Driving While Ignorent

Those of us who grew up in middle Georgia and were lucky enough to make the trip to the beach remember highway 80. We’re talking way before 16 was ever poured. We’re talking long before anyone knew what a debit card or an A.T.M. machine was. We’re talking back when teeth were optional, wait I guess they still are. 

Highway 80 is now a ghost town, but if you look hard, you can see the remnants of what it used to be. You pass the dead dinosaurs of things that distinguished it from the other, back roads that did not go between Six Flags and Tybee Island.

Old truck stops stand in disrepair; small stores occupy corners of buildings that have long ago outlived their usefulness. You can buy a bottled coke in a store where the roof is partial collapsed. Rather than repair it, the store grows smaller and smaller as the roof continues to cover less area. Stores where teeth and debit cards might be optional, but where a good drink of stiff white liquor can be found for a price.

Old Motels hide in the edge of the woods. Trees grow from the roofs as kudzu slowly claims them as its own. Their few serviceable rooms serve as slum apartments until they simply fall down, the parking lots are littered with old cars and junk. The stores become used tire stores and the lucky ones house antique shops. Their death rattle is when they become a produce stand.

It’s sad, talk about an economic downturn, progress wiped them out. Railroads and interstates have shaped our Country throughout history, some of it for the good, some of it for   the bad. I’ll never forget eating at the Dairy Queen in Statesboro, Ga., it’s still there. I almost stopped recently, but opted to keep moving as I was taking pictures of dead buildings, not live one’s.

One of my fondest memories, maybe not a politically correct one, is of a trip down highway 80 when I was in the Navy. I was stationed in Jacksonville, FL, and had decided to take a trip home. I took three other guys with me. We decided to come to Milledgeville, by way of Savannah. I knew where to get a little good mood in a jug. Yeah it was still in a jug back then. After waking up a cousin, I hadn’t seen in years we hit the road and proceeded to get a little happy. Okay we were a lot happy. We blew through Kite, GA, and its one caution light at about a hundred corn fields an hour. When I passed through there recently, it appeared they might not have a police officer anymore, but they did then. He was waiting for us at the city limit sign and pulled us over.

I tried to convince him that I was fine. Showing him our military I.D.’s, we expected to be let go with a good tongue lashing. He had no sense of humor and taking my license said, “Foller me boy.”

He did a u turn, and so did I. We slowly made our way back through Kite and were scared out of our minds. Visions of meeting someone’s pet chainsaw or vicious attach pigs were keeping us quiet. I wondered where the jail was or if they had one at all. Maybe they just executed people on the spot. Back then a bullet was cheaper than a long distance phone call. The town slipped by without us stopping. Well, we did stop at the caution light. At the city limit sign on the other side of town, he did a u turn again, and we slowly passed back through town. Now we were really scared and joking about the size of the jail, and wondered if they had inside plumbing.

At the original city limit sign, he pulled over, again. I was hoping that being from Georgia might at least save my life. The guy in the back seat was from New York, and I figured he had about a snowballs chance.

As he approached the car, I had the strong urge to hit the gas and take my chances on the road. The other guy in the backseat was trying to keep the New Yorker from jumping out and running. He had decided he would rather be shot in the back than be shot in the backseat.

“Now ya’ll knows how to drive ifin you come through my town again. Best don’t ferget it,” he said while handing me my license. The guy from New York quit drinking that night and developed a much closer relationship to God. I for my part will never forget that lesson, and as I passed through Kite a few weeks ago I obeyed all traffic laws.