Thanksgiving has become my traveling holiday.  Everyone else in the family has something to do and it’s easy to make it a six day weekend.  This year, I am planning on making a three stopper in West Viriginia, Ohio, and Indiana before a return late Monday.

I left a little after from work for Cross Lanes with a listening queue consisting of the books Blood Meridian, Atlas Shrugged, Bonfire of the Vanities, and back issues of Intelligence Squared: US.  I started listening to the IQ2 episodes which meshed poorly with traffic on the PA Turnpike.  Worse than dealing with rubberneckers going by a car wreck is dealing with rubberneckers going by a car wreck while some toolbag from the the CATO Institute makes non-points about Keynesian economics who can’t hear me yelling at him.  The traffic and by podcast backlog cleared and I started listening to Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy’s magnus opus of violence in the Southwest around 1850.  By the time I had arrived at Chris’s house near 12:30 AM, about 200 people had died from fires, gunshots, broken bottles, knives, fist fights, and scalpings.  Foreshadowing?

The reception by Chris and Christine was warm but their apartment smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and beer.  They were hosting Christine’s brother who is active duty in the Navy.  Maybe I would be reminded of home this Thanksgiving after all.  We stayed up too late talking and I braced for Turkey Day in a strange land.