Wow... This is so much fun I haven't entered anything in months; since last year, in fact. Which doesn't seem like all that long ago. Yet, I suppose, it is.

I don't know if I can even remember everything that happened on my trip but I did promise myself that I'd write it all out. So here I'll try to finish some more.

Moriarty, Texas is a small town on the map of Texas in the panhandle. Texas' panhandle goes north and south, rather than east and west like Oklahoma's. I've always thought of it as more the upright of the piano but I don't think that sounds quite as ummm... manly as 'panhandle'. Funny thing here. I just looked up Moriarty, Texas on MapQuest and find that there apparently is no such place. There's a Moriarty in New Mexico, but I'm almost positive I stopped for lunch in Texas. Damn. It must be a destruction of short term memory, since I thought I'd stopped in Texas when I last wrote here, two weeks after I got home.

Anyway, wherever it was I stopped, there was a McDonald's.

I ordered my lunch, which I remember was a Big Mac. I was jonesin' for a Big Mac for some reason and kept driving until I saw a Mickey's on my side of the highway which was quite a while as most of them were on the other (north) side. So I'm standing there, waiting for my Mac to be made (no onions, light lettuce), when in walks what I can only describe as being "trailer trash" personified. She was wearing a thin babydoll tanktop that showed way too much of her middle. While not fat, really, she certainly had enough extra that the part not covered by cloth was coming out for a peek around. She was also richly tattooed around her chest and arms and upper back. There were probably more but I was trying to keep my brain from imagining those possibilities by digging my fingernails into my palms. She had the quintissential "skank" look all around.

She walked into the McDonald's clutching a greasy McDonald's bag and asked to see the manager. When the manager (a nice girl, young and, like most young women in that part of the country, married) come up to find out what was wrong, Lydia (my name for her) shoved the paper bag into the manager's face andsaidthatherorderfromlastnightwasallwrongandthey-
didn'teatitandshecalledthestorelastnightandthemanager-
theresaidshecouldcomeinandgethermoneybackandshesaved-
thefoodincasetheydidn'tbelieveherandshedidn'thavea-
recieptandshewantedhermoneyback.

Just about like that, too.

The manager looked dumbfounded and I can't say as I blame her. So she went in back and was looking through the manager's log for any mention of this. She was being a conscientious person and trying to make sure that the store wasn't getting ripped off. Now me, having had a long and storied career at McDonald's, would have just given her a refund for what was in the bag just so she'd leave. But that's why I'm not a McDonald's employee anymore.

By this time I'd been served and I picked a seat which would allow me the best view of Lydia as well as keep me a decent distance from her in case she decided that she was gonna start something which would call for the local law enforcement. So I sat back and watched while the manager went and looked in the log for a note which explained what was going on. Apparently she couldn't find such a note and was unsuccessful in getting hold of the manager from the previous night. Again, in my book, this is going above and beyond the call and I would have definately done whatever it took to get her out of my store. But the manager was not to be fooled. She continued to try to find out what was going on. Maybe she had knowledge that I did not regarding Lydia and her boyfriend, who was waiting in their car.

Amazingly, I finished my lunch before this whole ordeal was closed. If I hadn't been in a hurry to get back on the road again I might had stuck around to see what transpired. As I left the store, the manager was on the phone and Lydia looked.... well.... zoned out. I'll leave you, Gentle Reader, to draw your own conclusions as this was what I was forced to do. Outside, I saw her male companion. I'm not sure what his role in this drama was but he was apparently content to sit in the car and smoke and listen to the radio while Lydia fought the good fight inside. For all I know, they're still there, making argument and counter argument about what to do while the food, the bag, and the counter they're sitting on all become one unified mass which will eventually possess sentience.