when trying to be decent exceeds the bounds of restraint

Back to Roswell

pic taken at park i stopped at 

      Roswell is in a location where you need to have enough gas in your tank when venturing out of town as sometimes it is nothing to go 100 miles without seeing a gas station or another town that has any facilities like gas or even public restrooms. Having to go to the restroom was a problem for me as I neared Roswell on my second trip out there. I had just drove through Texas and was soon entering New Mexico I think it was in Alamogordo , and was heading towards Roswell when I had to take a leak about 40 miles to Roswell , so close and yet so far away , as I looked for a place alongside the road where I could just pull off.

      The road was busy with cars coming along one after another going where I really didn’t know as far as I could tell there was nothing there alongside the road except tumble weeds and cactus, and I am sure they were not all heading out to harvest cactus, but the problem with going to take a leak is that someone can see you for ten miles out there if you pull off to the side of the road. I really didn’t want someone stopping to offer me a hand insisting on doing it myself, so I waited and drove hoping soon I would have a chance to finally go.

       The first trip I made out there I had drove the same road in and noticed a park and figured I must be coming close to that park now. It was a state park featuring dunes of sand, and not much else. The first time I came through with a friend of mine and we were in a hurry and really didn’t need to go so we just passed right by the park, this time it was just Bud, my dog, and I and I needed to go and Bud could always muster up something when he needed, or didn’t need to,  but just in case he wanted to make sure I had a trail to go back home by, so I needed to stop at this park bad.

     I pull in the park entrance and the lane looks as though it is at least 2 miles long back to the park and all the landscape around me for the last 40 miles is still the flat arid dusty lifeless cactus fields offering no cover. I couldn’t just pull over and go as I was still visible from the road and surely they had restrooms back at the park and if nothing else surely I would be obscured from the road. As I pull onto the road leading into the park I see a dust cloud coming at me in the distance as I start up a washboard road with bumps 4 inches deep every 2 feet apart. My truck broke a spring holder before I left and I was going to fix it, but didn’t have time before I left, so to say the least the road and the truck was having no mercy on me as it was more bouncy than usual  and every pothole almost made me want to spring  a leak by now,  as I did the best I could to hold myself and swore once this car passed I was just going to get out and go . If I went now the car approaching could just as easily have  been a New Mexico trooper , as far as the approaching dust cloud was letting me see of who was approaching. Finally when it was within a few hundred yards I could tell it was just a small car and it had Ohio plates.

        So here I am in New Mexico having drove almost 1600 miles to get here and low and behold the one time I need to go real bad and here comes one of those misplaced useless nuts we call buckeyes , heading straight towards me waving their arms in a friendly greeting way as if they were excited as I wasn’t, at seeing Ohio plates in Roswell , New Mexico. As their car came closer I checked them out as I was bouncing up the old washboard road, now the dust was coming in the windows and settling on my dash and my bladder was screaming relieve me, and as I approached their car as one ship passing another in the middle of nowhere these guys leaned out of their windows wanting me to stop and talk. I couldn’t I was backed up that much with the countless pounding I had taken since leaving the asphalt. I really didn’t want to talk but stopped trying not to be rude to some fellow useless nuts, as Dad a West Virginian by heart and soul often referred to Ohioans as, and so i needing a rest from the shakeup I received since leaving the asphalt, I relented and stopped and talked to them.

        They were from Cincinnati and were visiting the desert southwest on their trip and they too noticed my plates and thought they would say hello. We talked a few while the dust settled around us and I asked if they had port-a- jons or a public restroom back where they had just came from the park and they said they did, the pain at having to go, was advancing as I sat there,  and so I decided we were not going to get much accomplished and wished them well on their trip but if I didn’t move quick I might unleash a flood in my pants that could easily wash us all away in the midst of this desert .

    Upon hearing my plight they decide it may be in their best interest to move along and let me sink or swim on my own. I was glad as I couldn’t think anymore and my eyes were venturing over to green as blue and yellow normally does when combined. I had to go. Again another half mile of bouncing up and down at a whole 5 mile per hour in the heat and dust, and I finally found what I was looking for a port-a-Jon in the desert. It wasn’t an oasis, but would soon be, and  to me looked like it could have been easily a palace that was soon to be submerged in desire to relieve myself, without doing it in public.

      I stopped the truck with in feet of the outhouse and opened the door of the little cabana and checked for rattle snakes and didn’t find any , besides with the tools I was carrying I could have easily have drowned one if there was, and was soon taking care of business much to my relief. And all without losing a single drop in the wrong place. Never was I so glad to see an outhouse before. Sure I could have stopped alongside the road but again there was nothing to hide me and I knew I would have to have some time alone considering the pressure built up within me , so  I didn’t want to start, what  I figured there was no stopping, in the event someone happened by. 

     I kinda felt bad for the other useless nuts I cut short while heading into the park, but hey, a man has to do what he has to do. Surely they could understand. Besides I was in critical overload, and soon I would have had a meltdown, as things happen when the core melts. Not a good place to be out there in the desert with wet pants. But the next time I decide to head out west I will remember to take along a large Slurpee cup , when heading along those remote stretches of roadway.