So far, I've only published my own writing here, but I've found my first exception with good reason. This is a short story/creative writing piece my good friend Jesse Cromwell wrote about one of our many roadtrips together. It takes some liberty with fact, and mixes together several events, but it works. It's amazingly written. Without further ado, here it is:
Pick a point on the map. Find your bearings. Pick some patch of verdant, untilled earth to sit on and watch the sun go down. It won’t be hard. Despite popular wisdom to the contrary, Florida abounds with them. Well, our Florida anyway. Find some big lazy bend in the river. Maybe a own with nothing around it. A little gray strip of rural route begging to die. A green box of state park. A barrier island if you’re feeling exotic. Got it? Now fling that crumpled up rag of a map into the back seat. You can look at it on the ride home if you like.
That’s how we do it anyway. Trey and I have been wandering North Florida for about as long as we can remember being friends. In the second half of my senior year of high school he showed up with his things in a few cardboard boxes and trash bags three days after my mother announced to my father and I:
“Trey, a senior at my school, is going to be living with us until he graduates. His parents have kicked him out of the house and while they leave something to be desired, he is a sweet boy.”
Her tone was rehearsed, like a child wanting to sound grown-up and confident for some impossible sales pitch like: “Daddy, I think we should buy a puppy.” “Mommy, let’s all go to Disneyland.” But there was also an imperative quality to it. Mom, always something of a collector of stray animals, no doubt thought piteously of Trey sleeping in his car, bouncing house to house between friends and relatives. This one would be taken in out of the rain. And so James Warren Menefee III, Trey to everyone but his birth certificate, came to live with us.
I’d never had anyone of my age around the house. It felt new, different, distinct. What did Trey like to do? What were in all those garbage bags and boxes? What did he listen to? Would he be a loud housemate? He left little peace offerings around the house. We ate day old glazed cream cakes for breakfast from the bakery where he worked. While brushing our teeth, we laughed together at his 365-day pull off Our Dumb Century calendar. It was awkward though. I’m sure it was difficult for him. He had his already established life and I had mine. In the beginning it was like sharing an apartment with a stranger. Maybe he felt like it was charity too. We didn’t reflect much on how our friendship had developed, perhaps because it had developed from an artificial environment. The only utterance of this awkwardness was years later when Trey, in his matter-of-fact and usually expletive laden manner, “Jesse, you were quiet. I thought you resented me, like, ‘fuck man, who the hell is this kid coming into my house senior year?’” Truth be told, I might’ve been uncomfortable. I can live with just about anyone, but I’ll act like I’m tiptoeing around a bed and breakfast even in my own home. We watched each other, learned each others’ habits, and made pleasantries. Still, we were friends by proximity, just sharing space as best we could.
The particulars of why we got in Trey’s supped up little death-mobile of a Corolla that day escape me. Maybe it was a nice day. Perhaps we had some wanderlust. Jacksonville can be so goddamned boring sometimes that going anywhere else can be a crucial quality of life decision. But we got in the car and just drove. We got out, wandered around some town halls, ate dinner at the local greasy spoon, and drove home. Nothing remarkable. Nothing really to write home about. Really we just talked. Talked a lot. About everything that came to mind. We talked about girls and politics and dog breeding (his wicked stepmother’s diabolic passion) and where we’d most like to go with a free ticket. I said England. Trey said Iraq. A communion of souls amongst teenage males rarely occurs unassisted. Driving through those Florida back roads and byways, we had the conversations that couldn’t have taken place in my kitchen over a cup of coffee. Rural North Florida, bathed in light and overgrown by tresses of Spanish moss, became at once our distraction and an object to covet and cherish on its own. We refined the practice of exploring until it was our craft as well as a hobby. Middle aged men have john boats and fishing rods. We had a full tank of gas and the speeding country out our side windows.
“So, what did you and Trey do today?” my mother asked upon our return. She was obviously tickled pink that we were spending time together on our own accord. I tried hard to think of what to say, tried to think of something profound, something that would, at least, sum up the day and the expenditure of the gas. Nothing encompassing came to mind.
“Uhh…we got lost, Mom.” The name stuck.
Getting lost is a fine art. It is essential to find a good turn around point. Having to return home without a satisfying end is the equivalent of leaving naptime without your graham crackers and apple juice. You’ve done something with your day, but it’s groggy and just not the same. Since there’s a terminus, “getting lost” might be a bit of a misnomer. It’s not frightening in that helpless, going to be robbed and beaten senseless sort of way so common in American road movies. We are never anywhere that we cannot leave. The linear swaths of I-75, 95, and 10 creep drastically close to our sense of backcountry provincialism. We travel roads that have some marking on the map…well, most of them anyway. And we know where we want to go.
But we do it by dead reckoning and context clues. Divining a direction to travel when no time limit nor set destination exists would appear easy. Something that could be settled by the flip of a coin. A failure to observe and anticipate, however, leads to unfulfilling expeditions. When we’ve missed the subtle encroachment of suburbia, like a tick under the arm, Trey and I have ended up in gridlocked Gainesville strip mall traffic, caught behind minivans weighing the relative family value merits of Bennegan’s and Shoneys. Conversely, reading the smallest road signs and trusting our brain’s spinning internal compass has produced some remarkable events. Half sunken aviation signs amongst the channels and spits of land comprising the Cedar Keys once led us to an unguarded airfield where we could park next to propellers and drag race the runway.
We pick roads that loop and curve and leave us at crossroads only utilized by tractors and horses. We pick them precisely for that purpose. The routes must lead to civilization without standardization. If the seaside town of Suwanee had followed its gulf bordering South Florida counterparts in the push to pork barrel Florida out, its one lane bridges, houses on stilts, and intricate myriad inlets would’ve been demolished, drained, and paved over to make room for gated communities and 18 holes of paradise. In our ramblings, we yearn for something of Suwanee, living how it wants, not how a moneymaking blueprint would encourage it.
We seek dialects of English where whole words are swallowed into grammatical atrocities that make us glad that the ivory towers of academia will never come here. Somewhere between the “all y’alls”, “done been fixin’ tos” and “alright thens,” Trey and I always feel the liberty inherent in intentional speech. Here is language, unfettered and undaunted by its rules and structure, hammering its point home.
The food must be from a restaurant with the proprietor’s name on the sign. Wendy’s and Long John Silver’s do not count. The meat should be fried. The vegetables too. If there’s much more than sweettea (yes, one word) to drink, there are too many options. These little shanties will never provide you with a comments card to rate on a 1-5 scale their value, friendliness, and cleanliness. At the Newburn Barbeque, such suggestions would get you laughed out the door. Loyal patrons bring their little girls in lace embroidered flower dresses after church on Sundays to have their weekly meal out. They know the food is good because they’ve tasted it. As for the rest of the categories, five dollars a meal will not break the bank, the little girls are given crayons and paper placemats, and if a little sweat falls into the deep fat fryer while browning those corn fritters, well, then by God that’s just flavoring.
And in the end, after all the CDs have been played through twice, we know, as if by sheer intuition, that we will reach something marvelous. To shorten the drive, to bypass one meat and three side lunch, to skip one old redneck’s diatribe about kids these days for the linear exactitude of 3 lane highway driving would be to cheat ourselves of the pleasure inherent in automobile travel. The knowledge of what comes between here and there.
Despite what your grandparents told you about Sarasota or West Palm Beach, there is another side to Florida that is wild. Our Florida is not a swaying picture of coconut palms, turquoise waters, and Mickey Mouse. Our Florida begs to be reclaimed by south Georgia. It hates tourists and misanthropically trudges away from the plasticity of golf packages and early bird retiree dinner specials. To the outside world, its sullen personality gains results. This part of the map is barren of “attractions” or “amusements” and thus is mainly left alone. Our Florida is also begging to be reclaimed by water.
Rivers flow up from the ground, bubbling crystal clear 70 degree spring water year round. The soil, a soft bed of sand covering thick layers of porous limestone, wants to inhale houses. Sinkholes form in days and people’s nest eggs drop fifteen or twenty feet into murky pits. Many of these sinkholes, the ones that formed before white men decided that Florida would contain their fountains of youth or beachfront condominiums, turned into amazing ramshackle wonders. Imagine walking over completely flat dirt and sand, stubbing toes on sharp palmetto bushes, turning a corner, and then seeing the ground in front of you give way to a glassy pool as wide as a grain silo, deeper than a telephone pole, and visibly full of bass, catfish, and gar. We like this Florida because it will not market itself. What it gives, it gives sparingly to those who ramble and wait. It indulges aimlessness and, most of all, it never settles for a quick fix.
I brought Laura home with me from college in the end of our first winter together. My girlfriend of six months, she had come to know via co-habitation the intricacies and banalities of my college existence. I had told her about my home life too, its lackadaisical patterns, the major actors in its scope, and its contrast to my day-to-day at Brown. After a few months together, my descriptions had worn thin.
“Over Christmas we talked everyday,” she told me, “and I could hear your voice and imagine your face, but I had no idea where you were or what your room looked like or what you did with your days. It was so important that you came to my house for Thanksgiving. You know what produced me. Now I want to see your home.” If that’s what she wanted, that’s what she’d get. We began making plans to escape to Florida as soon as we knew the dates of spring break. Sick of winter’s last slushy gasps and the rigors of our theses, we left Providence in late March for a week of work free solace. We’d penciled in planned activities for most of our days there. Travel to spots of interest or time with my family filled in each box on the week’s calendar. When we were finished planning, one day remained vacant.
“How ‘bout I ask Trey if he wants to get lost on that day,” I asked her, sketching the possibilities, both lovely and problematic, in my head. “Sure,” she replied eagerly. Whether she’d tell me otherwise or not, Laura was up for anything. I’d told her about these adventures and what they meant to me. Still, I harbored a few doubts as to how much she’d enjoy this sort of entertainment. Trey and I had brought along other guests on previous trips, who had been bored or dumbfounded by our circuitous pastime and had expressed to us quite frankly that we had wasted their time. Getting lost requires giving oneself wholly to the frivolity of a day without measurable accomplishments. To Laura, a woman who made to-do lists in her sleep, this could’ve presented a problem. Though she was a world traveler, I also worried she’d be out of her element in our Florida. Even if she loved me, what would this New Yorker care about meandering around horse farms and pine forests in search of country cooking and cracker wisdom? North Florida backroads could be ugly, lethargic, and downright obscene at times. With Trey, I laughed at them and forgave their coarseness. A northerner might not be similarly amused. Trey might also be an issue. We’d had an understanding that, while we welcomed guests for our wanderings, getting lost was still our personal labor of love. Trey and I did the exploring. Others were just along for the ride. But Laura was different. She broke our unspoken assumption in that it mattered to me what she thought of our travels and whether she enjoyed herself. I understood Trey, his razor sharp polemics about the state of the world, his manic leaps from subject to subject, his intellectual and occupational flavors of the month. But I understood him in the context of Trey and Jesse at the helm of a speeding, four-wheeled rocket, which responded to nothing but our whims. He might be a different and far more cantankerous individual when confronted by a traveling partner with suddenly dual interests.
With a few cups of coffee and some packaged danishes for breakfast in the car, we embarked upon another adventure in disorientation. We had picked Ichetucknee Springs the day before as our destination. The weather proved more than willing to cooperate, grilling us up a hot, humid, hazy Florida afternoon. Ichetucknee is like nectar on days like this. The water, cool and clear, is balm to skin baking under the barely blue sky. Trees overhang the river — noble pines, whistling palms, gnarled live oaks — providing a canopy of green that scatters around pollen with the infrequent breezes. One plops down in an inner tube and lets the current do the rest. Body temperature is regulated by alternately sunning on top the tube for warmth and capsizing into the river for cooling. The past time of tubing down lazy rivers in old car tires existed as a relaxation and rejuvenation ritual long before yoga, Swedish massage, exfoliating facials graced the American landscape. To folks not yet acquainted with these new age panaceas, or apprehensive about their touchy feely aesthetics, tubing still holds its appeal. I agreed with these souls.
Trey, in his roundabout way, had tried to convince me that going to Lake Okeechobee, a four and a half hour drive by even the least scenic routes, was the best course of action. “C’mon, we haven’t seen it before,” he pleaded. “I’ll wake up as early as we need to.” That was a bald faced lie. I could count on one hand the number of times that Trey woke up pre-11AM since high school. The prospect of dragging Trey out of bed and Laura into the car on a marathon trip without many scenic rewards was a simple cost/benefit analysis. Besides, I wanted the massage of that the hot sun and those cold waters could give me. I needed the elements to flow into my tense, assignment-ridden back and shoulders and loosen them up.
“Let’s stick to the original plan, Trey.”
“If you really want to,” he replied with a generous portion of reluctance.
The trip to Fort White, Ichetucknee’s business broker, passed uneventfully. Visiting a destination more than once does not disqualify the second journey as getting lost. However, Trey and I were much too frequent visitors to count the trip to Ichetucknee as an exploration. We knew the roads too well, were too familiar with this particular stretch of land and trees and broken down former gas stations and general stores. Not that these little asphalt strips were not beautiful, but in our minds, they had already crossed over from the realm of the uncharted to that of the discovered. So we made tracks to Fort White and figured we’d explore on the way home. I spent our first couple hours in the car facilitating Trey meeting Laura, Laura meeting Trey, Trey and I continuing our automotive bond, and Trey’s utter impatience for whatever CD he had insisted that I put on the stereo two minutes before. My juggling subsided as we reached route 27 and the Fort White town limit.
The town itself is not much to speak of. Rotting white buildings line a main street that has long since given up the ghost to the super Wal-Mart’s of surrounding cities. Sun bleached signs for products that no longer exist balance precariously in storefront windows. A mechanic shop that never opens is the only real sign of life. It’s outskirts, which lead to the gates of Ichetucknee state park, are a more fertile ground for commerce. Five or ten shacks and lean-tos in a quarter mile advertise in hand painted signs on cardboard: “TUBES - $5 DOUBLES - $10.” This is pretty far from the tourist industry by Florida standards. These people don’t make their money hocking Mickey Mouse Tshirts or vacation packages in the neon lit monstrosities of Kissimmee-St. Cloud, Disney’s pimp. But where twenty tubes and a trailer will supplement their income, they’ll be willing to sit gruffly on weekend afternoons when the weather is warm and
then smile for the nice folks who’ll be renting their merchandise.
We zoomed past several of these signs on our way out of Fort White, noticing the stacks of inner tubes too late to pull over at the turn offs. “There’ll be others,” we assured ourselves. We soon came to an opening in the pines where stacks of black and yellow tubes propped up a red and white sign reading “MISS PIGGIE’S TUBES + BOILED PEANUTS”
“This should give you a taste,” I chuckled to Laura as we pulled in.
Miss Piggie sat under a canvas tent supported by four posts next to two simmering vats and a variety of hot sauces. She stared off into the distance beneath the veil of thick dark sun glasses and looked totally unimpressed by our approach. She would not, in fact, even get up until we voiced our desire for tubular transportation. She made no sales pitches to us nor buttered us up with any bargains. She sold two products and her attitude represented the take it or leave it nonchalance therein.
Her strange moniker soon became apparent as I talked to her about the weather and the clarity of the spring that day. Glancing up and down Miss Piggie’s leathered skin, the type that comes from careless years of youthful sun bathing, I saw an army of little pigs tattooed anywhere space could be found. Pigs driving cars, pigs playing cards, pigs dancing. I had never seen nor have I seen so much idol worship of the pink creature. It was as if she had replaced the biblical golden cow for the other white meat.
“How many pigs do you have on your body?” I finally blurted out.
“Well, let’s see here,” she mused, as if no one had ever asked her that question before. “One….two….three….,” she began counting and pointing to various spots around her poorly fitting tank top. She touched one inked swine on her chest and then remembered that there were probably pigs in places she couldn’t show us.
“Let’s just say I have a lot. There’s an artist just up the road who’s done some real good work for me.” She stroked her inner arm. “This one’s my favorite,” she said, pointing to a quartet of drummer, bassist, guitarist, and lead singer. “It’s the Piggy Ray Cyrus Band.” She spoke with the utter confidence of one who knows that their references are understood. “My husband and I both get ‘em. He’s got one on his stomach of two pigs, you know, doin’ it and it says underneath, ‘pigs makin’ bacon.’”
Her small, pudgy face howled with laughter as she doubled over to slap her knees. Laura laughed too, probably with different provocation. At the same time she gave me a look as if to say, “now I understand. Wow, THIS is where you come from?” Miss Piggie had more than earned my business. Plus I figured Laura should try some boiled peanuts so I bought a bag while Trey strapped down the tubes with John, Miss Piggie’s billy goat bearded co-worker. Slow cooked for hours in water and copious amounts of salt, the peanuts turn soft and squishy like lima beans and the shells fall apart when twisted between the thumb and forefinger. To me they’re comfort food, but I realize they’re not for everyone. As Laura took her first mushy shell out of the enormous ziplock bag, the thought occurred to me that I might be eating a lot of nuts.
“Hmm….these are good,” Laura exclaimed. I looked on proudly. Thata girl.
“I’ve never had them before, but I think I like ‘em. Y’all do a good job,” she lilted in a Scarlet O’Hara accent. Damn, the jig was up. Still I had to give it to her. It was gutsy for a girl from Westchester county to break out the y’all and the drawl with these folks, misplaced as her southern belle impression might’ve been. I smiled. Laura, my languophile, was loving this as much as I was.
“So where y’all from,” Miss Piggie asked inquisitively. I darted in, “Trey and I
are from Jacksonville. Laura here’s from New York.” Better to lay my cards on the
table, than keep up the charade.
“Oh yeah? We get a lot here from New York. Well, a few anyway.” She looked at her shoes. Miss Piggie’s tone did not convince me. She and I shot the breeze about a lot of things. Nothing important, just two people making conversation, passing the time on a hot summer day. We debated the merits of salted, unsalted, and Cajun-style boiled peanuts. We both agreed that while some people prefer to drizzle hot sauce on the shell and eat it whole, we, as purists, liked to open and eat the nuts as was customary. Trust and amiable relations with North Florida’s merchants and peddlers, in my experience, usually emanate outward from the small things. Miss Piggie, who appeared reticent and reserved at first, proved genuinely interested in talking about whatever struck her fancy once I’d revealed to her my personal preference in nuts. We’d spoken, briefly from a common well of experience. Of course, maybe she was just smiling for the nice folks who were renting her merchandise. I didn’t much debate it in my head.
Our conversation got more serious over time. When I told Miss Piggie that we’d made plans to go down to Miami later in the week, she squinted up her eyes and the corners of her mouth as if she had just smelled something sulfurous.
“Don’t much care for that area anymore. I usedta live in Broward County near the Everglades. I had a little piece of land. It was beautiful. I left fifteen years ago. It’s different now. They’ve built up that area to the point where there ain’t a lot of Florida left. It’s too loud. Too cramped.” I agreed. “And besides,” Miss Piggie added, getting ready for the punchline, “they don’t even speak English there anymore. I don’t know Spanish or any other languages and at my age, I don’t intend to learn them.” I could tell out of the corner of my eye that Laura, a lover of the Castilian tongue, was mildly miffed. I appreciated Miss Piggie’s candor though. She didn’t wade through a murky bog of political correctness. She told us how she felt. Getting lost is wonderful that way. In pleasuring the trivial, you sometimes stumble headfirst into the profound.
I thanked Miss Piggie and John for their kindly help. “I hope we’ll see y’all again,” Laura drawled. “After a batch of them peanuts, I reckon you’ll be back,” yelled John from beneath his beard. “Careful Miss Laura Mae,” I said, poking fun at her newfound Southerness when we were out of earshot, “they can smell a rat.” As we turned toward the car, I saw Trey leaning against the door, smiling as if he knew something amusing had just transpired. When Laura came to the backseat door Trey graciously grabbed the handle and opened the door for her. He bent slightly at the waist as his left hand gripped the handle and his right hand moved across his body, palm open, motioning her into the car. A chauffer could not have done it finer. This I had not anticipated in Trey. He did not often pull out the Southern gentleman ethic to anyone whom he was not dating. “Oh, thanks Trey,” said Laura somewhat surprised. With that we sped on to the springs.
Trey’s gesture put me at ease in the first day balancing act between my friend and girlfriend. It had expressed, in a decidedly more succinct and eloquent manner than words could have, that he comprehended what Laura meant to me and simultaneously the stability of what he and I had built in these years of travel. Now I could enjoy the day and what it held. We put in two or three miles upstream of the where the state park service cuts off recreational use of the spring. After the shimmying and pulling and paddling required to get myself onto the tube in the lazy current and catch up to Trey and Laura, I found myself lounging on the yellow donut, the heat of the sun on my stomach and the cold water on my back. My friend swam off to the left, diving and emerging with his snorkel mask like an epileptic river otter. Trey was truly as A.D.D. in his snorkeling as he was in his intellectual pursuits. “Look at the bass, man,” he exclaimed. “Check out that gar!” I sporadically glanced down at the fish. They darted back and forth between the limestone and undulating sea grass. Today, however, my interest went elsewhere. I stared up at the canopy overhead. Tufts of Spanish moss tangled from the shady live oaks and cypresses.
The sun peaked around each finger of the overhanging palm fronds like a father playing peek-a-boo with an infant. I closed my eyes and smelled the growth on both banks of the river. The woods in Florida do not smell fresh or pure like the outdoors in a Glade commercial. They smell like utter fertility. A musty, thick, fecund odor characterizes this mix of plants. Life builds on death, gobbles it up, uses it to grow strong, fat, and eventually die, continuing the cycle. Moss grew on dead cypresses which high tides had drowned. In some trees, the original bark had been entirely engulfed by swaths of green lichen. What I was smelling was the explosion of sheer cell division and mitosis that only a couple of frosts each year can hinder.
I heard soft splashes and saw Laura floating next to me. Her stomach, chest, and arms gave the tube a great big bear hug, while she lazily kicked her legs up in the air. Slowly opening her eyes, she said to me very intentionally, “thank you for sharing this with me.” I sat in silence for a minute, contemplating her, our shared enjoyment of this place, this marvelous unhurried uninterrupted current.
“This is what we do. I’m glad you like it.”
No. That didn’t sum it up. It just represented the most I could muster of the ecstasy I felt in the moment. Most of the time, I enjoy myself and only realize later on that it was memorable. Sometimes I write and take pictures hoping for memories, but what I’m trying to record doesn’t merit the effort. In that hour, on that river, I experienced the rare delight of both being in an instant of pure happiness and knowing it. She understood why Trey and I did this. When I’d explained it to her at Brown, she’d nod her head and smile and seem to get the theory behind it. Now she felt it. The elements attached themselves to her and wrapped her in a state of wonder and calm exactly as they had done to me. We floated tranquilly with the current to the river’s end. Laura not only appreciated back road rambling, she was good at it. After, our time on the river, we wandered south for a while and then turned back to the east so that we’d be traversing a different path than the one that brought us there. The sun’s rays now transformed from the angry mid day glare that eats right into the skin to a more forgiving, late afternoon gold that illuminated all the trees and turned shadow to absolute blackness.
As we got off highway 441 and rounded the bend onto tiny route 236, a little white gazebo emerged out of a gnarled mess of vines. For miles we had seen nothing but trailer parks, hulking wrecks of old houses with the roofs caved in, and trucks rusted to pieces. In typical North Florida style, this well kept and flower laden gazebo appeared out of nowhere, out of context, on the right. We all stared. “Let’s stop,” Laura said.
The gazebo served as the centerpiece of the Haynesworth Cemetery. It was a great find on Laura’s part. The stones had terrific stories to tell. After all, Trey and I didn’t always get our stories from the living. Laura pointed at two graves, which stood on the same plot. One, massive and grandiose. ROBERT HAYNES. The other no more than a small metal plaque on the ground. WILLIAM HAYNES. Two generations had lapsed between the two men. Slowly the Haynes must’ve fallen on hard times. Another gravestone on a different plot marked the resting place of a teenager who couldn’t have been older than eighteen when he died. Artfully engraved into the stone was a huge red truck, tearing down the highway on its inevitably fatal way. “A BOY AND HIS TRUCK,” read the inscription. It reminded me of Bobby Gentry’s creepy “Ode to Billy Joe.” Something too Southern Gothic to have actually happened. Trey and I have seen dozens of things on our travels here that should’ve come out of novels. Clichés become a lot more believable when they’re true.
We made our way out of the cemetery turn off and replaced dirt for pavement. Trey’s stomach growled. Laura said she was getting close to faint from hunger. The next order of business would be food. The back roads there were often lonely and bereft of food. We didn’t, wouldn’t give in to the temptation to snake up to a super highway and eat McDonald’s. That violated our ethics. Laura grasped this as well as anyone by this point. As the sun, now an orange ball of flame, made its descent into the tree line, we rolled past what looked like an Italian bistro complete with red and white checkered tables outside.
“That looked pretty good,” grunted Trey, as if not fully willing to give into the mirage his eyes had seen.
“Yep. It’ll work,” I echoed. The car came to a jerking halt. Trey swung a hard left and made a three point turn to come back around to the bistro. Often, rural north Florida makes no sense culturally. It can be like tailoring together two clashing cheap suits. What would a seemingly authentic pizza and subs joint be doing in the middle of a stretch where unmarked dirt roads and a couple tin roof cracker homes were the only habitation indicators for miles?
Understanding this question requires simply giving into the dominant Florida paradigm of migration. It’s warm here. People want to leave whatever snow and salt encrusted Northern city they lived in to come live in paradise. While our part of Florida is usually bypassed by such dreams, sometimes it is circuitously affected.
The DiAngelos, the proprietors of our bistro, came to outside Lake Butler from Miami-Dade County. Mrs. DiAngelo’s thick New Jersey accent told me she had been involved in more than one move. Her reasons for moving sounded a lot like Miss Piggie’s.
“I was tired of the traffic and people living right on top of me and the gunshots and the helicopters at night,” she said, puffing sternly on a cigarette and looking off into the distance as dusk settled in. “It’s much better up here. I had to lose the Dade county state of mind, but that didn’t take long.” I got all this by asking how they got started here. I wished her much success in the business’s first year and went back to sit down on the chairs outside. Our waiter was a gangly teenager named Jeremy; Mrs. DiAngelo’s son, I presumed. His manner was as awkward as the presence of his family’s restaurant. Jeremy wasn’t folksy. Had he still gone to some Miami-Dade public school, I’m sure he would’ve been roundly pummeled after class. He was also opinionated and impatient. All in all these traits formed a mighty nasty combination for a waiter. When Trey asked if he could get pineapple on our pizza, Jeremy looked on in horror as if Trey was asking for drugs.
“No sir, I’m afraid we just don’t do that sort of thing.”
“It’s in a lot of restaurants.”
“Well not here. You’ll just have to order again.”
Laura, at one point, asked for tap water. Jeremy told us he’d have to check with his management. I quickly pondered the domestic issues at play in calling one’s mother and father the management. Had I been anywhere else, I might’ve taken Jeremy for something of a thespian. But it felt safe to assume, on this rural road, that what I saw was what I got. Jeremy DiAngelo, incoherent as he might’ve appeared within the landscape also formed a part of what getting lost is all about.
After many filling slices of pizza, Laura announced that she was going to use the bathroom before we left. Trey and I sat alone for the first time that day as night came on. We smoked two small cigars to toast the tail end of the sunset. As Laura walked out of the bathroom door and back towards our table, Trey looked at me approvingly. “She’s great. You’re lucky, man.” With that, my worlds came into union and the loose ends were bound.
In the car we stared at the map by overhead light. It was time to figure out where we were and head home. Trey had homework and we were tired. With two quick, decisive road changes, we were on I-10 speeding home. In an hour, the Corolla pulled up to my house. Laura and I said our goodbyes to Trey for the night. We opened the squeaky front door and nearly knocked over my mother, on her way to put out the garbage.
“So, where’d you kids go?” she asked. Laura and I looked at each other puzzled. We tried to explain meaningfully what we’d done with the day. Something. Anything. Before she walked out the door.
“We got lost”
Tags: Treyopia Stories Jesse Cromwell Jesse Cromwell Getting Lost North Florida Ft. White Fort White Ichetucknee River tubing
