Four Weeks (Part Two)

July 18, 2008, 2:30 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, Featured, Steve  | 1 Comment

Read the series in parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

If you have ever driven through southwestern Virginia, you may have noticed that, for nine miles, Interstates 77 and 81 form what is called a “wrong-way concurrency.” I-81 travels from northeast to southwest, while I-77 was built from northwest to southeast; as a result, when the two roads meet and ever-so-briefly join, the unsuspecting driver (heading due west by compass) finds herself simultaneously traversing I-81 south — and I-77 north.

Up looks down, wrong seems right, and west can be both north and south…and if you try to turn around, you’ll find that east is too.

This fact, which once crouched amidst foggy dusk to add a loathsome 45 minutes to a previous trip, returned to my mind as I recalled our preparation for the 1200-mile drive to the Deep Southâ„¢. This leg was nothing new. Several times before, I have set out on similar trips: unstopped until Pennsylvania, optimistic until West Virginia, and awake (with brief exceptions) until the bitter end, with the occasional pharmacological assist.

But this time we had a plan — to attend church with my uncle in Alabama the next morning — and it depended, or so it was thought, on leaving directly after my sister attained America’s mark of minimal educational competency that afternoon.

Circumstances prevailed, though, as is their way, and we were delayed one round hour, mostly by my brother’s newly discovered (and irrepressible) need to fold everything he owned. Wrinkles, not failure and tardiness, were to be this journey’s most fearsome enemies. Our fate we would trust to the road; his fashion he guarded with his life.

The drive was thankfully unremarkable, and once we finally did arrive, we found the church was quite new, the silver lining from unfair and contentious division elsewhere. Its services were held in the conference room of a local motel, and after the overnight drive, we savored, to some extent, the languorously maintained breakfast buffet, most notable for its pile of buttery, watery hominy grits. Two sermons later, our first experience down South was precisely what we had hoped, a small congregation of the devoted faithful, giving thanks to God in all things, even (inexplicably) for grits.

And our time of arrival? Somewhere around that I-77 merge, I realized we had overlooked the variable of the time zone — and that the hour Princess spent folding his dainties had saved us from turning up on anyone’s doorstep at the unholy hour of 6 a.m.

The wrong-way concurrency. Sometimes advance feels like retreat.


Comments

1 Comment to “Four Weeks (Part Two)”

  1. Tom on July 18th, 2008 8:45 pm

    I’m going to princess you right in the eye, girl power. Making your theoretical “driver” female just to pander to the tyrannical 51%?

    Ju-venile.

Leave a comment!