When
I lived in Missouri, I used to drive back to Texas occasionally to visit my
family. It was about a 16-hour drive, and there were several routes I could
take. My favorite was down through Arkansas, because it had the prettiest
scenery. The shortest was through Oklahoma, but it was also the most boring,
because there was nothing to see. Someone recommended that I try heading over
to Kansas before heading down, so on one visit, I tried that route. Big
mistake! It was just as boring as the Oklahoma route, but also longer. But
that’s not the point of this story.
During
my trip, I got hungry and pulled over at a Taco Bell to get some portable
lunch. (This, of course, was back when I could actually digest and process Taco
Bell without turning into Mt. Vesuvius for the next three days.) So, as I drove
on down the road, being lulled to sleep by grasslands and cows for as far as
the eye could see, I grabbed one of my soft tacos and started unwrapping it. I
liked to wrap the paper around the bottom like a diaper to catch any
particulates that might fall out of the taco. I got my taco ready and looked up
to see no road in front of me.
I
was on a slightly raised portion of the highway, and the green fields were
spread out below me. My car was pointed at one of these fields about to launch
off the highway and go flying over the barbed wire fence. A disinterested black
cow was standing on the other side of the fence, munching on some grass,
watching my car barreling straight at her. As she realized that I was not
swerving to follow the highway as it curves off to the left, she became much
more interested. Her mouth stopped mid chew, and the wet, half-chewed grass
dropped from her gaping mouth.
Realizing
that I was about to die in Kansas of all places, and take this poor cow with
me, I threw my soft taco across the car, grabbed the wheel, and jerked it to
the left. My car responded, and I skidded along the gravel shoulder, my tires
just kissing the grass along the edge. By the grace of God, I managed to get
back onto the highway. I pulled over a mile up the road and collected the
remnants of my taco from the floorboard and tried unsuccessfully to put it back
together again.
I
never went that route again. Mostly because I couldn’t bear to face that cow
again. Her dark, judgmental eyes still haunt my dreams. I wonder now if I might
have cleared that fence (and the cow) and landed safely on the other side. I’m
not sure what I would have done at that point if I had. I guess I could have
driven across the field to the farmhouse and tried somehow to explain what
happened. Logically, it would make sense for someone not to believe such a far
fetched story. But the fact that I was miraculously in their field would have
been irrefutable proof. Well that, and the taco. We can’t forget the taco.
