So you think I’m weird, huh? How’s this for evidence?

I like to drive Southern country two lane -highways to get my bearings. It’s like touching my roots. It’s my way of communing with nature. It’s like a religious experience.

Today I drve state highway 69 from Tuscaloosa to Jasper. Never made this drive before. Won’t make it again ever and it was’t transformative, but it was almost supernatural.

This stretch of highway 69 is twisting and winding, and it doesn’t let up all the way to Jasper.

Close trees hug the highway almost all the way. Few houses. No gas stations for at least 50 miles. Lots of small and deserted churches with adjacent cemeteries with the long forgotten buried. I say a prayer for all of them as I pass by. Few cars along with me or passing the other way

It occurs to me I could be in a Deliverance setting. Locals stop me, tie me up, and make me squel like a pig. No one here with a bow and arrow to save me. But I make it.

My mind starts tripping. Sir Paul McCartney’s long and winding road. Willie Nelson on the road again like a bunch of gypsies going down the highway. Cormac McCathy’s apocaplyptic “The Road.” This deserted road would make a good candidate for an apocalypse. But mp automobiles up on blocks or discarded refrigerators in from yards so few houses. On these county roads I am always aware that there are always deer on the side of the road waiting for a chance to dart in front of my. One false move on this never-ending twisting road and I’m in a ditch maybe days before somebody finds me. But I make it to I-22 after passing thru Oakman with no red lights and no homo sapiens in sight.

I-22 and a sigh of relief. You have to be there to understand the goose-bumping thills.