I tell people that if it wern't for funerals I wouldn't ever get out of town. When Lynne announced her plans for her mothers memorial service , I jumped at the chance. I am shallow that way, and others.
Friday morning, with Crybaby safely exploring her new surroundings, I pointed the silver bullet west, intoned Mamie to clean the way and climbed the mountain, Lovers Leap, the way I could drive with my eyes closed having over 30 years experience at it, the ever changing landscape, the old buildings I used to stop and photograph now replaced by replaced by prefabs steel structures what housed a business one year and have set empty ever since.
The way familiar to the state line with Tennessee, where I always peeled off and went to college and late alumni weekend. More lay beyond, but it was the road I was not familiar with, the towns that were vague to me. That day, crossing the state line I was met with dust. The air was full of it. The mountains in the distance were obscured, the wind rocking the silver bullet worse than the semis.
In Baileyton, Tennessee, I pulled off I81 and got some gas. It was time for luncheon and I noticed a BBQ food truck set up in a parking lot next door. It had one of those metal carport structures set up with tables, a semipermanent restaurant of sorts. I got me a sandwich and a Dr. Enuf, the man at the window wondering where all this dust was coming from. He had thought the day before ti was blowing from the truck stop parking area across the way but it was everywhere today. I ate in my car.
Down past the end of I81, on I40, headed west through the sprawl of Knoxville, five lanes and signs that still gave milage in miles and kilometers, a relic of the 1982 Worlds Fair, and off to my left the Sun Sphere. That oddball tacky golden structure where it will always be 1982. I 75 should be coming up. Watch for the signs, ear bud in my ear to the mechanical woman could tell in "in a quarter of a mile, exit right onto I75 South". Five lanes at 75 miles and hour and the phone wrings. It is the office. Bless her heart this agent has to tell me that she doesen't know if she is going to be able to show that house or not this weekend. So and so's mother has to be hospitalized and so for but if she does where does she find the key. She is an only child. Nothing in the world exists except what she has going on right now and that does not account for the 8 years she has worked with me. I tell her to look on the show card and it will tell her what to do but I have to repeat myself because at the same instant mechanical woman is telling me to exit left onto I 75 south.....