traveling the backroads

Monday 05/09/05 07:18 PM | Category: Concentrations | Comment on this

Traveling The Back Roads

Riding the back roads of Georgia is one of my favorite childhood memories. I remember warm, lazy summer afternoons with the hum of katydids a constant background music as the car wound down narrow, two-lane roads. I loved stopping at the small roadside fruit and vegetable stands nestled among the kudzu vines. I always chose a ripe Georgia peach from one of the small wooden baskets under the shade of the fruit stand and, when my mother wasn’t watching, I would bite into its fuzzy roundness. Its moist sweetness enveloped my taste buds and its sticky juice coated my fingers. I would help my mother fill a paper sack full of freshly picked corn, bright yellow squash and a green-striped watermelon or two. I loved the earthy smell that filled the car as I looked for the next stop. The back roads held many treasures. I was never sure what I’d find around the next bend. It was the last refuge of the country store, a cornucopia of mercantile delights from chewing tobacco and RC Colas to Farmers Almanacs and cords of wood. I loved the store smells, the musty mingling of scents that spoke of every day life. My last visit uncovered “Stagecoach Planks,” a favorite gingerbread cookie with stripes of pink icing. I washed this down with an orange Nehi. The people of the back roads were Norman Rockwell look-alikes. The girl with matted yellow pigtails and the black man with missing teeth. Their speech was rich with Southern slang and sooo slooow you would hang on every syllable. And there were always stories, stories full of people and their lives. Back roads people loved to talk and I loved to listen. I would imagine what it would be like to have an Uncle Earl who runs a tractor store and goes to Memphis every June to see his favorite blues singers on Beale Street. Or friends like Donnie and Barbara who barbecue goat every weekend on their backyard grill and invite their neighbors to join them.
Georgia’s back roads, although far away now, still reach out and touch me. The memories are so thick and rich they coat my consciousness like honey. I may never travel those roads again except in my mind but that’s OK. My remembrances are powerful reminders of a time filled with daydreams and possibilities, with unexpected pleasures and welcomed surprises.