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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

“Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, and the waving wheat can sure smell sweet, when the wind comes right behind the rain. Oklahoma, every night my honey lamb and I sit alone and talk and watch a hawk making lazy circles in the sky.”

I sang that aloud in the key of off on my drive to Oklahoma for a speaking gig. I sang because I was all alone in the car.

I’d finished one audiobook and was listening to a second book until I determined it wasn’t the right path for my ears.

I can listen to my singing for only so long. I turned on the radio. A likable song came on immediately, but it was trickery. It was bumper music for a show filled with strident voices, angered by something their favorite football team had done or hadn’t done. They gave their opinions at a high volume. The host interrupted and yelled back. Somehow, the discussion on quarterbacks touched on the JFK assassination and Putin’s propensity to refuse to punt until the fifth down. Opinions flew at deafening decibels capable of peeling any wallpaper my car might have had. The host praised those who agreed with him and dismissed those who didn’t. His nice button was in the shop. It was like listening to a bonus track on a Yoko Ono album. Opinions don’t drive nails. We’re not meant to know everything, but the host bragged he did. He hadn’t learned that if you constantly need to tell people how great you are, you’re not that great.

I switched off the radio. Disaster averted. I chose silence over harsh voices.

I rode along with both hands on the wheel. Riding in the shotgun seat was a banana peel. I like bananas. Many people do. Most bananas eaten in the U.S. are cultivated in Central and South America.

The fruit is picked long before it’s mature, so it can survive the long journey to our favorite grocery store. There are banana ripening facilities in this country that use a delicate science, which enables them to trick hard, green bananas into continuing to ripen. These facilities convince bananas that they’re back in their sunny, humid homes. It involves ethylene, a colorless, flammable gas that’s a natural plant hormone, and speeds the ripening process.

It occurred to me that riding along in silence makes a car a ripening facility on wheels. And it’s not the kind of ripening that only a shower could cure. It ripens the mind.

Nearing my destination, I consulted my GPS, on which I’d just switched the voice to that of a male. “Just keep driving. It’s around here somewhere,” it advised.

Exit stage right and I was soon in the drive-thru lane of a fast-food restaurant after being in the drive-me-over lane of a highway. I wasn’t there to fling a fang into French fries. I was in the drive-thru lane for two reasons: I wanted a cup of iced tea (I hoped they wouldn’t make it sweet as they always promise they won’t), and the drive-thru was the only part of the restaurant open due to staffing shortages.

Walking through the drive-thru lane just ahead of me were two ring-billed gulls — gulls with a ring around their bills. It didn’t mean they were a married couple. It wasn’t a diamond ring or prize from a box of Cracker Jack. The gull’s yellow bill has a black band around it that gives the bird its name. What were they doing in the drive-thru? It wasn’t the first time I’d seen birds in a drive-thru lane. The gulls were hoping to find stale french fries. They love stale French fries.

While the gulls were struggling to get their correct order, I thought of the Florida man who had tossed a live 3.5-foot alligator into a drive-thru window. His order hadn’t been wrong. He did it to be funny. The judge ordered him to stay away from animals. I hope he also stays away from restaurants. And I thought of the county sheriff in Georgia who called his deputies for backup because a drive-thru worker got his order wrong.

Those two gentlemen could use more time in a ripening facility.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.