I’ve never driven through the Midwest before, but the rumors are true.
I-80 through Indiana, Illinois. It’s all corn.
Now, I’ve seen some corn in Mexico. I’ve even been to the 5-story corn museum in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City. Twice.
But I’ve never seen this much corn.
I’ve been on the road for six hours from Cleveland and want to stretch my legs again before the final push. I stop at a park on the Illinois River a few miles off the highway, and walk up a short path to a view of the river.
On the way back to the highway, I drive past this elementary school. Nice-looking elementary school. Totally normal.
Except it is completely boxed in by corn.
Across the road: a wall of corn. Behind it: corn. On both sides: corn. Just this elementary school sitting in the middle of a massive amount of corn.
I get back on I-80, which will carry me the rest of the way to San Francisco over the next five days.
Corn. RV dealerships. More corn.
I get to Peru, Illinois, and park at my motel, a short hop from the highway and at the end of a large shopping complex.
I bring my valuables up to the room and get settled. I check my phone and realize I’ve only racked up around 4,500 steps.
Even with a handful of stops along the way, my body isn’t very happy with the long ride. I stretch a little, but what I really want is a walk.
And sometimes I like having a mission when I walk.
I wonder if weed is legal in Illinois, so I look it up. Apparently it is. And there’s a dispensary just down the road from the motel.
Perfect. I’ll walk there.
The shopping complex is basically big-box stores with huge parking lots and freestanding banks, restaurants, and fast-food joints: Dollar Tree, Home Depot, Target, Hobby Lobby, Steak & Shake, IHOP, Red Lobster.
There are no sidewalks. Not one. Zero.
I’m walking on curbs, through grass, awkwardly across all these little roads and entrances connecting the massive parking lots. I’m crossing places where cars are turning in and out and nobody is expecting a person to be walking.
Eventually I get close enough to see the dispensary sign across the four lane state highway: Stash.
There are these big grassy ditches running along either side of the road, with water sitting in them. The ground angles down pretty steeply from the road into the ditch. A moat.
So the dispensary is right there, but there’s no pedestrian crossing, even at the nearby light.
I’m standing there thinking, am I really going to play Frogger running across this goddamn road?
I give up and walk back to the motel.
But now I’m curious.
I don’t even necessarily want to get high. I mostly want to see what the deal is with weed in Illinois. See what kind of products they have. Maybe chat with the people inside. They’re probably nice. If they have something interesting, great. If not, whatever.
So I get back in my car and drive there. It takes three minutes.
As soon as I walk in, I see a Fernway recycling bin. My friend Kit, who I grew up with, started the company. And here I am in this completely random dispensary in Peru, Illinois, looking at one of their recycling bins with a few of their products displayed on top.
Genius.
Inside, I look at some of the display cases. A lot of variety and a bunch of brands I’d never heard of before. I figure now that I’m here, I’ll get a joint, maybe try something local.
I walk up to the next available counter and start chatting with Tom.
“I’d love just a single joint, small like a dog walker. And it’d be sweet if there’s any CBD in it.”
Most joints are a whole gram. I can’t smoke that much, and I don’t want to carry a smelly roach across Iowa and Nebraska, where weed isn’t that cool yet. I’d already had one terrifying run-in with a K-9 unit about 700 miles due south in Mississippi on another cross-country road trip.
I notice one of the women behind the counter is wearing a Fernway jersey and ask about it. Apparently the dispensary won some kind of regional recycling competition for recycling Fernway vapes, and they’re really excited about it. They proudly tell me Fernway is the only company in the state doing this type of recycling program.
I tell them about my childhood friend and ask if I can take a picture of her in the jersey. She says yes, and I take one and send it to Kit.
After doing some filtering and searching on the iPad on the counter, Tom points at the screen and says, “We have this two-pack of half gram dog walkers by Northern Heights. No CBD, but lower THC, around 20% instead of 40% plus. Illinois grown flower, good farming practices.”
And while we’re looking at the details on the iPad, this cute woman walks up to the counter about five feet to the left of us.
“Great. I’ll try it,” I say to Tom.
But now I’ll have two joints that I definitely cannot finish tonight.
I make sure to speak a little louder so she can hear, “I really want to give one of these joints away. Can I open it here?”
I look over at her.
She looks at me.
“No, unfortunately we’re not allowed,” says Tom.
She finishes paying and leaves.
“Well, I don’t want to throw it away.”
“You’ll find someone to give it to.”
I retrieve my debit card off the counter, four dollars in debit round-up (weed banking still sucks because of federal regulation), and the sealed doob tube containing the two joints. I walk a few paces then realize, shit, I need a lighter.
I turn back.
“Hey Tom, actually I also need a lighter. What do you have?”
He shows me a carousel of Stash-branded ones for two bucks. I hand him two of the bills he’d given me, take one of the lighters where you can see all the liquid butane sloshing around, and head out of the store.
I walk over to my car, open the door, and sit down. As I’m reaching to close the door, I hear someone holler at me.
“Hey!”
I turn around.
On the other side of the small parking lot there’s a white car with its door open. A different very cute woman with olive skin and curly hair is half out of her seat looking at me.
“Were you offering that joint? We would love to have it.”
“Oh yeah. I was planning on giving it to you.”
I walk over, crack open the doob tube, and hand her one.
We start chatting. They’re pretty young, probably early to mid-twenties, and they tell me they don’t really live around there. They often come to this dispensary. They’re staying with their families, who don’t really like weed and don’t like them going out late.
They start smoking in the car.
They offer me the joint.
I ask what there is to do on a Saturday night around here. They give me the name of a bar in LaSalle that sounds promising, but basically they’re just going home to hang out with their families.
I bid them goodnight.
I haven’t eaten yet and the woman wearing the Fernway jersey at the dispensary had recommended this Mexican place called Jalapeños right next to my motel. So I drive back to the motel and park.
From the motel, I walk over an awkward series of curbs and grass to Jalapeños, go in, get seated, and order in Spanish. A chicken bowl with spicy salsa and a margarita.
There’s a table of Mexican guys sitting next to me, two older and one younger. They look over when they hear me talking to the waiter.
The margarita arrives quickly.
It is enormous. Salt rim.
“Veintiocho onzas.” 28 ounces.
“Qué grande!” is all I can manage. The server grins at me.
He’d even given me two straws, despite the fact that I am very clearly one person.
One of the Mexican guys looks over, eyes the drink and the empty seat, and says, “Where is she?” and we start talking.
His name is Pablo. The other guy, who looks older than Pablo, is Luis; the younger one is Mateo. It turns out they’re traveling around doing construction work. Pablo had been working in Sacramento, and now the three of them have driven all the way to Peru. They’re going to be here for two weeks, and then they’re heading to Atlanta for six months.
They down their second beers before their food arrives.
We end up chatting for a while, mostly in broken English and broken Spanish.
They’re telling me they’re going to try to find some ladies later, and I say I might try to find somewhere to go out too.
There’s a table of women nearby who are pretty dressed up and have this enormous tower of some kind of drink.
Pablo asks, “What do you think about them?”
“I don’t know. Not really my type.”
Eventually the women pay and leave the restaurant.
I finish my chicken bowl and they finish their fajitas.
Mateo looks out the window and says that the women are still hanging around outside in the parking lot. He decides he’s going to go out and try to get one of their numbers while Pablo, Luis and I keep chatting and sipping our drinks.
Mateo comes back in. The women have left, but he got one of their numbers.
He sits down and texts the woman.
The guys have another round of beers while I tend to my bowl of margarita.
They bitch about their hotel and say how much they can’t wait to get a proper house when they get to Georgia.
Soon we’re the only people in the restaurant.
We settle our bills.
I’ve conquered the marg.
The women never text back.
The guys each shake my hand, in the same order, no fewer than three times as we get up and walk out. They climb up into two Toyota pickup trucks, waving goodbye.
“Buena suerte.”
It’s dark. I walk about a minute over to a wall of corn and follow it down the road. I come to a streetlamp illuminating a large sign for a Lutheran church.
Huge cornfield. A church that believes the world lies under the devil’s power. Middle of the night in rural Illinois.
It’s giving Children of the Corn.
I light up the dog walker, walk around empty parking lots while dictating this story to my phone, and then head back to the motel.
I have 11,873 steps.