Captain’s Log Stardate 2022.2.2. The trip is underway. We made good progress yesterday. Ate lunch in Fort Stockton. The visit this time was a better experience for me. Last August I got a ticket for speeding in a school zone. The only bug this time was that I was the last to get my meal at lunch and the bacon was under-cooked. I was bold and sent it back. Raw pork isn’t my thing. It came back nice and crispy and appeared to be otherwise unadulterated.

We crossed over the Texas New Mexico line late in the afternoon and I thought of the song of the same name. It’s a toe-tapper. I like Jed Zimmerman’s version. You should look it up. We made numerous stops, which was good because I’ve got old legs to go with the rest of my old body and they need periodic refreshing. There was lots to look at during the day and then nothing at night and it got sort of boring and cold.

Pulled into Santa Fe around 8:30 or nine I forgot to check my watch which is a bad thing for a guy writing a captain’s log to do. But I’m only a passenger on this trip and not really the keeper of the official record. I did discover that I had been in New Mexico before because yesterday, February 1, was the day in 1881 that Billie the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County jail. My dad took us there as children on one of our many cross-country trips in service of the US Navy. I’m back dad, and I miss you. And there’s a song about Billie by Joe Ely that someone in the car quoted. Apparently, they never got along and he didn’t like the cock of Billies hat and the way he wore his gun.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale