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One thing that comes up a lot when making a home on the road for any length of time is, where are we going to get our next meal. At home, that was easy. A phone call could yield pizza, chow mein or Thai food delivered to me in a car. Look in a cabinet, and there was dinner in a can. The idea of food just lying around waiting to be a meal for me was something that was a given, and I didn't even have to go anywhere to find it. On the road, it wasn't as simple as that. In a van, there weren't cabinets stocked with months of premade meals that one could heat and eat. Ice cream, well, that was something that I drove by eighty times in one day without having instant access to it. Even though all it took was getting off the highway and following the directional signs, it wasn't right there in front of me. Just one of the inconveniences of American road travel. It was easy, and everything was right there for the taking. Except it wasn't right there. A conundrum that got more confusing as I twisted it in my mind; part of the Empty Stomach Syndrome. In reality, our home on four wheels wasn't completely devoid of food. There were chips, fruit, cookies, and other kinds of food which seemed so out of place for an entree that it fell into the category of "etc." And etc. it felt: never had I felt so bored by the idea of ridged potato chips and pretzels and deviled chocolate cakes. Somehow, eating this stuff made me felt both sick and hungry at the same time, as though I was poisoning myself and my body was calling out real food to heal it. Another candy bar would probably cause diabetic coma. That was the thing with American road travel that sometimes puzzled me. The highway would call me and lure me on to its path, and there I would be. Soon I would be zombified by miles and miles of unending road, cramped from lack of exercise and movement. The unending road food medley of candy and fast food would bounce in me with every pothole, threatening to keep me awake even as I nodded off. It was like getting a hangover without having the benefit of getting drunk. It was a wonder that I kept getting attracted to this kind of travel and wanted to do more and more of it. This time, however, we had come equipped with a plug in heater/ refrigerator. Resembling a giant cooler without its plug in component, this contraption allowed us to either keep food hot or cold, depending on what we had stuffed into it. In theory, this meant that we could go and buy a hot meal and keep it warm until we got to wherever we got to eat our meal. Which worked well unless we had something we wanted to keep cold at the same time. But suffice it to say, we could pick up some takeout food and keep it with us for some length of time. In addition to the usual restaurants and drive thru places, we could go to supermarkets and stock up, at least to some extent. On some microscopic level, the conveniences of home could be had. So this particular night, instead of hitting the usual fast food places and stocking up for the next day or so, we went to a grocery store. Specifically, we went to a Wal-Mart. This was in the days before the Wal-Mart parking lots were granted campground status. The stores were so rare at the time in my native Long Island that it seemed like one of those places you go to see what the locals are doing. Like, going to Winn-Dixie stores when I was in the South. At the time, this was what Wal-Mart was for me. In the years afterwards, this would change. Wal-Mart would become synonymous with Big Box stores. I'd look to avoid Wal-Mart as much as I possibly could. But that was now, this was then. We entered a store filled with people that most likely was a mix of us and a heaping of locals, people wearing jeans, shorts, the required shoes and long faces. It was the end of the day, and people had spent it doing whatever it was that occupied their time. Most did not look as though they had a thrill of a lifetime that day, nor did they look as though they had experienced tragedy for two. A day of whatever it was that consumed the day, and then an evening to become consumers themselves for whatever the next day needed. Just the way we were doing ourselves. A rotisserie chicken later, along with various salads, fruit and raw veggies, we left the store as soon as we were stocked up, treating it like a refrigerator on the road. Air conditioning preserved the salads as we kept our chicken temporarily warm in the fridge, and once we'd had a good meal from it, kept it cold. The full meal was like having a picnic lunch on my home turf, and it filled me good. Better than any bag of potato chips could. Our trusty contraption had come in handy for us, a convenience on the road. Road food never tasted so good when it had a taste of home along with it on the side. |
