It was the sweltering
weekend of the Fourth of July. We were
headed west across the United
States, a country that seemed as vast as
space and as timeless as infinity. Our
motorcade included a moving van, a pickup named Sledgehammer and a Ford
Expedition called The Behemoth.
We made it
through Nashville
and were on a route through the land of the different, the bizarre, and the
unexplainable: fields of peanuts,
tobacco, soy beans and industrial hemp.
The sign post up
ahead read, “Cadiz, Kentucky” when suddenly black smoke began to
roll out from under the U-Haul.
We pulled off at a nearby exit and watched as
inky fluid poured out of the truck and onto the concrete highway.
After a phone
call or two to the moving company, we were informed a mechanic was on the way.
 |
| Our mechanic. Note all the cell towers in the background. |
He arrived after
a long delay. “I had to stop at the
Piggly Wiggly for three bags of groceries,” he drawled. After some poking around, he informed us we
had a blown hose.
 |
| A turkey vulture surveys the damage. |
No crap, Columbo! Even I could see the remains of the hose and the engine's bodily fluids bleeding out. He told us he would be back in the morning with parts to repair the damage; got in his van with his wife and his groceries and left.
We found rooms
at the Holiday Inn for our group of four adults and four children.
 |
The kids were so disappointed
to have to spend the afternoon in the motel pool. |
While our son
and his wife got the kids settled, DH and I walked across the street and into--what
else--Kentucky Fried Chicken. We felt
like we were invisible. None of the
employees even looked up when we walked in.
At last, moving at a lingering pace through a zone of his own, one
finally took our order. After we got the chicken dinners and took them back
to the motel for the kids, DH and I decided we’d get our own meal at a nearby restaurant:
The Cracker Barrel Country Store.
It was a fifth
dimension beyond that which is known to man. It was a souvenir store as chaotic as
a sideshow and as immeasurable as the universe. It was the middle ground between light and
shadow, between imagination and superstition.
A waitress with a perky apron and big, big
hair parked us at a table and fed us potatoes and gravy, cold cider and pie.
While we waited
for our food we tried to use our cell phones and discovered that, although
there were three cell towers within a half mile of our location, we were unable
to get service. We were on the shadowy
tip of reality: on a through route to weirdness and the unexplainable.
As we were
paying our bill at the register, the cashier smiled, looked us in the eye and said,
“Y’all want some fudge,” drawing the last word out into two syllables. Suddenly we did and ordered a slab.
The next morning,
using some items found at a plumbing store, our son and DH were able to
improvise a repair to the truck and had it running before our redneck mechanic
arrived.
He was impressed
with the work and asked if our boy needed a job. We didn’t tell him our son had an engineering
degree and was on his way to a high paying career in Utah.
No, we hustled
ourselves on down the highway and out of that freaky dimension of imagination,
a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind: on our journey into a wondrous land whose only
boundaries are that of imagination.
