Road Trip 2016 # 7

I was in a little notch, a bump in the border between the two Virginias that can’t be ten miles across and ten miles high containing but two little towns, Rich Creek and Glen Lyn.  Below them, out of the notch in Virginia proper are the towns of Narrows, Petersburg, and Pembroke.  There are no doubt explanations for anomalies like this in border making and map drawing but I sense such stories if not lost are now hard to find.  Maybe a big farmer, or a person with some other ancient and forgotten clout owned land there and insisted on remaining a Virginian.  The border similarly goes around Peters Mountain, to the Northeast up the border line, leaving that patch of steep land in West Virginia when a straight line would have placed it in Virginia.  There are things I wonder about that aren’t worth the time it takes to figure them out.  Those are two.

I stopped at a very general store.  It had gas pumps, Marathon if I remember correctly, that weren’t accepting credit cards.  I went inside and the young woman behind the counter apologized profusely for the pump’s failure.

“They just come yesterday and reprogrammed those pumps and now they aren’t working worth a dang.  We’ve had nothing but trouble since, I’ll tell YOU.“

She said all this slowly but that last line she said slower and louder with a lot of emphasis on the YOU.

“I can either charge an amount on the card that it will take up to, won’t charge you if it’s less, or you can leave the card with me and come back in and we’ll ring it up.  Once again mister I’m really, really sorry.”

“It’s OK.  Keep the card I’m coming back in anyway.”

I smelled food and it smelled good.  I filled up, parked off the gas lane, reentered, paid for my gas, and perused the hot food menu.  There was a middle aged very blonde woman in a black Harley tee shirt working the small kitchen just past the food racks.  It was equipped with deep fryers, a commercial stove, the whole deal.  I could smell chicken frying.  There was a line. When it was my turn I ordered the hot dog with everything, not knowing what everything was.  I like surprises, especially when it comes to hot dogs.

I watched her put it together.  She was fast.  With giant tongs she pulled a dog from a pot of steaming water on the stove.  She slid it into in a skinny warm white bread bun from the oven below.  “Everything” at the gas station/general store/restaurant in the Virginia notch, in terms of hot dogs, went like this: on one side of the wiener a line of yellow mustard, and on the other side a much thicker load of what looked like mayonnaise.

 ‘Jesus Christ’ I thought, ‘that’s way too much mayo.’

In the middle of those two lines she spread a nice amount of chopped raw onion, and to top it all off a small ladle full of thick and meaty no beans chili.  She wrapped it in waxed paper and put it in my outstretched hand.  It was hot. She looked at me and gave me a big smile.

“There you go sugar.”  Hot food, a smile, and a flirty address all in one motion.  I blushed. God I love the South.

That thick white line on the hot dog was not mayo at all but the most pulverized and mushy cole slaw I had ever eaten.  In combination with the chili, mustard and onion it was absolutely delicious, sweet and tangy all at once.  The wiener had not only flavor but snap.  The snappy dog combined with creamy slaw and smooth chili felt good in my mouth.  I chewed it slowly.   It hit the spot.   If it wasn’t so far away I’d go back today for lunch.

I figured out why the little store was so crowded.  It was PowerBall drawing day and the jackpot was something astronomical like a half a billion dollars.  That and they sold discount cigarettes.  It was Virginia after all.  As I waited in line to pay for my hot dog I pondered whether to buy a ticket.  The odds were ridiculously slim.  Like getting struck by lightning twice I’d heard.  In the end I paid for the hot dog and a $2 quick pick ticket.  The skinny woman ahead of me gave the cashier a handful of pre-selected power ball orders.  With it she put a loaf of bread and a pack of cigarettes on the counter with a coupon, three tens, a bunch of ones, and a whole load of coins.

    

The cashier printed off the power ball tickets, rang it all up, counted the money carefully and announced

“You’re $2.89 cents short.”

She looked frazzled.  I thought of paying the balance but heck, it was mostly cigarettes and gambling.

“If I put back the bread will that work?”

She was keeping the cigarettes and putting back the bread.  That did it.

I followed her out.  A man was sitting at a picnic table waiting for her.  She handed him the cigarettes and sat across from him.  They both lit up.

“You mind if I take the other end of the table here folks?”

“Go right ahead,” the man said.  “Nice day int nit?  Cain’t get no worse than yesterday though.”

“We couldn’t get out at all yesterday.  Thought we’d go crazy in that apartment,” the woman chimed in.

“Yeah, I drove through West Virginia yesterday in that snowstorm.  Wasn’t any fun.”

“You driving that car with the Illinois plates?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, you look like you been through some stuff all right.”

I looked back at the Buick parked a few spaces behind us.  Normally a light green, it was absolutely white with salt.  I had to get it washed.

 

We were overlooking a little valley.  It was still cold but the sun felt good.

“We just gotta win that PowerBall,” the woman said to no one in particular or both of us.  To me she said

 “Did you get a ticket?”

“Yeah, I got one.”

“One?  We got as many as we can afford.  We got the kids’ birthdays, our anniversary, all the lucky numbers in there.  We need that money bad.”

“How many kids do you have?”

“Four,” the man answered.  “Two of hers from before and two of ours.  Her first husband don’t help none.  We really do need that money.”

We talked a while longer.  They talked about each other, and their kids, but mentioned no one else.  I got the impression that besides themselves they didn’t have a lot of people in their lives. Maybe they have all or more than they need.  I hope so.  I know I shouldn’t but I worry about those families.

They got up to leave, we said our goodbyes, and they walked over to a big old Chrysler New Yorker, the year the New Yorkers had the straight-up rear window and the big square side panels.  The windshield was cracked clear across and the vinyl dash was faded almost white.  A black garbage bag served as one of the rear side windows.

“Good luck on that PowerBall,” I said, just knowing they wouldn’t win.

“Good luck to you too,” the woman said.  “Hey, maybe we’ll both win.”

Two winners in line at the same time at the same store?  It was hopeless.  No, it wasn’t.  I’m wrong.  She had hope.  Maybe that’s what the lottery is really about.  But it’s a rigged game.  They prey on our hope, faint for some, desperate for others.

I got the Buick back on the road, Route 460, and promptly drove back into West Virginia.  I was following a two-lane highway southeast parallel to the border.  As I drove I thought about the trip so far.  I was behind schedule.

I loved to think I didn’t have a schedule, but in the end, I did, loose as it admittedly was.  I was to meet my wife at her brother’s house in Tampa sometime Friday, and Saturday travel with them to Sarasota where we would meet up with her older sister, the bunch of them,  each with their spouses, and take off together for the Keys.  It was Wednesday.  I had spent the better part of two days in West Virginia.  At some point, I was going to have to zoom.  Make up time.  I had places to go, people to see, and things to do down the road.  As much as I hated to admit it, I was going to have to get on the interstate and get myself south more quickly than I’d bargained for.

 

Virginia seemed as good a state as any to zoom through.  Those eastern states with the Atlantic on one side are bigger by the ocean and skinnier by the hills.  Virginia narrows down pretty well as it stretches west.  By doing a little reconnoitering on my smartphone I figured I could be in Mt. Airy North Carolina for dinner.  So that’s what I did.  When I hit Interstate 77 I turned south, put the Buick on cruise control, got out the CDs and kicked back so to speak.

I fished out the Beatles White Album.  It came out in 1968 but I listened to it most in Manchester Hall at ISU in the fall of 1969.  A long-haired blonde kid from Tinley Park played it over and over two doors down.  He knew everything about the Beatles, or pretended to, and talked about them incessantly.  I just wanted to hear the songs.  I ended up buying my own album.  I thought I’d worn the grooves out on that double vinyl album in college but when I dug it out of the attic, after getting a turntable for the shack, it sounded amazingly good.

I put the first disc of the Beatles' White Album in the CD player.  There’s some filler on that album.  You have to wonder why they included the song “Rocky Raccoon”, though I love it and know every word.  Same for “Bungalow Bill.”  But at the same time, there are gems.  I listened to it all twice, turning it up loud on the best cuts.  It’s good traveling music. 

I cranked up “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” so loud I had to open the windows to protect my ears. Like other George Harrison songs, it wasn’t the lyrics but the guitar licks that I was intent on hearing.  The story on the white album was that the Beatles wrote most of the songs while they were in Risikesh, India studying transcendental meditation.  George Harrison, who had been primarily learning and playing sitar in India, brought only an acoustic guitar on the trip, and thankfully picked it back up.  He wrote WMGGW on it originally.  It was later recorded in England.  When Harrison tried to recreate what he’d written acoustically on electric guitar he couldn’t get the sound he wanted.  Rather than abandon the tune he brought Eric Clapton into the studio to play that terrific guitar part in the middle.  I didn’t know that for a long time. The blonde kid never told me that.  It may be the best guitar playing on the album, no offense to the Beatles.

Virginia was a snap.  I drove from Rocky Gap to Lambsburg, from the West Virginia border to the North Carolina line, in just under an hour.  Somewhere in there, near Bland, I crossed the Appalachian Trail with little fanfare.  It is beautiful country but viewing it at 75 miles an hour plus detracts from the experience.  All the hills and valleys are made tame by the engineers who build the highway.  No sudden turns, nothing unpredictable, hardly ever a let-up in the pace.  Interstate highway travel is made for speed and that’s what you get.  Try as I might it got monotonous.  I listened more than looked.  I zoned out.  Sorry, Virginia.  There’s always a next time.

The next song that made the volume increase was “Blackbird.”  I get sentimental when I hear that song A sixteen-year-old boy I once knew had just learned this song, worked so hard and long to do so, only to die unexpectedly and tragically soon after.  Songs and people and times in our lives get all wound up together.  Music from long ago can evoke emotion that feels like yesterday.  That’s the way it is with me and Blackbird, with its haunting lyrics and simple but beautiful acoustic guitar.  The essence of that song is how I want to remember both that boy and the music of Lennon and McCartney.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

You were only waiting for this moment to be free

              

Mount Airy North Carolina is farther from Interstate 77 than they would lead you to believe.  You go quite a ways, through a little town called Toast, where I washed the Buick, and then you’re there.  Commerce steadily picks up the closer you get to Mt. Airy.  You soon realize that Mt. Airy is the mythical town of Mayberry, site of the Andy Griffith show.  I wanted to stop there just because I remembered hearing Andy talk about Mt. Airy on the show.  I thought there might be a connection.  There is more than a connection.  Mt. Airy has wholly embraced the identity, frozen in black and white between the years of 1960-1968, of Mayberry.  There may be an actual Mt. Airy there somewhere, but what you see is the town of Aunt Bee and Gomer Pyle, Floyd the daffy barber and Ernest T. Bass, and yes Barney Fife the epitome of small-town self-importance, his boss Sheriff Andy, and of course Opie.

Somewhere a real town with its own past and present beyond a TV show exists.  Mt. Airy has 10,000 people and a history.  Mt. Airy is the former home of Chang and Eng Butler, famous Siamese twins joined at the chest. They were buried together in the Baptist cemetery not far out of town in 1874.  Each year Mt. Airy also hosts the Mt. Airy fiddler’s Convention which features bluegrass and old-time music in the local “Round Peak” style.

But by and large, the community is one big rerun of The Andy Griffith show.  The Andy Griffith museum draws 200 people a day.  There is a modern Andy Griffith theater with bronze full-size statues of Andy and Opie (above).  The annual five-day Mayberry Festival in late September, now in its 27^th year, brings an estimated 250,000 attendees and brings $5 million to the local economy.  60’s Ford Galaxie squad cars sit outside the old police station.  Floyd’s Barber Shop is still there.  You can drive by Aunt Bee’s house. At another location, you can eat at Aunt Bee’s Barbeque.  I was hungry, and I always liked Aunt Bee because she reminded me of old women in my family, but I remember her for her pies.  In no show do I recall Aunt Bee smoking a whole hog with hickory off the back porch.

Instead, I went to Little Richard’s Barbeque by the mall at the edge of town.  It’s not the only Little Richard’s BBQ in North Carolina but it had four stars on Yelp and Aunt Bee’s had one.  I’m all for Aunt Bee but I was going for the flavor.

Little Richard’s Barbeque was underwhelming.  Why go into detail about uninteresting food?  I may have had my last hush puppy there.  It wasn’t all that warm.  Can someone tell me the difference between a lukewarm hush puppy and fried dough?  A down on his luck nearly starving former client from a failed adoption once shared fried dough with me he’d made in a hot pot in a cheap hotel.  I got him out of there, bought him a good meal, and promised myself never to again eat flour and sugar cooked in hot oil again.  So can you tell me why we’re eating hush puppies?  OK, maybe Little Richard had a bad batch.

 

I got back on 77 South as the afternoon was ending and it crossed my mind that I could zoom through North Carolina the way I did Virginia.  I got back on and decided to push it.  That I did.  As night began to fall the Buick and I were still on the road.