Day 1: Over the Mason Dixon Line

Got a late start due to the overall disengagement issue, but I did make it all the way to Winchester, Virginia, as planned. The day started gloomy and rainy, and stayed that way right up until about 4 pm and Pennsylvania. My GPS choked at a crucial moment when I was merging in a spaghetti-like interchange in New York City, and I ended up meandering around some run-down part of New Jersey until it was all synched up and I was back on route again.

So I've said that going back to Texas is about going home for me, although the truth is I have no actual home town, due to a majorly unstable childhood. In many ways my sense of "home" is tied up in old country music, especially honky-tonk, because that music was itself all there was of stability in my childhood, and in my mind also much of what there as of happy times -- playing music with my dad, talking about songs, listening to music.

Because of that and because there's someone in Massachusetts I'm not happy to be driving away from, I felt too sad to delve into country music today for all those hours in the car. Instead, I revisited the 70s and 80s via XM radio -- disco! new wave! dance music! -- the music of my teens and 20s. I needed the high energy too. I heard a Kasey Kasem top 40 countdown from Aug 31, 1975. On that date in the year when I was 16 and just starting what turned out to be my final year of high school (starting at Oswego High School in Oswego, Illinois, and ending at Springfield High School in Springfield, Tennessee), the #1 song was "Get Down Tonight" by KC and the Sunshine Band.

As Thelma Houston was whaling away on "Don't Leave Me This Way," I crossed from Pennsylvania into Maryland and saw to my amazement an actual highway sign for the Mason Dixon Line. Didn't know there was one, but I'm on the other side of it now than I was yesterday.