Pascagoula, Alabama

Truman Capote and Harper Lee grew up and were friends not far from here--in a little town called Monroeville. Mike and I went there one December afternoon, seven years ago.

We were driving my first Mini to Texas that year and we took a back-road detour, as we both like to do.  Small towns were lit up for Christmas with twinkly lights.  We walked through the courthouse on the Monroeville square after which the one in To Kill A Mockingbird was modeled.  We saw a small town holiday parade and ate barbecue we bought from someone's beat-up pick-up truck. And on that Sunday morning, we visited an all-black church--a lively service I'll never forget.

I passed the sign to Monroeville yesterday and was tempted to take it.  I'm always tempted to take roads I've gone down before.  Returning to a place I remember refreshes the memory of that other time, connecting that Then to this Now.  It's like listening to music evocative of another time, back when I was a younger version of myself.

But I drove on.  I have promises to keep--a Halloween party for Nathan and Elena and their friends.  Will called and we talked for an hour as I was driving through slow Atlanta traffic.  He didn't say so, but I suspect he wanted to give me some company on the road for a bit, knowing I'm always sad to leave Carlene's.

Then the thick trees on both sides of the Atlanta-Montgomery-Mobile Interstates reduced phone signals, and I went into Road Reverie for the rest of the trip, listening to podcasts and old gospel music.

Later, I passed the exit to Dauphine Island.  It would soon be dark and I didn't have time to explore.  But I made a mental note to plan my time next trip to go there again, to get on the ferry as I did a few years ago, to take pictures of the many colorful houses on stilts.

Yesterday's driving was a day for making time--so I left Carlene's at 8:30 Eastern time and stuck to the main highways all the way, 85 South, then 65 toward Mobile.  The only stop I made all day was to poke around in a ginormous antique store called Angel's in Opelika.

I've driven these same roads so many times that I know the route like a neighborhood--yet passing through a town or a city doesn't mean knowing it, not really, just knowing where it is and how it's positioned among other Southern towns.  To stop is to uncover a tiny bit of it.

On that seven-years-ago trip with Mike, we had breakfast in Tuskegee, then walked around an old cemetery.  He, as I do, traveling solo, always asks the locals for directions to the best places to eat.  At a local greasy-spoon restaurant with salty country ham and mounds of grits and biscuits. we got into a conversation with a young woman who had long, long fingernails with tiny landscapes painted on them.  I commented about the elaborate tiny polish-paintings, and she said, "I got 'em did in Opelika."

Ever since then, whenever I pass the Opelika sign, I think about her words: "I got 'em did in Opelika."

I spent the day listening  to pocasts: interviews with the Dalai Lama, Yo-Yo-Ma, Michel Martin, and several other people participating in Krista Tippet's interfaith dialogue.  In my moving listening booth, I enjoyed both the content and the variety of different voices.  Both sides of the bland highways were rimmed with pine trees and kudzu and a few trees with colorful foliage.  Other drivers, each in their own moving listening booths, seemed like a band of good fellow- and sister-travelers.  I wondered what they were listening to--gospel music? the news? red-neck ranting? opera? audio books?

Just before reaching Mobile on 65, I decided to take a little detour into Bay Minette to get a whiff of the Gulf air, then connected with I 10 just as the sun was going down.  The sky was a blaze of red as I drove through Mobile, then dark as I drove here to Pascagoula, where I finally stopped after twelve hours on the road.

It's hard to stay on the wide roads.  Backroads are where you'll find pool halls and cemeteries, flower shops and rusted trucks, beauty shops and churches with signs like "Honest to God church"--as I saw in Bay Minette.  Backroads are where you see bales of hay lit by the fading sun, dogs running free, and all the hodgepodge poetry of real life off the beaten track.  If I had time, I'd avoid all interstates.

The more boring the roads, though, the better for a certain kind of reverie. I wanted time alone to seal in all the things that have happened since I left home on the 13th, to reflect on each detail of being There, before arriving in another There.

It occurred to me that my love of roads is a perfect template for the way my mind works.  But that's a topic for another day, another post....