Ice storm

I should tell you about what I've seen maybe instead of how I feel. The ice storm started just outside Oklahoma City. The night before was warm, about 65 degrees and I slept in my car at a rest stop with the windows cracked. I woke up to light rain (I was in Western Arkansas). By the time I got to Oklahoma, it began to sleet. I made it as far as a town called Alanreed Texas, population 52 (this is not a lie, this was on the sign). I had passed about 20-30 overturned semi trucks, with a lot of damage and what looked like possible deaths. One had a bunch of Hoover vacuums strewn over the road. So while filling up my tank in Alanreed, I asked about a hotel room and took it. This place was a dump, but it was warm. I could hear the sleet all night into the wee hours, pounding at the door. I left at 6 am, and as I was driving up the on rampt to the highway, I almost drove into a ditch. Luckily I have all my possessions weighing me down (quite literally) so the extra weight kept me on the road. I shifted into low gear and crept up the ramp to the highway. I drove about 10 miles on solid snow and then pulled off into a rest stop where I slept another hour.

When I woke up I got back on the highway and the roads were worn where people had driven so I followed this for about 300 miles. The scenery was indescribable. It was as if I awoke in the distant future on another planet. Everything was white and covered with snow and icicles. It was 5 degrees with the wind chill and it felt like I was in the middle of an ice age. Black cattle wander fields of white. Willie Nelson and Hank Williams Sr. on the radio. I was a high plains drifter, going slow until New Mexico, when the roads opened up a little. By the time I got over the mountains into Albuquerque, all the ice melted off my mattress, car, and U-Haul, no evidence there had ever been a storm, except for my frayed nerves. Outside now it is 50 degrees and I am in the west.