A shorter version of this personal essay was first printed in the Fort Bragg PARAGLIDE in 1989.

The Scenic Route:
Country boy tells urban couple where to go

            When I stepped from the shadows of the wood line, the August sun hit me like a 2½-ton truck.  The humidity was even worse, forcing me to wipe sweat from my eyes with every step while cleaning my glasses every other step.  Though wearing only a 4^th of July sun visor, T-shirt, shorts and sneakers [no socks], the heat and humidity made it feel like I was wearing an overcoat.  The air too was thick and salty with just a hint of myrtle and freshly mowed grass, not to mention a whiff of rotting oyster shells filling the ruts in someone’s dirt driveway I’d just passed.  Still, I walked onward, jumping a wide drainage ditch then proceeding along the shoulder of the road.

            My pace was casual, non-tactical even though I was on a high-priority, military mission.  Daddy, the retired Marine [but still a Marine], was gravely concerned by the gradual disappearance of my ears and shirt collar.  Without delay [or else], I was to report to our local barber, which was a 4-mile hike unless I cut through the woods.  And I always cut through the woods, even this time of year when the ticks and chiggers outnumbered the gnats, deer flies and mosquitoes.

            For me, the shortest route was always preferred, even when I was in no hurry like today.  Although I’d made a B+, perhaps the only thing I really learned in geometry was something about the shortest distance between two points being a straight line.  Besides, I was never one to follow the “scenic route,” as Lynn Everette, my school bus driver described Fulcher’s Landing.  With its long, winding curves and unmarked intersections that followed the shoreline along New River, my side of town really was scenic, what with all the shrimp boats, skiffs and boat docks, not to mention the river itself.  But if you were seeing it all on foot, its appeal to the eyes wasn’t enough to soothe one’s hot, tired feet.

                         
            Let me take that back; there were times when I’d “tour” the roads and ditches enroute to Lee Sharpe’s Variety Store, which was right across from the Riverview Café, which was on the hill above Everette’s Seafood House and where Daddy docked his boat, the “L.T. Rose.”  At Lee Sharpe’s, a boy could get a Pepsi and a cinnamon bun, a pack of B-Bs and a pound of ten-penny nails, all paid for with the refunds on a dozen or so drink bottles collected while touring along the roadside on the way to the store.  I liked Mr. Sharpe and his store.  He had the kind of hardware and tackle stuff a boy loved to plunder in though I rarely bought anything more than the above list of boyhood necessities. 

            I should have been in a bigger hurry, having wasted an hour by stopping at Joe Redd’s house.  Joe’s family lived right on the water, whereas our house was across and way up the road from them.  His daddy was a long time party boat captain who’d dug his own “slough,” [pronounced slew] where he docked the “Echo,” the best looking boat on the river.  Joe was taller, uglier and older than me but about the best friend a fellah could have, if only because he rarely talked me into things that got me in trouble – that is, except the time he talked me into exploring that old house blown in the river by Hurricane Hazel before I was even born.  The flooring to the old house was torn up and half hidden under mud and water, which allowed me to step on a 3-inch finishing nail that went right through my sneaker and most of my foot, which I had to walk on to get back to shore then home.  Today, he wanted me to go with him in his skiff to dig for clams.  Splashing around in the river was far more inviting than a trek across town on a hot August day, but Daddy’s “or else” persuaded me to keep heading for the barber shop.

            I kept a mental map of my hometown before my eyes as I journeyed.  At my present location, I was less than a quarter the way between my house back on Poverty Point [later change to Riverside Drive] and Midgett’s Barber Shop and the only grocery store in town, Capps' IGA.  Just as I was about to cross the road and enter another tract of woods, I could hear a car slowing to a stop behind me.

“Hey, boy!”  A man shouted.

I stopped, undecided whether to turn around.  Nobody likes to be called boy.  Besides, in just seven months, I’d be old enough to get my driver’s license.  In two or three years, I figured to be fighting Commies in Southeast Asia.  Though I knew I wasn't yet a man, I was offended at being called a boy.  Finally, I twisted my head around slowly, doing my best Clint Eastwood snarl.  Almost in my face was the chrome front bumper of a big, brown Lincoln.  A narrow, rectangular plate centered on the bumper read:  CHARLOTTE.
 

            “City folks,” I mumbled.

            A bald man with three chins poked his red face through the driver’s window that he’d lowered just enough to talk through.  A fierce-looking woman with blue hair could be heard complaining about his letting hot air inside the car.

            “Come ‘ere a minute, kid.”  He said as he fired some brief comment at the blue-haired woman, “Can ya tell me how to get to Sneads Ferry?”

            “Sir,” I answered with a grin, “you’re in Sneads Ferry.”

            His inability to read a roadmap had some humor in it, but the size of my hometown wasn’t something I appreciated their mocking.  Sneads Ferry was actually bigger than Pavo, Georgia – my other hometown.  Military brats tend to have several hometowns.  Sneads Ferry was where Daddy decided to retire when he left the Marine Corps over two years ago, but Pavo was where my family came from.  I was as much a part of one as the other, or vice versa.  One day I’d have to choose between North Carolina and Georgia, but that day was years away.  Still, Fat Face and the blue-haired woman were having a fine time of it, calling Sneads Ferry a “one-horse town whose horse had died.”

            “What an itty bitty town!” The woman cried as she wiped her painted, baggy eyes with a wad of tissues, “Two gas stations and one seafood restaurant.”

            That wasn’t true.  We had a mess of gas stations even back then in 1970, and we had a dozen or more seafood restaurants and fish houses!  I turned to go.

            “Don’t leave, son,” Mr. 3-Chins said, probably realizing they’d struck a raw nerve.  “Have you ever heard of the Riverview Café?”

            “Yes, sir,” I told him, not volunteering to tell him that Mama waitressed there and that I washed dishes there on weekends when Percy Jenkins, the owner back then, found himself shorthanded.  Of all the restaurants in town, the Riverview was the best.

            “Well, then,” Melon Head said, grinning as he lowered his window the rest of the way.  “Are ya bright enough…. I mean, do ya s’pose you can tell us how to get to the Riverview Café from hea’?”

            Bright enough?!  Why do city folks think they can patronize country folks?  It ain’t right!  Obviously, we’re not as stupid as some folks, since we made a conscious decision not to live in the big city with all of its crime, noise and confusion.  His talking to me that way was the sort of thing that makes a fellah wanna say or do things contrary to his Christian conscience.

            “Oh yes, sir,” I answered, lifting my sun visor to scratch my forehead, not that it was itching, but since I was feeling particularly devilish, I needed to verify there weren’t any tiny horns growing on it.  It was just a couple pimples, so I continued, turning slightly as I pointed up the road.  “You see where that road intersects this one up there on the right?”

            “Uh huh,” Mr. Piggy grunted, squinting his puffy eyes.

            “Well,” I went on, still pointing, “ya wanna turn right on that road and follow it until it dead ends into another road.  You’ll wanna turn right again at that road.  Ya don’t wanna turn left and ya don’t wanna go straight.”

            “Why’s that?” The albino orangutan had to ask.

            “’Cause if you go left, you’ll end up out on Highway 172 and might get bogged down in heavy traffic.  Dozens of folks use that road this time of year,” I grinned as I paused to take a breath then continued.  “And if you go straight, Jack Millis will get upset about your running into his house.”

            As expected, neither of them appreciated small town humor.  So I continued.

            “Anyway,” I said and coughed, pretending to clear my throat as I figured the best way to say this without being too obvious.  “Ya wanna turn right in front of Mr. Millis’ house then follow the road ‘round two 90 degree curves that sorta follow along the river, taking ya through Fulcher’s Landing then ya wanna turn left in front of Don Guy’s 76 station.  You’ll be able to see the Riverview from there.”

            Pudgy Lips hesitated a moment, looked at the blue-haired lady then back at me.  He then drove away without even a “thank you.”  I watched their big, brown Lincoln as it made the first right turn then I did an about-face.  Five minutes later I was still watching as their car slowed to turn left in front of Don Guy’s Union 76 station.  The obnoxious couple stopped dead in the road, apparently realizing they were less than 100 yards from where they’d started when I told them where to go.

            They just sat there a moment, probably trying to decipher whether they could run me down before I could make it to the wood line.  I snapped my sneaker heels together and rendered them a proper salute then slipped across the road into the woods.  As I continued on my mission, I felt just a little twinge of guilt nagging at my conscience.  But I got over it.

            He never said he wanted to know the shortest route, and I doubt his Lincoln would have made it through the wooded path from which I had just come that led back to Lee Sharpe’s store and the Riverview Café.  That’s why I directed them via the scenic route.  Being refined, urban tourists, I figured they’d prefer it that way.  It gave them a chance to see a little more of our itty bitty town.