The Long Drive Back from My Mom's House

Driving back from Santa Barbara I mostly noticed the music. In that vast middle area of California there aren’t a lot of radio stations. Those stations you can find seem to be either Christian or Spanish. Of course, some may be both, but since Jesus is a fairly common Hispanic name and I don’t speak Spanish I couldn’t tell. I could however tell when one of the Spanish stations was advertising a restaurant. Being from California I know the Spanish names of common Mexican/Salvadoran/Guatemalan/CalMex food items. So when the DJ started saying Carne Asada, Ensalata, Chile Rellenos, plus words that even I recognized as numbers at first for a brief moment I felt like it was a station for Spanish-illiterate people so they could hear some words they knew – then I realized I was being ridiculous and he was just reading the menu. But it’s not always easy to be rational in the third hour of a five hour drive by yourself along largely flat roads, accompanied only by passing oil rigs and cattle.

I should point out, I am an atheist.