1600 Miles ~ There & Back Again A Cheeseburger Holiday

I own, and with a wild band of miscreants, operate TrollLord Games. We publish role playing games. Lately things have been insanely busy. We have been hammering the final touches on five massive projects, getting them to print and shipped. Though we are now through the thick of it, I don’t think I have taken a day off in 18 months (aside from a few holidays) and have worked mostly on weekends to boot. I have needed a break for some time. I saw an opportunity for a few days coming up and thought to myself, what to do. Where to go to get out of from under this crazy mountain of table top games.

Outside of family and close friends, I do not take pleasure in many things. A good book. Finely crafted tv show. Music of many genres. New Mexico. A cold, cold can of Dr. Pepper. And a good cheeseburger.

I decided to combine all these things together, and head to Tatum, a little town in New Mexico, and have a cheeseburger at Tiny’s Burger Barn. I had stopped there with my family some few years ago and had, what I thought then, was the best damn cheeseburger crafted by man or god. It seemed a good idea to head out that way, enjoy the flat dry plains of east Texas and New Mexico and have myself a cheeseburger, and see if time played tricks on me. Roswell, famed for being near the 1947 alien crash site, was close by and a town I love to visit. I figured, a quick drive to Roswell, spend the evening and then head over to Tatum (there are no hotels in Tatum, that I know of).

It is only 800+ miles to Roswell from Little Rock, Arkansas and another 80 or so down to Tatum. 900 miles for such a cheeseburger seemed a fair price. Monday out. Tuesday there. Wednesday back. That seemed a fair vacation for a troll lord.

Enlisting the aid of my youngest son, Wilson, (he is virtual schooled, which gives us this freedom), we planned to set off first of the week.

Monday morning, at 8:30 a.m. saw my old truck heading west on I40 to Oklahoma. Though recent years have seen me a little tired of travel by car, it is such a part of our culture here in the States that it seems almost sacrilegious to travel any other way. The open road, your own space on it, the freedom to go whither you will, makes for a comfort no other mode of transport yields. It’s who we are and I embraced it for the cheeseburger. 

The hours and road ticked by as we rode down I40 through Fort Smith Arkansas, Oklahoma City Oklahoma, Amarillo Texas, all the way to Vega Texas. We stopped to enjoy the dry wind and rolling expanse a few times. It is a wide-open world out there, with few trees, but draws crowned with dry grass and sage. The land seems lonely and at first glance, almost lifeless, but its easy to be fooled by it, for on a more reflective glance it is as open as anything in all the wide world.

A quick stop for fuel and a discussion as to whether we would stay the night yielded more road. There we left the well beaten path to follow 385 south to Herford and then 60 west to Farwell (here we speculated that Farwell was named for the furthest well in some Oil Baron’s Empire) and Clovis, New Mexico. It was past 8 p.m. as we turned on 70 south with about 100+ miles to Roswell, so we decided to push on. 

That was a lonely dark road with little traffic on it. But smooth and easy on the tires and our bones. Sometime after 10 p.m. we lumbered into town. Tired and a bit worn out, we found a quick hotel to camp out in and laid up for some rest.

We slept a bit past dawn but closed out the hotel and headed to IHOP for some breakfast with the intent to explore Roswell a bit and check out the alien shops and museum. I enjoy this side of the story as much as the crash itself. I love to watch people, businesses and towns thrive and the extremely kind people of Roswell, have embraced the alien crash with a gusto and it’s wonderful. 

We spent a bit of time in the museum, reading and listening to the recordings. It was interesting to note that they have included a whole case of Star Wars figures, something new since my last visit. It’s an echo of an evolving story of the crash and what really happened and how people perceive that stormy night in New Mexico and the aftermath so many years ago.

From there, we hit some shops, picked up some alien six siders for the game table and some other bits and pieces. I also felt compelled to visit the John Chisum statue, that adorns Roswell's town center and was not disappointed. It is an amazing statue.

At that point I had a notion to head out to Walker Army Air Field, the place where the remains of the crash were carried along with other unmentionables. The air base is all but gone, swallowed up by the Roswell Air Center. There are some buildings left I suspect, from those long-ago days that saw some frenzied activity as debris was carted in and uniformed soldiers scrambled to pack it all up. These old Quonset huts seemed to fit the bill of World War II buildings, but it has been a long while.

After that we found ourselves sufficiently hungry to head on to the Tiny’s Burger Barn in Tatum, the original intent of our journey. We figuring we’d get there just before dinner time, have a good meal and head back home to Arkansas.

Off we went.

Heading out of town on 308 east we stopped off at the Roswell Welcome sign. This is the only sign that welcomes you to Roswell with sufficient alien fanfare, and one we’d stopped at before. (If you are looking for it, it is a ways out of town, on the left side as you leave Roswell on 308). We stopped, got some pics, and lumbered on.

After mounting a light ridge and heading off across the flats we spotted the Bottomless Lakes National Park and did a quick turn into it to poke around and see what that was all about. It proved worth the short drive with some scenic buttes and amazing little lakes tucked beneath them. It gave us a good feel of what it must have been like in the old west days, hiding out from bandits or the law. Circling the park with a few stops found us back on 308 and driving to Tatum and Tiny’s Burger Barn.

The roads in western New Mexico are flat, well maintained, and easy to drive on so it took us no time at all to traverse the 70-80 miles to Tatum. We came to the Burger Barn without much ado, pulled up and headed inside. After taking the order of a weathered cowboy in battered hat and well worn boots, the waitress told us to take any seat and brought us our menus. We were there for cheeseburgers and fries and in my son’s case, some fried pickles, so there was no real need to read it over.

I placed my order, a cheeseburger dry (cheese and meat only), some fries and a coke (I never drink Dr. Pepper out of a cup or glass). Wilson followed suit with his cheeseburger (loaded) and fried pickles. We chatted up politics and the desert and aliens while we waited. The pickles arrived and Wilson ate them with gusto, clearing the plate.

But it wasn’t long before the food was set before us by the more than friendly staff. By this point we were good and hungry and with 900 miles behind us, ready to eat. Despite that, both of us held off a minute, ready to savor the first bite. Years and memory change the meaning of things, and as oft diminish as inflate the experiences of the past, so we were unsure of what would happen after that first bite.

We didn’t wait long, though, but both bit down at the same time and suffered no loss of love for Tiny’s burgers. The taste, texture and make up of the burgers proved exquisite and we settled in and ate in silence. We didn’t hurry to finish the food, Wilson was tanked up on Pickles and I eat slow, and took our time, enjoying every mile the burgers cost… or rather the burger we earned with those many miles.

 

A cup of ice cream and some friendly chatter ended the Tiny’s Burger Barn experience and we found ourselves well satisfied and content, ready for whatever came next. We only had a few hours of light and content as we were, decided to drive on for a spell and stop when the feeling hit us. We took off across New Mexico and into East Texas, where the roads are as flat and easy as those behind. 

It is a beautiful country to drive through. Open expanse and a blue sky that seems to go forever. The land is dry and the houses weathered and everything seems to bend with the wind. We passed through cattle country, crop lands and windmills. A herd of pronghorn antelopes grazed the dry grass along the highway and paid no mind to us or any others. The drive proved calming and easy.

So we drove on, through East Texas down to Abilene and onto Interstate 20 east. I have to say the land between the mountains of New Mexico and Abilene fascinates me. Open and inviting, yet old and hard. The wind doesn’t seem to stop but holds you to a purpose. Not sure why I like it out there so, but I do.

Tiny’s burger kept us for many miles through the night. It never wore off until we crossed the whole of Texas and into Arkansas, somewhere near Hot Springs we started to rumble in hunger and show a little exhaustion. It was 3 in the morning at that point and we pushed on for another hour to home. Pulling in just before 4 a.m., greeted at the door by a pack of dogs and Kathy we tumbled off to bed, satisfied and tired. A burger well earned, that only cost a few days and 1600 miles.