The air is warm, the feel is cool, it’s at least 30 years before cell phones and I’m driving on a road that straddles the fault line that runs anywhere between Northern California and South Central Florida – not that one exists but…it is a dream sequence.
All eight cylinders are cranking in a vehicle that needs only one battery, has zero factory-installed air-conditioning, and doesn’t care how much of the 34 cents per gallon in leaded fuel it’s using to get me there.
Where am I going?
I’ll know when I get there.
Because it’s the weekend and this is entertainment. I get in the BIG red stake-bed and drive.
Summer was made for driving without destination. To leave the city behind in search for a new piece of road and maybe even find the new place, the one the rest haven’t quite found yet.
All of this, when TV had two colors and six channels, years before they started harvesting wind, before the first laptop (or desktop) was born, when fresh fruit was still packed and stacked in wooden crates.
Windows down and the AM radio struggles to hold onto the faint broadcast signal from maybe 50, maybe 200 miles away… Some country song that sounds like 50 other country songs that I can barely identify. Can’t identify. And then a commercial with only a few words from a peppy jingle making it through…”You’ll wonder where the yellow went…”, interrupted by the larger crackles from some distant thunderstorm, “…with Pepsodent!”
But right here, right now, the skies are clear except for a crop duster pulling an advertising banner. Not close enough to read.
Where the hell am I?
Nowhere, directly in the middle. Wide open fields, green hills, distant forms.
Barns with painted advertising slogans, some cracking and fading in the summer sun pitching products and companies that no longer exist.
See Rock City, DeKalb, Mail Pouch, Funks G Hybrid, Lay Or Bust Brand.
And then, a simple hand-made sign appears just off the shoulder…
Melons Up
Another 50 yards, another hand-made sign with poor spelling…I hope…
A Head
And one more…
5 miles
I hear my voice, me as a kid, in my head…Are we there yet? Another sign answers my question…
You’re almost there!
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