Rain Forest Convenience Store

Life is what happens while we are standing there with Robert Frost. The roads diverge and we’re just wondering which is the quickest to a gas station with a clean restroom.

There are different routes between Dallas and Nebraska's capital city, but for just getting it done and getting there, Interstate 35 is best. The gas station with a clean restroom is sometimes a challenge, so I'm pleased to report my discovery of the clean and cute Rainforest Convenience Store/Conoco in Ardmore, OK. Many miles have passed since then, but I think the exit was number 32, or 31B, near the intersection of 12th Ave NW and Rockford Rd N.

Maybe I've just never seen a gas station with a theme, but my brief stop cheered me up. The interior was nice and jungly. It was too early in the day to visit the Bat Cave walk-in beverage cooler, though. I marched back to the Buick wearing an imaginary pith helmet and carrying a mental machete for my expedition north.

Danger Baby has recommended summer reading for me. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann, sounds just my style. I've promised myself a long read and then a nap this holiday.

The past couple months have offered many opportunities to second guess decisions and choices as we three siblings helped our elderly father in Nebraska. On the drive home I struggled to recall a poem I once had memorized. So here is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken":


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.


© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder