Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 28
I DROVE ON and on across South Dakota. God, what a flat and empty state. You can't be-
lieve how remote and lonely it feels out in the endless fields of yellow grass. It is like the
world's first drive-through sensory deprivation chamber. The car was still making ominous
clonking noises, and the thought of breaking down out here filled me with disquiet. I was
in a part of the world where you could drive hundreds of miles in any direction before you
found civilization, or at least met another person who didn't like accordion music. In a for-
lorn attempt to pass the time, I thumbed through my Mobil guides, leaning them against the
steeringwheelwhiledriftingjustatriflewildlyinandoutofmylane,andaddedupthepop-
ulationsandsizesofthefourstatesofthehighplains:NorthandSouthDakota,Montanaand
Wyoming. Altogether they take up 385,000 square milesan area about the size of France,
Germany, Switzerland and the Low Countries combined-but they have a total population of
just 2.6 million. There are almost four times as many people in Paris alone. Isn't that inter-
esting? Here's another interesting fact for you. The population density of Wyoming is 1.9
people per square kilometer; in South Dakota it is a little over 2 people per square kilomet-
er. In Britain, there- are 236.2 people per square kilometer. The number of people airborne
in the United States at any given time (136,000) is greater than the combined populations
of the largest cities in each of these four states. And finally here's a really interesting fact.
AccordingtoasurveybyCurrentHealthmagazine,thepercentageofsaladbarcustomersin
the United States seen “touching or spilling food or otherwise being unsanitary” is 6o per-
cent. I am of course aware that this has nothing to do with the population of the northern
plains states, but I thought a brief excursion into irrelevancy was a small price to pay for
information that could change your life. It certainly has changed mine.
I stopped for the night in a nothing little town called Murdo, got a room in a Motel 6 over-
looking Interstate g0 and went for dinner in a big truck stop across the highway. A highway
patrol car was parked by the restaurant door. There is always a highway patrol car parked
by the restaurant door. As you walk past it you can hear muffled squawking on the radio.
“Attention, attention! Zero tango charlie! A Boeing 747 has just crashed into the nuclear
power plant on Highway 69. People are wandering around with their hair on fire. Do you
read me?” Inside, oblivious of all this, are the two highway patrolmen, sitting at the counter
eating apple pie with ice cream and shooting the breeze with the waitress. Every once in a
great while-perhaps twice in a daythe two patrolmen will get up from the counter and drive
out to the highway to ticket some random motorists for trying to cross the state at seven
miles an hour above the permitted limit. Then they will go and have some more pie. That is
what it is to be a highway patrolman.
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