“Road Trip—Pt. I” [Facebook post from 01-20-2014]

A recent prompt for my writing group was to recall a road trip and write about some aspect of it.  One trip in particular stood out for me.  The following is a bit of a prelude, but also a preview.  More to come intermittently.

Newly graduated mid-year with my bachelor’s degree (December 1971), I couldn’t find a job.  My fiancée had decided we weren’t meant to be, so I returned the rings to the jeweler to have some spending money.  I celebrated my 21^st birthday just before Christmas curled up in the bedroom I was using in my parents’ home.  Probably goes without saying that I needed a change of scenery.  When I told my mother I was going to hitch to Georgia to see an old friend, she looked out the window at the newly fallen foot of snow and told me she’d buy me a bus ticket to Atlanta to at least get me out of the cold.

The heater on the bus didn’t work.  It was ten degrees in Atlanta when I got there the next day.  The girl I hadn’t seen in five years had written to tell me not to bother, but the letter most likely arrived in the mailbox as I was knocking on her door in a little town 60 miles south of Atlanta.  At least it was approaching 60° when I hefted my pack and headed back to Missouri.

I met all sorts of people on the trip home, and I made a significant life decision.  While camped in a downpour on the median of I-40 in eastern Tennessee after walking across the Appalachians at Rabun Gap in north Georgia, I vowed that as soon as I could return to school, I was going to get my teaching certificate.  Dad had often told me that teachers could always get jobs.

After I stood with my thumb out for an hour or so on the side of the road the next morning, the car that finally stopped was a neatly kept little sedan that exuded the spit and polish of its driver.  He turned out to be a terrific fellow who was doing some soul-searching of his own.  Although he was only in his early forties, he had just retired as the youngest commander of US forces in Korea.  He was driving home to a wife and daughter he hadn’t seen in several months, and he had no idea what he was going to do with himself.  We shared our stories and our hopes and encouraged one another.

Tennessee is a fairly long state from east to west, even at 70 miles an hour.  I think we both made the trip from past to future in those few hours together before he dropped me off outside of Memphis.  I’ve often wondered where his road took him.  Mine has not been as straight or smooth as that four-lane highway, but I’ve enjoyed the side trips—those blue highways of the everyday—more than any rest stop or tourist trap.  Most of all, I’ve appreciated the days when I have felt like I was out on the road again with my thumb in the air and nothing but promise ahead.