The American flag is waving furiously off the antennae of The Beast, waving vigorously ready to shred off at any moment and lay Larry's two dollar 76 station purchase to waste on the side of I-10 in Texas just west of Houston.

The manager of the Seventy Six Restaurant, Pat, paid for our breakfast. I guess because we interviewed him and allowed him to spiel some of his political science education into our tape recorder. Machevellian, Texan. We've met a lot of interesting people, to say the least.

I cannot stress the presence felt by Tom Colton in the El Paso 76 truck stop, enough. Tom Colton, was a man of few words, powerful stature, trucker garb and a sense of independence and self sufficiency that could only make him an American icon. His face was pock marked and scarred, a 4 inch line of tissue on his left cheek that had to have been from the same broken bottle fight that took his right eye. Waco, Texas is where he hailed from. Drove truck since 1951, his first job outta highschool. He worked construction, actually owned his own construction business, whe he wasn't driving.

"You want ta write a book? Hell, you hang around me for a couple a three days and you'll get a book." he promised me with the smile of a coyote who knew where the remains of a battlefield lie fresh.

-Houston, population
1,596,000 and some change-

I imagine Tom Colton drove a jet black rig. I'm surprised he wasn't wearing a gun.

-We just arrived in Houston and U2 is singing "When Love Comes to Town," with BB King.-

He had two sons, one 21, watching over the construction business at home, the other 17, watching over his mama who's been disabled for the past 7 years.

Stung by Mr. Colton's presence, filled with admiration and idolism, but a desire to be his son? No! Tom looked to be stern and abusively disciplinary to say the least. Tom Colton, we were so fortunate to meet you, the Texan ideal, an American heroe.

We drove on through Texas, we fought, Larry and I. At about midnight, every night, we've gotten into arguments, bold and cutting. He is a classic "A" type personality, I am classic "B". Conflicts arise over everything from setting up our tent to trying to find our wallets. We work through it.

Last night was particularly intense because we covered a lot of touchy subject ground. Larry's "pussy whipped" attitude about my relationship with Blaire, my girlfriend, and my sensitivity about my being ever-impractical and inefficient and not mechanically inclined were among the subjects. We drove through the night leaving our last 76 at 3:00 in the morning after our soul searching, mind raking argument.

Earlier we ran out of gas one mile short of Ozona, Texas, at midnight we skated down I-10 on our skateboards with a gas can. An Ozona police deputy named, Tommy Wilkerson, gave us a ride back to The Beast in his squad car. We had been drinking beers since seven o'clock that evening but, hell, Tommy was too busy tellin' us about the "Mexican Town" party he'd just broken up to notice that maybe these California boys weren't fully respectin' the law.

We saw a fire out in the middle of a field. We had taken a deviation route in search of fuel and wound up taking a wild 25 mile loop back around to I-10 on a windy, dark road. The fire was big, ominous, in the middle of the dark, Texas fields. The aura smacked of satanic ritual fires and KKK meetings. We drove faster and prayed that if we ran out of gas, none of the members at the bonfire would come upon us.

I saw a fire by myself while Larry slept somewhere between 3 and 4am. It was after Ozona. It looked to me like an ever-burning torch, Olympic-type symbolism, or the Kennedy grave. Probably just an oil refinery or something.

"You should have looked at that Mexican in that El Dorado." Larry just told me. We're in Houston. We should be in New Orleans by early this evening. We have not seen an extraordinarily beautiful woman on our trip yet. Nor have we taken a picture with an extraordinarily fat one. Racquel, the Mexican waitress in Brookshire was very cute and sweet and terrifically naive. The road working woman in Arizona was probably the most striking so far. We should have taken a picture of her.