Traveling in the Midwest over the Holidays

Because of the holidays, and a few other personal reasons, I have done a lot of driving lately. I drove from Madison to Texas and back (916.90 miles), and then I drove from Madison to eastern Tennessee and back (732.17) — two times.

Above: Illinois fields in winter

All that time driving through the cold and flat midwest caused me to notice three things:

1) Jesus has one heckuva licensing deal. All those bumper stickers, license plate frames, pisces decals, road signs, t-shirts, and other promotional schwag must bring in tons of money.

2) The rock band Journey still has a surprisingly strong following among radio programmers.

3) The number and frequency of Wal-Mart bags littering the highways and byways of America seems to be going down. To explain: About two years ago I took a long road trip through the southern United States. I witnessed so many of those blue, plastic Wal-Mart shopping bags along the highway that I decided to pass time by counting them. I lost count in the mid-60s. Yes, over the course of a few states, I saw over 60 blue bags along the road, snagged in trees, or lying on the median full of other trash. The number was so large that I wrote Wal-Mart to ask if they percieved this as a problem. I received no reply. I’m happy to report on this trip, I saw no blue bags.