The weekend scenery on a drive from Cincinnati to the SC Midlands and back, an abbreviated list:
Horizontal flashes of lightening, in a lightening storm that lasted through NC, maybe about an hour-and-a-half. The most impressive lightening storm in my life yet.
Flashing hazard lights emerging now and again through sheets of rain during the rest of the trip down.
A semi jack-knifed on the opposite side of the highway; many miles of headlights of the cars stopped behind. (Where could everyone be going, in such a storm, that time of night - 9:30, 10:00) on that no-longer-lonely part of the highway, I wondered. Where do we all have to go, all the time, like this, that such an amount of traffic can accumulate in a comparatively short span of time?)
The welcomed, welcoming faces of loved ones we miss, one of whom had an important birthday. (Where we were going, why, in such a storm, etc.)
Under the sun, bloomed wisteria crawling upward, lavender-colored plumes, twisting over dead trees, abandoned shacks, rusting roofs, anything.
A traveling posse of red motorcycles riding in formation, five of them, the riders looking like family.
A bumper sticker (near Asheville): I’d rather being reading Bukowski.
6 Comments
what do you know, i’d rather be reading bukowski as well!
beautiful post… i miss lightening storms.
i totally dug this post…it sounds like quite the trip. lightening storms, jackknifed trailers, wisteria, and bukowski.
i’m not much for bumper stickers, since i don’t have a car, but i’d pay good money for a t-shirt that said “i’d rather be reading bukowski.”
Great website. It looks like we share many of the same loves — reading, writing, and marine biology.
I love roadtrips, and of course looking forward to crawling into bed at night with a good book. Your reference to lightning storms reminds me of summer evenings in Tampa, Florida.
Sounds like a typical drive to South Carolina to me.
In 1963 my father posted to Ft. Jackson in Columbia, SC. On the way he bought automobile air-conditioning for the first time at a dealership in Atlanta. He didn’t want it, but “it came with the car.”
He refused to turn it on–said it taxed the engine. The car was a V-8. We could have run from the police in it.
Did I forget to mention, it was July in the sand hills of South Carolina?
The first time we turned onto Assembly Street in Columbia, we saw a cross between a set for a Rob Zombie movie, and a de Chirico painting. At noon in July in the predominately-black shopping section of Columbia, there wasn’t a soul on the street.
“Where is everyone?” said my mother.
We would later learn that “everyone”—black and white were six blocks down by the river sipping moonshine beneath willow trees. Moonshine, I might add, made within a pistol shot of the Governor’s Mansion.
My father paused at a light and surveyed the low-canopied buildings, the empty shadows, the pawnshops, Army & Navy stores, and the parked cars sealed like ovens.
My father reached over and turned on the car AC, and for the next 18 summers in Columbia–the remainder of his life–refused to turn it off.
Thanks for stopping by, people. Sixteen hours on the road ought to yield up something or other, is my thinking!
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