Bill Kirby: Things you think about on a lonely Georgia road
"Two roads diverged into a wood and I took the one less traveled …"
— Robert Frost
I know what the middle-of-nowhere looks like.
I was there last week.
I was alone on a Georgia two-lane road driving across the state and trying to miss the Memorial Day holiday traffic that my radio said had clogged Atlanta and even Macon.
My son and his wife had mentioned a remote route they sometimes enjoyed, so I decided to give it a shot. It was not a straight one.
The day was cloudy, so I had a muted sense of direction, but thought I was generally going west. The helpful voice in my dashboard computer would occasionally perk up and tell me to turn left or right on some road ahead. I was in no hurry, so I just followed directions. (There's always a first time.)
The road was not bad. Its two lanes looked new and well-paved, but most remarkable, it had almost no traffic. No school buses, no log trucks, no pickups, no moms headed to town. No farmers headed to market.
I measured one stretch of 4½ miles during which I did not encounter another vehicle coming or going.
"Where is everybody?" I wondered.
There were no tractors, no semi-trucks, no grandmothers headed to mid-week church meetings. There were no youngsters in over-tinted Dodge Challengers who had seen too many "Fast and Furious" movies.
There were, however, a lot of trees.
More Bill Kirby:
Did you know that 40 percent of the state of Georgia is forest? I looked it up when I got home. I think I saw most of them last week.
Every now and then I whizzed by a fruit stand. No fruit … despite a vowel-challenged sign touting "Fresh Peches."
Every 15 or 20 miles a little town would come up. I'd slow down. Navigate its square and soon be on my way.
Wherever I was, McDonald's had yet to discover it. Dollar stores, on the other hand, were well established.
Occasionally, I zoomed by a house. No people. No sign anyone had been there for a while. Most were wood. Their porches sagged like wet cardboard. Their sheds often leaned.
It was a little bit sad. I always think someone once celebrated Christmas in that house. Someone came home to it from a war. Someone brought a bride across its threshold, birthed a baby in a room that caught the most sunlight, closed the eyes of an old aunt who had taken a final breath.
All gone now; no one to tell their stories.
But then I see the flowers.
Hiding in the undergrowth to the side of the porch. Ringed around some rocks that might have been a well … is that flash of white a gardenia? Is that hint of light blue a hydrangea bush? Around the next corner I see something red or orange.
Their gardener is gone, but the blooms live on. That's the way it is.
You can speed through life with only the vaguest sense of direction. Moving ahead, passing through, and only sometimes wondering who was here before and what they did.
If lucky, they'll know we planted flowers.
Bill Kirby has reported, photographed and commented on life in Augusta and Georgia for 45 years.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Lonely highway gives you things to think about: Bill Kirby
