What Would Jew Do

 October 6, 2013

8am, Downs, Kansas: None of the three restaurants listed in the 2009 guide is open, so we eat some stuff from Claudia’s care package and head towards Lebanon, where the geographic center of the continental U.S. is located. We presume it will be a great monument in a national park populated with mid-westerners, but instead it is a small statue of rocks the size of R2D2 and a tiny little chapel with a sign that says, “U.S. Center Chapel.” At first no one is there, but soon a nice couple from Omaha shows up and graciously take several pictures of us pretending to be a newly married lesbian couple.

11 am, Phillipsburg, Kansas: We are in a lovely little town with a diner called The Branding Iron II Cafe, where Melanie devours more food than I have eaten in a week and I pee three times for good measure. The waitress asks for my autograph! Apparently I am a star in Kansas.

12 pm, Colby, Kansas: Fortunately we stopped to pee before the mayhem begins. I don’t think we will be welcomed back to Colby. That is all I will say for now. Let’s just say that a New York Jew traveling with an author from South Carolina in a car with some very liberal stickers on it ruffles some feathers in this town. I miss the town of Phillipsburg.

2:30pm, Colorado State line: A parked police officer eyes us suspiciously as we pull off to the side to take pictures of ourselves by the “Welcome to Colorado” sign. The wind is so strong that when I open the car door to spit something gross out of my mouth, it blows back in and lands on Melanie’s car seat. I roar with laughter as I remark that I do indeed put the rad in Colorado.

4 pm, Denver: Sadly, our road trip has come to an end. Melanie splurges on a room at the Marriott. I remark that the differences in our hotel rooms are thus: If this were Arrested Development, this hotel would be Portia de Rossi’s character and the West Lake Inn in Downs, Kansas would be the girl who played Ann. Or, if we were to speak in terms of food, this hotel room would be like eating all-you-can-eat crab legs at Hyman’s Seafood in Charleston, and our Kansas hotel would be like the Cheez Whiz Philly Tuesday Special at Penny’s Diner in Wellington, Kansas. Not to dismiss Penny’s… it was actually very good, but we stayed away from the Cheez Whiz Pilly. Good Lord, I could not imagine a road trip with Mel and her dairy intolerance after such a dinner. The bodily functions were bad enough.