All I meant to do was buy some tomato plants and flowers for my new flower beds. But these simple things seem to turn into adventures with me, especially when driving is concerned.
The best place to buy plants around here is down in the Mennonite community, about 15 miles from my house. It’s a nice drive in the spring, down Highway 50, through the sleepy little Coble community and along a winding road through some of the prettiest woodlands in Hickman County. I planned to visit a couple of the Mennonite families to get some homemade bread and fresh produce, then stop in at the market to buy a new corn cutter before visiting the greenhouse for tomato, pepper, petunia, squash and okra plants. I invited my friend Clay to ride down there with me, promising a quick trip. He said he wouldn’t mind going and buying some orange slice candy at the market.
Imagine my surprise when, just before reaching my first stop, I encountered a road closed/detour sign. The detour wasn’t even a detour – it was just a parking lot where you could turn around. There was room to go around the road closed barrier and I thought maybe the actual closure was far enough down the road that I could get to at least one of my destinations so I eased around it. But just around the next curve was a group of workers with a large piece of equipment. The road really was closed. I found out later they were installing a culvert.
There wasn’t room to turn around right there, so I had to back up. A car had followed me around the barrier, but they had stopped back up the road when I stopped, so I had room to back to an open space to turn around. The folks in the car pulled up, rolled down the window and asked what was going on. Turned out it was an acquaintance who was also enroute to the greenhouse. We parted ways and started back
I knew there was another way to the greenhouse, from the other side of town; I just wasn’t sure where to turn and it would mean going all the way back to town and starting over. I don’t know what possessed me to decide to try a “shortcut” through the back roads, especially when I didn’t have a full tank of gas. But when I saw the road that had a sign saying “Nacome Camp 2 miles,” I turned onto it. “Where are we going?” asked Clay suspiciously.
“I know there’s another way and I might be able to figure it out,“ I said cheerfully. Little did I know.
These were not well traveled roads and there were several other little roads that intersected every few miles. I was not familiar with any of those little roads. Pretty soon, I realized that I was loster than last year’s Easter egg. I had no idea where we were or where we were going, except occasionally we would see a sign that said Nacome 2 miles. We had been several miles more than two by then, but there wasn’t much choice but to forge ahead. The road wound along right beside the creek. Nacome is on the creek, so I figured we would get to it sooner or later and then I would know where we were. “I’ll bet one of those other little roads would take us over to the greenhouse if I just knew how to do it,” I said at one point. I won’t tell you what Clay said. I didn’t blame him – I had promised it would be a short trip and there would be candy.
I don’t think I mentioned before that I am severely directionally challenged. I don’t know right from left and I certainly don’t know north, south, east and west, unless I am at my house. I also don’t have any sense of whether my house in north, south, east or west of any other location in my county, or the wider world. My truck has a compass on the dash, which tells me what direction I am headed, but it doesn’t tell me where home is in relation to those compass points. I can’t even remember all the times I have stopped somewhere on a trip and gone back in the wrong direction when I left my location. It used to drive my mother crazy. “Mary Beth,” she would say, “you know home is to the west!” Well, no, I didn’t. One time Daddy was with us on an excursion to Nashville and I was going to drive home. We were leaving the parking lot and I asked which way to go. Daddy said promptly, “North.” My mother spoke up, not exactly yelling, but in a pretty loud voice. “She doesn’t know which way that is,” she announced and proceeded to tell me to turn that way – pointing to the correct direction.
Every now and then Clay would ask if I knew where we were and mention that he had never been to Nacome Camp. He also muttered something about orange slice candy every now and then.
We did see some pretty wild flowers, and we finally come out at Nacome Camp, and I don’t think Clay was correct in saying we had driven fifty miles, but I’m also pretty sure it was more than 2 miles. But the adventure wasn’t over yet. We came out on the highway and I turned right, which seemed to me to be the way back to town. “Where are you going?” asked Clay. “Because Linden is this way and Centerville is that way.” Now he sees what my mother went through every time we went on a trip.
I could write a book about all the times I got lost with my horse show buddy, Carol. There was the time in Brownsville, Kentucky, when we ended up at a church at 12:00 on a Sunday morning, just as church was getting out, pulling a horse trailer right through the middle of town. Then there was the time we ended up in a corn field in Ava, Missouri, in the dark, while trying to find the horse show grounds. Our last trip together was to Huntsville, Alabama, where we drove around and around and gave Carol’s GPS a nervous breakdown. I’m serious about the breakdown – the woman telling us where to turn just quit talking to us after we made our second trip into the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant. We did see some nice Christmas decorations in that little subdivision we drove into though. At least we weren’t pulling a horse trailer.
I went back to the Mennonites yesterday. I was telling the gentleman who sold me some vegetables that I tried to get down there the other day and the road was closed. He said there is a way to wind around and get to them but it was a confusing route and I probably would have got lost. I nodded and agreed. I did get my tomato and pepper plants, flowers, homemade bread and Clay’s orange slice candy. The market didn’t have a corn cutter so that will be an adventure for another time. Strawberries will be in season next week. I hope the main road is not closed then.
No comments:
Post a Comment