• "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy"
• professions of love and libel on bathroom stalls
• trumpet flowers
• honeysuckles smell sweeter in humid, still, 86-degree weather
• no such thing as energy bars
• butterflies
• lightning bugs
• plastic shoes with holes in them like Swiss cheese
• the beautiful ones standing out like stars
• cigarettes for sale behind the counter at the grocery store
• cigarettes in everyone's hands
• the dirty smell of cigarette smoke mixed with the oil evaporating from funnel cakes mixed with the smell of the pavement and beneath it all, the wet, sticky breath of the trees
• does the sign on my door always read "open" or does my mom switch it every time I come to town?
• far more cats than dogs
• peeling paint and random patches of ground where buildings once stood
• Mr. Potato Head Transformers
• the scary signs in the alley (the latest: "Home Confinement Office in back of building")
• people walk slower and drive faster
• pepperoni rolls (but shrinkwrapped in plastic)
• the last place on earth where you can walk down the street and not pass anyone talking on a cell phone
• being thinner than almost everyone I see over age twenty
• being in a crowd and still having fifteen feet of elbow room
• those gorgeous mountains, ridges beyond ridges stretching endlessly into the horizon
• rest stops
• Chick-fil-A
• burning your tongue so bad it hurts for days