The grand gestures in small towns soothed my soul, but the smallest and most unexpected reassured me I was traveling with angels unawares.

I’d pulled into a gas station to refill my tank and my cooler before hitting the road, and just before I wrapped up, the meekest peep called out to me.

“Miss?”

From a burgundy Subaru that had clearly earned its stripes, a frail woman’s voice barely broke through the roadside noise. She was the first Black person I’d seen in Taos, and judging by how she spoke, I was likely the first she’d seen in a long time, too.

“I noticed you from the road, and then I saw your Texas plates, so I pulled over to talk to you. I been here a long time, but I’m from Gilmer, Texas. You probably don’t know where that is…”

“Ma’am, I live in Austin, but I’m from Southeast Texas, and it’s north of there, but I know exactly where Gilmer is.”

Her eyes lit up, and she sat straighter in her disintegrating driver’s seat, smoothing her wispy silver strands behind oversized coke-bottle glasses.

“All the way from Austin? You not out here all by yourself, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She clucked at me and shook her head.

“Oh, baby. Well… I guess I did the same thing when I was a girl. Here, you got a pen and some paper? Let me give you my address and phone number so if you need anything, you get in touch with me, you hear?”

She asked where I was headed from there, and I told her I was running to Taos for a bite to eat before I got back on the road.

She, on the other hand, was waiting on some new teeth before she ate in Taos again, but at her age, she told me, that might never happen. Then with an empty but totally infectious grin, she chuckled that if not, that’d be OK, too.

It wasn’t until I drove away that I realized the paper she and I used to exchange contacts was a Little Debbie Fudge Rounds scrap from my road trip snack bag, and I couldn’t help a little giggle to myself about my sweet roadside encounter with watchful Miss Theresa and her future teeth.

---

where i wandered: