, a big new Wal-mart super center, directly across from where the old, tiny (not super) Wal-Mart used to be. My dad loved the old walmart because it was small and he thought perfectly adequate (this being relevant because Chestertown, where I grew up, had been fighting the installation of a large Wal-mart store at the time, a historical footnote: we won.) But clearly it was not an adequate walmart and the nearest existing super center in Newton, a ghastly 16 miles down US-6 was much too far away. That 16 miles, by the way, is some of the prettiest Iowa road you’ll find, bumpy, but pretty.
So back to the truck I biked, into the wind this time and with a belly full of biscuits and gravy sludge and the ride was not as fun. Then it was out across the prairie and down to my present stop, Mortons Gap, Kentucky with only a short 10 minute rest stop break on I-57 north of Mattoon, Illinois.
Just south of Mattoon I left the interstate to avoid the absurd westward bend I-57 takes and headed south on little roads through Newton, Olney, Albion and Greyville, hopped onto I-64 east and then US-41 south through Evansville, Indiana and into Kentucky. Originally the border of these two states must have been the Ohio River but over time, it seems, rivers change course (who knew?) but state lines do not and so, before crossing the river you cross the state line into a little sliver of Kentucky where the river once was. Throughout the Ohio and Mississppi river systems wherever the river makes up the border of the states (which is pretty much everywhere out here) you will find these little anomalies, look at a map of southern Illinois or Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, its ridiculous.
Mortons Gap is nice enough, just a truckstop on the Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway. Kentucky has this extensive system of Parkways. Apparently the Interstate system was not going to meet their needs, so they built a bunch of toll roads but it was written into the rules that once tolls had been collected enough to pay for the construction of the roads they would become freeways. And so they have. Edward T. Breathitt was a Kentucky politician who was a big civil rights supporter. He was born in Hopkinsville, where this road terminates ergo the dedication. Pennyrile is another name for Pennyroyal, an herb in the mint family known for its use in folk medicine as it contains a toxin that can stimulate abortions. This may be familiar to some readers aware of Nirvana’s song “Pennyroyal Tea” from the In Utero album. I suppose that this is a plant that grows round these parts.
Anyway, these Washers and Dryers are destined for Port Wentworth, Georgia, near Savannah where hopefully I will be tomorrow, where hopefully it will be pleasant sleeping as the last few nights have been a might chilly, and being, as I am, someone not inclined to burn up yet more diesel fuel just to stay warm, so hopefully I can ward off the apocalypse for another hour or two.