Cody

When I was just a kid, my parents - who had a habit of picking up sticks relatively unannounced and moving around - moved us from Chicago to Seattle. We'd already been in New York and then back to Kentucky by then. We didn't have any money, but we moved all the time and our credit was good, so usually my dad would drive the U-Haul and my mom would follow behind in the mustard yellow Plymouth Valiant.

I took turns riding with them. I really liked watching my dad shift through the gears with a cigarette hanging down below his moustache, navigating the twists of the Black Hills carrying everything we had behind him, but back in the Plymouth my mom was funny and kept the radio on.

Chicago, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington State. All drawn out on a Rand McNally map with a purple crayon. Wind storms in Cheyenne. Walls Drugs. The Corn Palace. Little Bighorn. The Irma Hotel. I can still recommend a couple of pretty good motels from Helena to Bakersfield to Lordsburg. When we finally got to Seattle it was raining, and after all that prairie dust and sun and rocks and wheat and corn, that rain felt like Oz.

I remember we stopped off for a rodeo in Cody. There was a rider there from Lexington and we cheered him on. Lexington was our home town. The horse was named "Roosevelt" and we were just chasing our luck.