Let's Call This The Halloween Edition

I woke up, wide awake, at 5:00am.  I was a time zone over at this point and so I suppose the body was claiming it to not be entirely out of line. I needed to log into work at nine but rather than just hang out in the van I decided to get on the road for a couple of hours.  It was beautiful driving.  Much better than the rainy night before.  Beautiful country at first, but then moving into perfectly flat land, vast farm fields and trains it took miles to pass.

A couple of hours later I was passing through Kansas and I started to watch for a town to come up.  There were not many but finally at a bend in the road there one was.  I got off the highway and drove around a bit.  It seemed like a quiet little town but it was  early.  No shortage of parking spots. I pulled into a side street shaded by a building to keep the van cool, but good visibility to the north for my satellite dish.  By exactly 8am I was parked beside the Rexford Kansas post office. Starlink dish on the roof of the van and not really thinking at all about what was outside my steel walls.  It was a town.  Just as anonymous to me as I was to it.  

Lunchtime came and I remembered seeing a sign for a diner. I thought I would sample the local fare. It was after piling out of the van and walking around I realized the downtown was essentially abandoned.  There was not a single open business on the entire main street.  Instead there was religion.  A church owns every building and the town seems to be converted to a bible camp.  I got a whole Children of the Corn vibe going on in my head.  I  packed up and got out.

I have to admit, rolling into essentially a ghost town and trying to blend in wasn’t really even on my event horizon to think about.  I thought the town seemed quiet.  Empty didn’t even occur to me.