gram at UW-Madison, I spent time with Teach for America. My journey to my new home was one that will stick with me for years to come.
Five days after graduating from college, amid my peers' ""I don't know what to do with my life"" quandaries, I left Brunswick, Maine in my 1993 Mercury Topaz purchased from my grandfather for a dollar. I was trading the harsh winters of Maine for the sun-baked Arizona desert, the self-focused world of college for the soul-testing experience of teaching high school.
First stop: Teach for America's teacher training in Houston, Texas—five weeks of ""Real World"" meets teacher boot-camp inferno.
With only one week of training left to go, a fellow teacher-to-be approached me and asked for a ride to Phoenix. Apparently none of the other eighty teachers making the mammoth 20-hour drive across the Texan desert could find room for Lisa—tiny, fraught and demonstrating control issues, Lisa was clearly anorexic and had suffered emotionally at the hands of angry elementary school drop-outs forced into a summer school program.
With Houston fading in the rear-view mirror, we relaxed into an easy conversation. Lisa's main contributions to the car ride consisted of her Elton John's Greatest Hits collection and the apple she brought me for lunch.
The road was wide, straight and seemingly untraveled, cutting evenly through the blanched landscape dotted with scrubby vegetation. Gradually we rose out of the Gulf of Mexico basin and the landscape morphed into hillier, drier terrain, reminiscent of a Georgia O'Keefe painting. No signs of human life were visible save for the occasional ranch gate and the even more rare exit ramp, neither of which seemed to lead anywhere.
Then, amidst Elton's crooning, the speedometer needle began to slow down, drifting toward 60, 50, 40 mph. The gas pedal became wooden and unresponsive, I guided the car into the right-hand lane and then off the road onto the gravel shoulder.
Out in the baking Texan sun, I checked the radiator fluid and the oil. I suggested to Lisa's increasingly panicked face that we merely wait twenty minutes, try the engine again, and if necessary, call AAA.
Lisa curled up into a very small ball and gently rocked herself, muttering softly, ignoring the film of dust now coating her rear and back.
I hiked up a small hill in the hopes of finding cell phone reception. A kind Texan family with a well-stocked gun rack pulled over and offered us food and water.
We tried the engine again. It wheezed half-heartedly, but wouldn't catch. After a few minutes a Mack truck grated by, slowed, and pulled over ahead of us. A middle-aged man with a sun-creased face and worn overalls draped over his potbelly ambled over.
""Where are y'all headed, some kind of Baptist convention?"" he asked.
No, we explained, we are moving to Phoenix to be teachers. When I mentioned that I began my road trip in Maine, the trucker nodded, mentioning he lived in Maine for a stint. I was excited to meet someone below the Mason-Dixon who had been to Maine. ""Where in Maine did you live?"" I asked.
He paused, clicking his tongue as he thought on this question.
""Well, hmm. I don't remember where the prison was,"" he said.
Lisa began rocking faster.
I tried the engine again and the sweet sound of revving chortled into the stifling air. Cautiously, our mood lifted. We arrived in El Paso around midnight after an excruciating four-hour drive.
The next morning, I took the car into Roberto, the mechanic recommended by the bellhop's mother. After breakfasting on huevos rancheros at a dimly-lit, family kitchen restaurant behind the auto shop, I returned to hear Roberto's diagnosis. He told me the car appeared fine, but perhaps changing the air filter for only $30 could help.
Several hours outside of El Paso and just into our destination state of Arizona, the engine failed again. This time, Mike of AAA arrived to tow the frazzled Lisa and tired Topaz. One hundred and nine miles west—Mike kindly recorded it as an even hundred, making it free under our AAA coverage—we arrived in Tucson.
Six hours and one rental car later, we were on the last leg of the road trip. The desert highway was dark, and all I could see of this state that was to become my home were occasional saguaro cacti looming in my headlights.
I let myself into my new apartment around 11 that night, with the key my friend had picked up during office hours. Hungry and tired, I dragged my two bags into the empty apartment. I found a giant Toblerone bar my dad had hid in my toolbox as a gift, devoured half of it, curled up in a blanket and fell asleep on the floor of my naked apartment.
