Carli

I drove to the gulf coast of Florida this week. I pulled up  directions on the computer and realized two different routes. One route was all Interstate… south to Jacksonville, Florida and then west to the Florida panhandle. The other was a meandering slope through the center of Georgia to the coast and Panama City Beach. Both had a travel time of just over eight and a half hours. I took the scenic route…

 

Spring is hinting its arrival and I looked forward to seeing the Georgia countryside. It didn’t take long… as a visitor, as an observer, details of a quiet drive overwhelmed my senses. The countryside shared the flowers of the trees and the blooms of the earth.  An old clapboard sided barn leaned against the forces of gravity and perched above the red clay earth on its four corners… the hand-stacked river rock pillars have held to their purpose for generations.

My telephone has GPS… thankfully. She has a pleasant voice and is extremely accurate. I couldn’t have made the trip through the Georgia countryside without her. My children named the GPS… we call her Carli. Carli guided me through countless road changes… countless small towns and two lane roads. We drove through small towns like Hawkinsville and Cordelle. The town squares in Wrens and Lilly reminded me of an old romantic movie, set in the South… there were statues commemorating fallen Civil War Soldiers and war heroes of familiar surnames of the county.

I didn’t find a stretch of road on my journey that took me over 55 MPH… if I would have, I wouldn’t have seen the beautiful purposeful plantings of the Pecan trees that surrounded century old homesteads…the homes that are framed with dusty white picket fences. I wouldn’t have seen the cages of red roosters for sale. Maybe I wouldn’t have seen the rusty windmill that stood sentry over a once, mule plowed field surrounded by a hand split cedar fence.

I wouldn’t have seen the weathered and ancient cemeteries that held the shadows of the past… the rusting sedans that hold on to life as someone’s dream. I wouldn’t have seen the children playing basketball on the dirt driveway on the edge of town. I wouldn’t have seen the car dealership that held the majority of its shiny cars inside of a tiny corner building on Main Street. If I turned too late on a town street between county roads… Carli was there as my companion to remind me of my way…

                                                          Shannon R Killman