The Long Road Home
I left Valdosta at 12:04 pm. It was hard to get a chicken sandwich. Cars were lined up and carrying their food away like giant, metallic ants without a Queen. The new Taco Bell was pretty busy. It looks too nice to serve pseudo-Mexican food. Track two begins to play on my new mixed-CD: a Coldplay song I've heard only once before, but a song I think I will like. It's one of her favorites. That's why it's on this CD, this road trip. That's why it's in this text.
The trees vary their colors more from crown to crown in a more persistent succession the farther north I drive. Browns, oranges, and yellows begin to replace the greens and light greens of South Georgia as the music plays on. I'm driving back against the direction of the ray, back toward my past. I'm driving away from my present, my future. I'm driving-- my metallic ant, my machine of modernity--, travelling down this wooded hallway; this hallway shaded with the colors of Nature's last, fleeting breaths: the penultimate sigh of Her life before the cold choke-hold strangles the last bit of Her color out.
Three dogs stand beside the highway, at the edge of a cotton patch already picked over, watching traffic and catching their collective breath. I wonder where they've come from and where they're going. I wonder if they are trotting back against their history, or moving toward something new. I wonder if their next meal will come from a dish or as the result of some hunt. There seems to be a freedom in not knowing.
The CD is starting over and I'm nearing the end-point of my drive. In a few days I'll turn around and make the same trip in reverse, back toward the future, toward uncertainty: not knowing if I'll eat from a dish or if it will require more effort than just sitting down at the table.
Coming into Dublin on 441, I see the old McDonald’s and a new steakhouse. Then it’s a short trek down I-16, past my high school. I drive by the old brick building fast enough only to catch a glimpse. It will only hold classes until this May and then it will be vacated, all of the students and teachers and janitors and principals moved across the county to a bigger cow pasture and a bigger barn; a newer barn. I catch glimpses of memories from my high school years: blue face paint and a kilt on homecoming, speeding around the building, screaming at the tops of our lungs at five in the morning before a field trip, wondering what freedom felt like, thinking we already knew.
But freedom isn’t speeding around your high school at five in the morning or painting your face blue. Freedom is driving home through the country with rain falling fast through open windows, soaking your shirt. Freedom isn’t doing something you can’t normally do when it’s alright. Freedom is doing something you normally wouldn’t, even when you still shouldn’t. And sometimes, it’s a drive back, along the old roads that help us discover what freedom is. Sometimes it’s a return home, a return to our roots, that really opens the gate and lets the floods out.
Sitting on the porch with my parents in three identical rocking chairs, getting run out of Applebee’s because their closing or maybe we’re being too loud, looking at the bargain rack at Wal-Mart, and watching the people who got trapped here fifty years ago drink with the kids who are trapping themselves here today: that’s Dublin, GA. There isn't much left for me in this town: some friends, some memories, some comfort. I love the time I spend here with the ones who nurtured me in my youth. It is truly refreshing. And tonight I’ll have a beer with a man named Scooter and he’ll tell me all about his limp and how I should talk to ladies. And I’ll see several people who I always thought would probably hang out in a bar and night but only to escape from reality who never thought they would see me in a bar, but always thought that I would teach college.
Soon, though, I will be in South Georgia again, where the trees don't die quite as quickly, and there I will live in the uncertainty...not knowing where I will end up...or what cotton field I will be standing at the edge of catching my breath.
-Shane "Blazin' Locks" Wilson
The trees vary their colors more from crown to crown in a more persistent succession the farther north I drive. Browns, oranges, and yellows begin to replace the greens and light greens of South Georgia as the music plays on. I'm driving back against the direction of the ray, back toward my past. I'm driving away from my present, my future. I'm driving-- my metallic ant, my machine of modernity--, travelling down this wooded hallway; this hallway shaded with the colors of Nature's last, fleeting breaths: the penultimate sigh of Her life before the cold choke-hold strangles the last bit of Her color out.
Three dogs stand beside the highway, at the edge of a cotton patch already picked over, watching traffic and catching their collective breath. I wonder where they've come from and where they're going. I wonder if they are trotting back against their history, or moving toward something new. I wonder if their next meal will come from a dish or as the result of some hunt. There seems to be a freedom in not knowing.
The CD is starting over and I'm nearing the end-point of my drive. In a few days I'll turn around and make the same trip in reverse, back toward the future, toward uncertainty: not knowing if I'll eat from a dish or if it will require more effort than just sitting down at the table.
Coming into Dublin on 441, I see the old McDonald’s and a new steakhouse. Then it’s a short trek down I-16, past my high school. I drive by the old brick building fast enough only to catch a glimpse. It will only hold classes until this May and then it will be vacated, all of the students and teachers and janitors and principals moved across the county to a bigger cow pasture and a bigger barn; a newer barn. I catch glimpses of memories from my high school years: blue face paint and a kilt on homecoming, speeding around the building, screaming at the tops of our lungs at five in the morning before a field trip, wondering what freedom felt like, thinking we already knew.
But freedom isn’t speeding around your high school at five in the morning or painting your face blue. Freedom is driving home through the country with rain falling fast through open windows, soaking your shirt. Freedom isn’t doing something you can’t normally do when it’s alright. Freedom is doing something you normally wouldn’t, even when you still shouldn’t. And sometimes, it’s a drive back, along the old roads that help us discover what freedom is. Sometimes it’s a return home, a return to our roots, that really opens the gate and lets the floods out.
Sitting on the porch with my parents in three identical rocking chairs, getting run out of Applebee’s because their closing or maybe we’re being too loud, looking at the bargain rack at Wal-Mart, and watching the people who got trapped here fifty years ago drink with the kids who are trapping themselves here today: that’s Dublin, GA. There isn't much left for me in this town: some friends, some memories, some comfort. I love the time I spend here with the ones who nurtured me in my youth. It is truly refreshing. And tonight I’ll have a beer with a man named Scooter and he’ll tell me all about his limp and how I should talk to ladies. And I’ll see several people who I always thought would probably hang out in a bar and night but only to escape from reality who never thought they would see me in a bar, but always thought that I would teach college.
Soon, though, I will be in South Georgia again, where the trees don't die quite as quickly, and there I will live in the uncertainty...not knowing where I will end up...or what cotton field I will be standing at the edge of catching my breath.
-Shane "Blazin' Locks" Wilson
posted by Shane at
7:31 PM
1 Comments:
I like the winks at the reader when you refer to this text. The three dogs and the three rocking chairs--the trinity of memories--nice.
By
Donna Sewell, at 7:37 PM
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