(Callie is on vacation. This is one of her favorite columns from the past.)
I think it began when my parents put us in the back seat of our 70’s car and drove us down every back road they could find enroute to our vacation spot.
I’m not sure why I have such fond memories. My brother would be sitting next to me saying, “Whoever passed gas knock on glass.” He would always knock on the glass laughing. And every now and then my father would knock on the glass instead. And then my mother would take out her makeup suitcase and begin teasing her hair to form a helmet. She would spray an aerosol can of hairspray enough to form a cloud. Between her hairspray and the gas in the car I’m not sure how I developed great memories I wanted to repeat, especially when I would be the baby of the family saying, “How Long ‘Til We Get There!” The other three would sigh as my mother would say, “Getting there is half the fun.”
It never really felt like fun at the time and then years later it was all I wanted to do in the summer. So, my husband has allowed me one road trip a year. I get to find the destination and even plan the route. Being that I detest interstates it is all I can do to coax him off the newly beaten path. He has learned to live with me after 27 years and just goes with it.
This year I picked Savannah, Georgia, but as I researched it I found a quaint little village called St. Simons Island off the coast just south of the city. I allowed him to take the interstate there, but the plan was that we would dog leg it back through Georgia into my father’s old stomping ground in Alabama. My purpose? To surprise my parents’ awesome old friends from when I was a little girl. They live in Ozark, Alabama. I just knew I would be able to find my way around, having Vesta and Jimmy Peek’s address in my purse. Not so lucky. Things happen to change a great deal over forty years.
We had the fortune of passing through Andersonville, Georgia, where the Union soldiers were held prisoner. We were able to walk through the ghost town and meet an old man who ran the old shack of a museum with all of the actual outfits and guns of Union soldiers. Talk about feeling the presence of ghosts. But we were awarded the best food we have ever put in our mouths since Clay’s Grandma Nezzie was alive. A cross-eyed man and his southern beautiful wife cooked us a meal that, as he said, “Was cooked from the heart.” Heart really tastes good in the form of turnip greens, meatloaf, and cornbread.
We were able to pass through Plains, Georgia which is the home of Jimmy Carter and we saw Billy Carter’s gas station with our very own eyes. We got to stop on the side of the road to buy two boxes of Georgia peaches from an old black man who told us he would see us again. When my husband said that he doubted it because we would not be back in this neck of the woods, he said, “Well, if not here then in heaven!” We had to agree with him on that.
That brought us to Ozark, Alabama. We couldn’t begin to find our way around. My husband told me it was hopeless, but then we passed the local fire station. I told him to pull over so I could question the firemen. My husband got out with me knowing they would never give us the directions to some innocent person’s house with us being strangers in town. But I was quick to explain to them that I needed to surprise this amazing couple who had meant so much to me when I was growing up.
The firemen looked at my husband, and he merely shrugged and said, “When my wife gets something in her head there’s no stopping her.” They gave me the directions and I soon knocked on the front door only to have two people hugging me like they had just seen a long lost friend ---because I was. It was so great to see them. I then got my husband out of the car because he was not going anywhere until he knew the coast was clear.
Now that’s what road trips are all about. Anyone can take the interstate and let the real America pass them by. But to get to drive through that old small southern town and see these two great people kind of made my summer. And not once did we have to knock on glass or choke each other with hairspray. We actually met people, real people with clover honey to sell and stories to tell. Leave the interstate to the 18-wheelers and find your own adventure because we never know what’s just around the corner in life! And who could ever pass up on a good story or a great hug.
