Day 3 — to Tucumcari, NM

We left Tulsa this morning, drove about two hours to the state capital and found our way through downtown to the Oklahoma City Memorial and Museum, on the site of the former Alfred P. Murrah Federal Buiilding, where Timothy McVeigh detonated nearly 5,000 pounds of a fertilizer, nitromethane and diesel fuel mixture housed in a rented Ryder truck. The blast destroyed one-third of the Murrah Building, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 others.

We spent about two hours in the museum, which features exhibits detailing the minutes leading up the detonation of the bomb, at 9:02 a.m., the immediate aftermath, the loss of life, and the efforts of the first-responders, as well as the criminal investigation that unfolded, the arrests of McVeigh and Terry Nichols, their trials, and McVeigh’s execution on June 11, 2001.

The experience was powerful. A replay of a recording of an Oklahoma Water Resources Board meeting that convened at precisely 9 a.m. in the building across the street was especially chilling, as we heard the board member who lead the meeting introduce herself and describe the agenda for a full minute before she was cut off by a monstrous, earth-shattering explosion, and the meeting erupted in chaos.

The memorial outside -- a large chair representing each of the victims and a block-long reflecting pool where the street once was -- is striking and solemn tribute. But Keith and I have been struggling with how we really feel about the exhibits inside the museum. As the deadliest act of terrorism in the U.S. until Sept. 11, 2001, the event certainly looms large in our nation’s history. Peering at objects that were found in the rubble of the Murrah Federal Building — shoes, keys, a desk calendar, a briefcase, a toddler’s toy — might help us understand the impact of the event, but at the same time it seems somehow lurid and sensationalistic, especially in the wake of recent violence in the U.S. (The thought of a museum commemorating other acts of violence in the same way -- in Orlando, for example -- seems grotesque, so where's the line?) The point of the visit becomes more about satisfying our own needs to feel concerned and compassionate (at best) and our morbid curiosity (at worst) rather than about honoring the heroes and remembering the victims. Today, I would rather have viewed the 168 chairs on the lawn outside, and quietly reflected on the lives lost, rather than walk through the museum pretending to understand the horror of that day as if I was there. 

The desk calendar (far right) was recovered, but its owner was killed in the blast. The window blinds were from a building a couple blocks away.

(There is no way to segue from that to Cadillac Ranch. I apologize.)

From Oklahoma City, we drove another four hours to Amarillo, Texas, were we pulled onto an I-40 frontage road to check out Cadillac Ranch, a public art installation and sculpture created in 1974 by members of the Ant Farm art collective. It is essentially 10 old cars half-buried nose-first in the ground. The public is encouraged to decorate the cars with spray paint, and so the installation is interactive, and ever-changing.

I had tucked three cans of paint in the back of the van before we left Lafayette, and pulled them out after we parked the car. The kids were delighted to spray with abandon, along with the dozens of other aspiring artists who had also made the pilgrimage. Clare painted an image of Stitch, from “Lilo and Stitch,” and was dismayed to return to that spot a moment later to find that someone else had already painted over it. Indeed, the cars are all sticky and damp. It’s difficult to find a spot that’s not dripping with fresh paint. I explained to Clare that the minute-by-minute changes and the idea that everyone can contribute are exactly what make this artwork so exciting. Also, I told her that I had captured her image of Stitch with my camera, and that it will always exist in iPhoto. 

After Cadillac Ranch, we spent another 90 minutes in the car on the way to Tucumcari, New Mexico. The landscape has changed dramatically in the last 400 miles. Outside of Tulsa, we drove across rolling hills and rich ranchland freckled with shady groves of trees. Throughout the day, the land flattened out and the vegetation got more scrubby. Here in New Mexico, it’s if the heavens have swallowed the earth. The sky is so vast that heaps of billowy, lavender clouds strung from horizon to horizon offer only flimsy cover; somehow it’s still intensely bright and blue.

Route 66 peels off of I-40 just outside of Tucumcari, so we followed it historic road into town. It’s lined with old-timey motor lodges and retro diners and lots of kitschy neon signs. We pulled into the the courtyard at the Blue Swallow Motel, a classic Route 66 motor court, just as guests were gathering in the driveway and settling in the vintage aluminum patio chairs outside their doors, cocktails in hand, to chat with neighbors, watch the sunset. We grabbed a quick dinner down the street, then returned to join them.

The Blue Swallow Motel was hopping well into the evening. The twelve units — some with their own garages! — are arranged in an L-shape around a central courtyard. One one side of us, an extended family from Normandy, France, took up a couple of rooms. They’re on a four-week road trip from Los Angeles to Chicago. On the other side of us, Bruce and Jenny, from Dallas, have been outside chatting with David and Linda, from Springfield, Ill., a cooler of beer parked between them, as if they’ve known each other for years. Down at the end, another group is playing corn hole in the driveway.

Garages!

The garage interiors are decorated with clever trompe l'oeil murals.

We’re in the middle, in the family suite. The kids are in one room, with a queen bed, and a twin, and we’re next door. The rooms are connected by a tiny hallway in the back, that also leads to a tiny tiled bathroom with a sunken shower. The rooms have sweet vintage touches, like chenille bedspreads and working rotary phones. (Although phones weren’t even installed in the rooms until 2000.) I had to laugh, because the guest information binder actually includes a page on how to use a rotary phone.