During a cross-country road trip in 2006, I left Mountain Home, Idaho with ten cents in my pocket and made it all the way to Eau Claire, Wisconsin with a full belly and half a pack of cigarettes. Winston’s too, not roll your owns. Rollies are for bums and cowboys. I hate bums and I especially hate cowboys.

The decision to escape came sudden. A heated argument between my slob of a roommate and I had forced me out of his apartment and into my Ford Explorer where I had nothing but my irrationality and anger to keep me afloat. It may have been the Lithium I was taking at the time, (I had just been released from the mental hospital) or the fact I was stuck in the most miserable, rat-bastard town in America for the past three months that made me act on such drastic impulse, but as soon as I left the steps of his apartment, I was in my truck and driving like a maniac the nearby Maverick gas station.

Mountain Home, Idaho is the shittiest town on the planet. A dusty little desert turd sitting sidesaddle on the back of Idaho’s forgotten history. The whole town is mobile, by mobile I mean made up primarily decrepit trailer houses and equally decrepit people. You could seriously move the whole town overnight if one had the gumption and equipment. Personally, if I had my way, I would move it due south about five miles and dump the whole godforsaken town into the currents of the Snake River, but that’s just me. The town is really just an eyesore though. If it weren’t for the Interstate and the nearby Air Force base, the town wouldn’t even exist. There would be no commercial traffic other than sightseers maybe taking a wrong turn out of Boise and ending up 50 miles east. The town would shrivel up and die overnight, but since that isn’t the case and there is in fact an Interstate and an Air Force base, the town had a pulse of about 13,000 wretched human beings. 18,000 if you include the flyboys.

Meth heads, white trash and fat slobs. Ugly bearded men in trucks with gun racks and a little brick and mortar library all set against the high desert cradle of a woebegone Southern Idaho horizon. Remnants of the Wild West, pioneers and outlaws still with their voices stapled to the breeze and with the right kind of ears, you can still hear them riding hard through the moonlit desert en route to riches on the Oregon trail. I was a pioneer and an outlaw that day myself, with my own rendition of a punch-drunk tale to tell but first I had to write it. Albeit, rip it off.

When you don‘t have any money for gas there are a few pointers you should know. For one, make sure yours isn’t the only car sitting at the pumps. Check. Two, try to pick a gas station where the clerks are young and dorky. Check. Thick rimmed glasses and pocket protectors are always a good indicator. And if at all possible, don’t drive away until they are helping a customer; it’ll give you a head start.

I returned the gas nozzle to its cradle with clink and closed my car door with a clank. I took a quick mental inventory of my escape options and chose the one I knew I would choose all along. The Interstate. I minded my speed while anticipating the onramp, heart singing with the melody of machinegun fire the whole way. It was the longest two miles I had ever driven and I saw my abrupt end when I was passed by three Mountain Home squad cars traveling in the opposing lane of traffic. No way they could have called the cops that fast and had a response unit combing the streets for me, I was safe but I had to purse my lips so my heart didn’t leap out.

I shouldn’t fail to mention that it isn’t smart to do it in states you may ever want to live in again. I mean, its the two thousands and every goddamn gas station in the Country has surveillance of some kind. They will get your plates, but not in time to catch your coattails as you journey victoriously out of their state jurisdiction and into the next. Which also reminds me, try to gas and go as close to the next state line as you can get so you can, simply board the onramp and be in a new state before they look out the window and see the nozzle swinging from the pump.