(east/west, day six: Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico)
Hit the road on Sunday when most heads still hit the pillow
Get out of Oklahoma, on a limb, on a branch
I’ll slice the Texas Panhandle across through Amarillo
On my way to see the legendary Cadillac Ranch
On the edge of town I spy something weird through my windshield
Is that the real thing I think that I see
Ten black phantoms arising in a wheatfield
Well, what other Cadillac Ranch could there be?
From here on, everything gets bigger
The era is over for thinking small
From this point forward, we’re thinking bigger
Living large and walking tall
Pull over on the shoulder, grab my camera, cross the interstate
On foot, like the idiots I’d curse out back home
But this maybe the only chance to investigate
This roadkitsch shrine to steel and chrome
But all the pointed-down DeVilles are getting repainted
All the Fleetwoods and Eldorados while the wrong music plays
This was to be a pilgrimage to an icon much sainted
But it’s such a sad sight, so no reason to stay
From here on, everything gets bigger
We’re done with all the should and can’ts
We’ll pursue life with a recharged vigor
Give our grandest dreams a chance
 
And the tres hombres boogie and rock up the soundtrack
Throughout the sheer bigness along this expanse of the ride
Will I pass this way again, I find myself wondering
Or will I stay permanently on the other side
So I push on from Cadillacs to cattle ranches
Miles and miles of beef, hot damn that’s a lot of steak
The sky is punctuated by wind farms and oil gantries
High plains stretch out around me and I’ve got to take a break
I pull over in Adrian and kill an hour playing Tetris
Then get back on the road while I’ve still got some light
Soon I’m at the state line and it’s bye bye Texas
Couple hours more and then late afternoon good night
From here on, everything gets bigger
Leave the old way of doing things behind
From this point forward, we’re thinking bigger
This petty worrying is for a smaller mind
From here on, everything gets bigger
This small-headed thinking is a thing of the past
From this point forward, we’ll do things bigger
In terms of huge, immense, and vast.
©2023 The Hesh Inc.
I had been curious about the legendary Cadillac Ranch since I first read about it in the book "Automerica: A Trip down US Highways from World War II to the Future," by Chip Lord and Ant Farm, a year or so before Bruce Springsteen released a song about it. It became a bucket-list item for me (long before "bucket list" became a term!), yet never imagined I would actually have the opportunity to see it in person. That opportunity came on Sunday morning, June 22, 2003, after I departed the hotel in Oklahoma City I had stayed at over Shabbos and hit the road early. Sorry to have to say that I was disappointed when I saw it ... I suppose I was expecting it to look something resembling the photos I had seen over the years, even though it was 23 years since I had first read about it (and almost 30 since the cars were planted face-down in the dirt). Instead, they were all painted black, being primed for a new paint job by some local volunteers. So I couldn't even take the close-up photos or proto-selfies that I would have liked ... it would have been nice to have the place to myself, but that was not to be. And stranger still, these volunteers had the music turned up loud to ... Bob Marley! Talk about musical cognitive dissonance.
Soon I was on my way west again, with ZZ Top on my own sound system, taking in the wide, vast Texas High Plains landscape of oil derricks, cattle ranches, and wind farms, realizing that the old saw about everything being bigger in Texas was not cliché at all. I took another break at a rest area in Adrian, not far from the New Mexico state line, where I noticed an old arcade-style Tetris machine, and I couldn't resist the urge to play ... and next thing I knew, an hour had slipped by me. Oops. But on I went, hoping to make Albuquerque, but I was exhausted by the time I reached Santa Rosa, on Historic Route 66, and that's where I called it a day.