I got up at 6:30 and chatted with Daniel about camping tips, then exchanged addresses. Breakfast was some pie at the Texaco, then I was off.  The wind wasn’t nearly as bad today, and I knew that when I reached Lamar I’d be turning east. 

Even without pushing against a strong wind, my right knee felt weird for a while, and after several miles I felt a sharp, paralyzing pain which necessitated me pulling over. It eventually resolved, but happened again half an hour later. I’m not sure what was causing it, but I did okay after the second episode. 

The shoulder going into Lamar narrowed and became so bad that I was forced to ride on the road. There were a lot of semis on this road and every one of them missed me by about two feet, the blast of the wind as they passed nearly knocking me over. They hammered their horns as they passed, but I didn’t need the not-so-subtle hint...   I didn’t WANT to be on the road. 

I arrived in Lamar where it seemed all of the residents wore parched frowns. At the City Park I stopped for a brief lunch where the mosquitoes seemed as malicious as the residents. Covering myself with Off, the insect repellant, helped… at least with the mosquitoes. It appears that simply being an outsider in this town is repellant enough.

From Lamar I headed east on 50 where I found a decent shoulder and friendlier drivers. In Holly (pop 969) I ate at the Dairy King. On the way through town I passed the First Baptist Church and noticed the Sunday evening service had just finished. (In case you’re wondering:  Could there be a SECOND Baptist Church in a town of <1,000 people? Yes. Absolutely.) People were leaving the church so I stopped to ask about a place in town to camp and was introduced to pretty much everyone who had attended the service. After spending twenty minutes visiting with every single parishioner, the Sears family (which includes Martin, Meredith, Leatha, and Mrs. Sears - for some reason I didn’t document her name) invited me to spend the night in their spare bedroom. 

After pedaling to their house around the corner we visited for a while. That mostly consisted of me answering the Usual Questions, then playing ping pong while Mrs. Sears prepared dinner. I stopped at three grilled cheese sandwiches because I thought four might seem rudely excessive, although my stomach disagreed. Overall, it was a very pleasant visit with some very nice people.   

Something I found interesting:  As I was writing this (forty years later) I went to Wikipedia to see what the population of Holly was in 1982. In 2000 there were 1,048 people, an increase of 19.5%. In 2010 there were 802 people, a significant decline of 23.5%. In 2020, the population was a big, fat ZERO. It makes me wonder what happened in those intervening years. Had there been some catastrophic infectious outbreak which resulted in closing the borders? Another Jonestown? Alien abductions? Had there been a nuclear explosion? Did someone build a large hog farm close to the upwind border of the city limits? Or, was it something as banal as an error in Wikipedia?

Curious, I looked on Google Maps and Google Earth to see if there was nuclear charring, but no, the town still looks like a normal American burgh.