This past Saturday night, my friend Haley and I had a bit more of an adventure than either of us had intended. "We're going out to Mike's friend's campsite over in Lynchburg. We have a couple beers, hang out, and then we come back to town." That's how it was pitched to me. Sounds simple enough, right? I've blogged about a visit to Lynchburg before. There isn't a whole lot there, so it couldn't possibly be that complicated. After all, it's just a straight shot west on State Route 55.
We hadn't yet turned onto 55 when Mike called with directions. I should have known right then. "Now there ain't but one single traffic light in Lynchburg. You go through it, then at the third street after it on the left, you'll see a mechanic's garage. You turn left and stay straight for about six, seven miles. After you go over a bridge, you take your first left then you stay on that road for about seven, eight miles. Then, it's gonna fork off to the right-"
"Hey Mike, why don't I just call you when I get to the area. I gotta drive," I said. "There's no way I'm gonna remember this."
About five miles down 55, the sun had gone down completely and the sky was dark. We rolled into Lynchburg. We rolled out of Lynchburg. We turned left at the garage. We went over the bridge and turned left again. This is when I called out Haley on her representation that our destination was in Lynchburg proper. "We're about fourteen miles into the hills on the far side of Lynchburg. The roads are dark and we're just going to drink and hangout? I'm thinking it's best to leave before midnight."
She seemed to agree. "I'm really sorry. I had no idea it was this far out." Haley got Mike back on the phone, giving her directions. Mike soon realized from our landmark descriptions that we had missed our turn. He told us to take the next right. "Dick McGee Road." I couldn't help but laugh.
Two hundred yards up the hill on "Dick McGee Road" the street narrowed to the point of looking like a paved driveway. Of course, no lights. Driving through a patch of woods, we came out on the other side... Houses! Lights! Yes! Wait... Dogs? What the f**k? Two golden retrievers and a big--ass, black German Shepherd were in front of a house which had no front yard. There was a porch and then the street. For all intensive purposes, the street was the yard. And when these dogs saw me coming, they ran into the street, barking at the top of their lungs, blocking my path. I stopped. They just stood there -- about fifteen feet from my headlights. I flashed my high beams and tapped my horn and they yielded to me. As I eased forward at 5-10 mph, they started to re-approach my car, then they started to run along the drivers side, led by the big-ass, black German Shepherd. I don't know if they just stopped and gave up or not. I don't think I ran them over. Suffice it to say, we lost them. Well that was interesting.
"Just keep on that road until you get to the top of the hill, then you turn left."
"Just go up the hill," I replied with a broad stroke of smart ass in my tone. "You mean that big dark thing in front of me that's blacking out half the sky?" Haley had heard the rest of the directions beyond that and insisted she could manage us in from here. But not thirty seconds after leaving the first three dogs, I drove around another bend, swerving to barely miss a yellow lab, lying nonchalantly, cooling herself on the black pavement - square in the middle of Dick McGee Road! (Again, most likely because the road was her front yard.) The bitch barely even lifted her head to acknowledge me!
Finally we got to the top of the hill and turned left, as per the directions. I celebrated upon seeing a double yellow line again. Two lanes! Sweet! Surely enough, along came two more dogs, trotting down the opposite lane, eyeing and sniffing the treeline. What the f**k is with this place? Do they have leashes and fences down here? Or is that just a northern thing? This is when Haley let me know that we were almost there. I'll believe that when I'm sipping a cold one.
"We just keep heading up the hill and turn left at the trailer." I clenched the steering wheel and bit my lip in disbelieve before replying in as calm a tone as possible.
"Let me get this straight," I said. "We're somewhere outside of South Bumblef**ck, Tennessee, and you want me to turn left at the trailer? Am I supposed to believe that we're only going to see one trailer out here?"
Lo and behold, we soon came upon a trailer. "Turn left," she said. "It's only a couple hundred yards in.
We drove through an open cattle gate and over a threshold of some in-laid piping. The gravel soon became parallel dirt tracks, separated by a column of tall grass. A few feet away, on each side of the car, was barbed wire fencing. It couldn't be clearer. We are now on private property. The question was - whose property was it? Did we turn at the right trailer? We drove a few hundred more yards until I noticed that we were all out of barbed wire fence. We were no longer on a private road, but on a trail in the middle of a field.
"It should just be up over this next hill," Haley said unconvincingly. She could see I was growing impatient. "I'm really sorry. I'm so sorry," she pleaded. "If I knew it was all the way out here, we wouldn't have done this." We drove to the top of the next hill. What I saw in my high beams was not a bonfire surrounded by a few pickup trucks... What I did see was about fifty head of cattle crowded on the road, many of them lying down. They quickly got up and moved. I guess they had never seen a big bull that said Nissan on it.
"So now where do we go," about twenty yards later, still no party in sight. The path became gravel again as it went downhill and into the wood.
"Let's just stop for a second. Let me call Mike and see where we are." I stopped the car and was dead silent.
So here I am. A yankee in rebel country. The local with the directions is lost. We're stopped, which means we're a sitting duck. Lost. In the dark. On private property. Unarmed. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the most obvious possibility is that a farmer might pop up out of nowhere in a pair of overalls with a shotgun and fill my ass with lead for trespassing. Then again, we could really have bad luck and accidentally stumble upon a rally of the Ku Klux Klan. What's that noise? Do I smell smoke? Who the f**k knows what kind of sh*t happens way the hell out here?
All of this passed through my mind while we waited for Mike to answer his phone. "I guess there's no signal." We went down the hill further and arrived in front of a driveway by a house. Of course, there was a dog, leashless, barking at my headlights. In rural areas, dogs are much more than pets. They are fanged, ferocious, well trained body guards and really loud alarm systems. Suddenly the possibility of the shotgun-wielding farmer in overalls seemed much more real.
After a few more forwards and reverses of two to three hundred yards each, Mike called us back and said somebody in a Jeep was coming up the trail for us. A young man whose father was the land owner arrived and directed us down the trail, past the house. He warned us that we'd have to open and close a couple of cattle gates before proceeding. We did as we were told, proceeding down the trail, through the woods, through the gates, and into a meadow the size of Wrigley field. The fire roared, the drinks were flowing. The sky was dark and the stars were bright. Mike played soft 80s rock out of his truck's sound system and poured me a drink.
It was after 10 o'clock. I was tightly wound. But soon, after a glass of Sun Drop punch, I was relaxed and in my own element again, listening to good music and the quiet hush of the Elk River only yards away.
Now I told y'all that so I could tell y'all this.
There were two couples there who, shortly after our arrival, hit the proverbial sack, bunking out in the tents behind their pickup trucks. And just around midnight, having had only two cups of punch, it was time to leave. We packed up and got ready to go.
Mike turned the key on his truck. GRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIND. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. This happened a few more times. "I'll give you a jump," I said "if you got cables."
"I ain't got cables. Maybe Clive and them got a set. I'll go wake 'em up."
Tina, Haley and I waited by our cars. Mike returned one minute later on a quick-paced tip-toe. His eyes wide. His jaw gaping. And he stopped. He looked like he had just seen an alien.
"Michael, you didn't interrupt something over there, did you," Tina asked.
He replied, exclaiming in a half-whispered Tennessee accent "Man, I ain't never heard f**kin' like that in my entire life!" As we all dubbed over and wheezed in laughter, clutching our ribs with watering eyes, Mike proceeded to offer his impression of the slaps, screams, grunts, and all other sounds he had heard in the ten seconds he stood silently by the tent before sneaking away. "I got a semi just listenin' to 'em!"
Regaining our composure, we decided we would forgo the jumper cables and instead, I would give Mike and Tina a lift home. Home, this time, actually was in Lynchburg. We hopped in, rolled down the windows, and cranked the John Denver. Reaching the cattle gate, Mike hopped out, opened the first, and closed it behind us. And this put the cap on the evening. Mike, in a pair of khaki shorts, golf shirt, and leather docksiders, with a cigarette in his mouth, insisted on running the fifty yards up hill to the next gate. The first thing that came to my mind was to yell after him like the football coach from Dazed & Confused:
"Randy Floyd, before next fall, you're in need of a serious attitude adjustment boy! You better get your priorities straight! And watch out with that other crowd you're runnin' with! Don't think I haven't noticed! -- Come on, now! My grandmother runs faster than that! 'Course she's six five, two hundred eighty pound gorilla, runs the forty in five flat and drives a Mack truck! -- Pick those legs, up boy! Jesus Christ, son, you're wearin' rebel grey!"
16 years ago
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