Updated 07/30/08

the revised devil's dictionary essay 63

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Greetings all,

Well, as I’ve said recently, retirement is here and this is the second of the two essays I’ve written regarding my trip to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. I had some reality issues during the trip, which are detailed below and called …

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Traversing the Piney Woods

This June I drove from New Orleans to St. Petersburg, Florida and got a chance to look at the Gulf of Mexico coast for the first time. I’ve been across the country a number of times, but my experience in the south was miniscule. Every time my folks drove us across the country, we’d get no further south than Oklahoma and upon occasion, we’d even cross most of the continent in Canada. A word of warning. Southern Saskatchewan looks a lot like North Dakota.

Quite different from the gulf states. First thing you notice is that there’s no sign of hills. There are swales and immense pitcher mounds that take up a couple of city blocks but not what you’d call a hill. Mountains? There might be some. Upstate Alabama and Mississippi maybe, but not anything within fifty miles of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s kind of awe inspiring to think, while you’re eating a cheeseburger in a park on some dark watercourse, that in fifty years time, this will probably all be underwater and a great place to catch marlin. Granted, the ecological niche shuffling that will be going on at the time may make it more people fishing by marlins then the other way around. Who knows?

Now, I’m used to the Oregon coast. Or the northern California or southern Washington coast. Or, if I want to stretch it, the coast of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. There you can’t swing a cat for the sea birds that are pestering you to let the cat go and get disemboweled by avian committee. Gulls in particular are ever present, ever noisy and ever, ever hungry. For each five or six gulls, you can throw in a tern, a cormorant and half a puffin. Instead, I saw one pelican, zero gulls, and a few sand pipers. Of course, I did see some crows and starlings, but then, if you don’t see them, you’d better figure on one of two things: 1: You’re in the Sahara or 2: Your zip code is Chernobyl.

As it was, I traveled along the gulf coast from New Orleans through Mississippi and Alabama which were awfully ordinary, as least compared to what most everybody from the west coast had told me to expect. The people looked a lot like people everywhere, and oddly enough, went about their business in exactly the same way people in Rhode Island, Maine, Nevada, Ohio and Oregon did. By that I mean I saw lots of idiots on cell phones, they looked nervous about gas prices and they all seemed to want to avoid head-on collisions, a practice I’m highly fond of myself.

I didn’t see a single banjo.

I suppose that could be a good sign, since everybody had told me that my life was in deadly peril the moment I heard banjo music. At which point, I'd mildly point out that the odds of me hearing banjo music were possibly as close to zero as one can get. That would lead into a bit about bow-hunters which was something I did know about, since I've owned and operated a left-hand compound bow for roughly twenty years, so I could reassure them.

The pan handle of Florida was very interesting, with lots and lots of sections showing little development and others, appearing to be sinking under the weight of fresh concrete pours. I'd drive ten miles and be in the middle of nowhere, only a few small houses about, and then go half a mile and find myself gazing at McMansions that really were nice to look at in a a sort of mirthless, mindless way.

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The real change in topography came when I was forced to leave the gulf coast behind and drive deeper into the state of Florida. That was right about where the pan handle joins up with the rest of the state and state lands seemed to predominate. From the map, one sees that there are various wildlife preserves, and without a detailed county map, I didn’t figure on trying to puzzle out the right roads to take. But I did have a GPS with me, sad to say.

You see, as near as I can tell, all GPS systems all are bent. They trundle you all over the map on what look like good roads on paper but really are bone-head selections in real life. Working in Traffic Analysis as I did, I knew full well that maps don’t mirror the real world. I remember one proposed detour route I checked out that would have been perfect, except that last five hundred feet of it was over an open field, two culverts and a really, really fine stand of poison oak.

It was getting to be late in the day so I gave the GPS a whirl and came up with the Panacea Motel, located in Panacea, Florida by some strange coincidence, which just happened to be a tiny, filled in dot on my road map.

I found the place, a nondescript motel of about ten units that sat in the sun that late afternoon, under tall trees which managed to funnel the lazy breeze away from the motel proper. The lady running the place looked very tired and not entirely certain that I was sane, but clearly wrote out that she only had one room available right now, next door. She showed me to a door, opened it and then let me look in.

I’ve been in cheap motels before and while I’m not exactly keen on them, they don’t bother me. This one held out the promise of being something unique. Consider: There were no windows, anywhere. The bathroom was tailored to teacup sized poodles with urinary tract infections. Needless to say, there was no air conditioning, and the ambient temperature was about 98 degrees at the present time. What with the cool breeze just a half block away, I figured it would drop to a pleasant 85 degrees sometime in the next week or so.

I said I’d think it over and she looked mildly surprised as I walked back to the car, got in and drove away.

I checked the next listed GPS target and saw that it was a Holiday Inn, about five miles away, deeper into the woods. Oddly enough, it was easy to find, being fairly big and uncamouflaged, near a big junction of two minor state routes and I checked in. That left getting something to eat and knowing that the GPS could easily do a search for restaurants, I asked the desk clerk for suggestions and directions and turned the GPS off.

Oddly enough, the desk clerk was a tad on the frosty side and with a certain amount of ill-grace, wrote out directions to a steak house a few miles away. I dutifully followed them, found myself back in Panacea, Florida and drifting out the other side of the hamlet still not seeing the bloody restaurant. Well, I’m used to hunting in small towns for things like food, water, gas and antacids. So, I turned around and did manage to see what probably was the steak house the desk clerk had meant. The trouble was, it was closed and looked like it might be closed for a long time, if the fire damage was as severe as it appeared. No matter, I went in to search mode and started looking at signs on back county Florida roads.

I spotted some signs for a chicken and barbeque rib place and only managed to drive by it twice before I figured out it was set back from the roadway about two hundred feet. The place was a bit crowded so I had to wrangle a parking spot way in the back by the wood-lot.

Once inside, I finally got across that I was deaf – it was all very noisy and happy-go-lucky there if I’m any judge. The girl at the counter was about twenty and sported a tat on her forearm that looked like a rose in the dim light – actually a fairly attractive tattoo – and managed to take my order even in the confusion. Then she had to tell me that, no, the chicken order wouldn’t work. Why? They were out of chicken. I looked around. Yep, that looked like a reasonable guess. Pulled pork? Still needed pulling. Baby back pork ribs, fries and a cola, to go. That she could do. It was going to take ten minutes so I went outside to count vehicles, dogs and gun-racks and watch people while I had a smoke. [Ribs]

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It was just starting to get dark when I left and began finding my way back to the motel. Now, on the way I had noticed something in passing but hadn’t really given it much thought. Returning, I pulled over and gave it a look-see, and wondered.

Off the road a hundred feet under trees were a bunch of pick-ups, carefully lined up side-by-side and regularly spaced. There were eleven of them. Now, the thing was this: If you started on the east side and worked your way along them to the west, you went back in time. Each pick-up was a few years older than the last, my best guess being something like four to six years difference in year. It was too dark to take a picture and too dark to make out that many details from a hundred feet away, but I did sit and ponder for a space. None of them looked to be in running condition. Brush looked comfortable and happy as it encroached, here poking out from under a hood, there, investigating an open window. The pick-ups were universally rusty. My best estimate is that the first one probably was pre-WWII. Damn me if it didn’t look like a shrine of some kind. Wish I’d been able to ask somebody about it.

The next morning I headed back onto my original route which continued inland for quite some distance through the piney woods of the title. Miles of them.

All of the same age, like wheat stalks in the great plains, waiting for some chain-saw scythes to begin reaping. I grant that it was a man-made sort of forest, but it looked very much like the land itself had contributed to the place, the feeling, as most woods do. The northwest woods are ultimately shaped by the mountains, the rain, the soil and the occasional forest fire or beetle infestation. Here, the woods crept out of a deeper, swampy area that boasted snakes, mud, insects galore, high humidity and a churning need to expand. The really odd thing was that I saw no evidence of logging whatsoever.

Cars and pick-ups passed me though they were few and far between and they moved at speed. This was clearly a place that people didn’t hanker to hang around, though I suspect the lack of beer, pretzels and ham hocks might be part of the problem. It was all very quiet, as well. I felt no vibrations whatsoever. [I'm looking for a picture, be patient. I took a lot of shots...]

I sat out there for a time, watching the traffic and thinking that it was, aside from being hot and muggy rather than cold and clammy, very like a place I knew up near Mt. Hood – Boring, Oregon. There’s lots of tree farms up there. I shelved that for later thought and again took to the road and kept my eyes open for the next turn I needed, to take me back to the gulf coast. That’s when I spotted the small town sign for a mini-hamlet of three gas stations, a market and a hock shop, by the name of Newport.

Excuse me? This didn’t look much like Oregon.

About fifteen miles later, I encountered another small hamlet, roughly the same size but a bit bigger. This one was called Salem. I pulled over there for a moment and started looking around for Rod Serling. When that rather dapper, dark man failed to show up, I decided I’d keep going but would keep in mind that things might not be as they seem. My mental music kept alternating between the Twilight Zone, Rod’s version, with The Twilight Zone, Golden Earring version.

Over the next three hours, it happened twice more. I passed by a turn-off for the town of Lebanon, which appeared to disappear back into heavy, piney woods. Then I passed a turn-off for the town of Forest Grove, which was a road that disappeared in the woods before you even knew it was there.

[For those who might not know, Salem is the name of the town I live in, in Oregon. Newport is six miles from my home town of Toledo, on the Oregon coast. Lebanon is a town in the Willamette valley and Forest Grove is yet another town much closer to Portland, Oregon].

I was pressed for time, but I did keep an eye open for a town called Toledo; I’m certain there was one, but fortunately, I must have missed it. I probably would have taken that turn, had I seen it and once taken, I’m not sure I would have ever made it to St. Petersburg. I have the oddest feeling that I would have run into Rod somewhere along the way, about the time the car would hiccup and die. Probably run into some wheezy old man shortly thereafter who would have asked me questions about which road I ultimately wanted to take, which of course, is not a question one should ponder too long by oneself either in your own back yard or in piney woods, presumably far from home.

I’m going back to Florida next month. If there’s no film at eleven, contact Bob Dodson for me and tell him the sled dogs are loose.

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