Just got back from a trip up Hwy. 10, the Route 66 of Minnesota. It has everything you want in a vacation-trip road: picturesque small towns, gee-gaw tourist-trap stores, old motels with custom neon, tiny bars with noontime inebriates, gas stations where the fellow comes out wiping his hands and offers to fill your tank. Sorry about the blood, we're dressing a deer. Unleaded? It's a part of the state where your cell phone has to stand on tiptoes to find a signal, where AM radio hisses crackly swap-meet shows. You find yourself in hamlets drowsing noonday sun -- then the crossing guards come down, cang cang cang cang, and the train thunders through with that marvelous metal rhythm: chang-chank, chang-chank. Chang-chank, chang-chank. You'll come across that train up the road a few miles, and it's almost impossible not to roll down the window, find something good on the radio, turn it up loud and speed alongside for the sheer joy of it all.
Warning: it takes longer. You can't do 80. In some patches, the road will give you that washboard shimmy that makes the steering wheel vibrate like a terrified Chihuahua. It's four lanes most of the way, but it's a slower road from a slower time. Fine. What's the hurry? The Guy's Rule of Driving is always make good time, but this trip I found myself sitting on a hill in the shadow of Frazee's World Largest Turkey, looking down at the lake, and I thought: I'm making horrible time. What a relief.
Every summer on 10 somehow feels like one the year before -- and, you hope, the next one. Get out there: you can't know the state if you don't know 10.
(Note: A photo tour of summer on Hwy. 10, including the sad beak of the Giant Frazee Turkey, can be found at startribune.com/blogs/lileks. And yes, this entire column was a sneaky pitch for the Strib's new blogs. See you there!)
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/blogs/lileks
