Month: June 2012

“We’ll stop for lunch at this little place we found a few years ago. Bar-B-Que and Po’r Boys.”

The comments gleaned pre-departure raise as many questions as they answer.  Which exit? Which town? We’ll know it when we see it – in Mississippi.

Trust in your driver. Mississippi includes a large portion of this trip. He’ll remember when he gets just as hungry as the rest of us.

Phones send text messages between the vans for serious and non-serious comments. My seat happens to be in the lead vehicle but at every stop the second pulls up within less than a minute. They act as a faithful tail.

Not fancy. Not expensive. Decent service. Iced drinks and good food. The lunch

stop fulfills the expectations raised by the comments along the way.

Back on the road we continue south next to our little strip of planted pines. Suddenly messages fly between us and our driver pulls to the side. One of our tail light covers is threatening to take it’s own unauthorized trip.

While the men discuss temporary fixes, discard most of them for various reasons, and rig up a taunt string from a plumb line I stroll the weedy portion of shoulder.

A black antenna has been lost. What’s this? I spy a piece of stiff, discarded animal skin. It’s big for a snake, an irregular three by eight inches. With the toe of my sneaker I tip it over and breath a sigh of relief. It looks more armadillo than rattler.

On a mild June morning the cars arrive in the church parking at easy intervals.

One my one greetings are exchanged. Soon duffels, sleeping bags, coolers, and buckets of tools sit in a clump ready for loading into either of the two vans that will transport us. Men outnumber women for this event and they load the supplies with efficient experience.

We gather around a tailgate for devotion. Then it’s time for a group photo — how convient that the mother of our youngest member agrees to play photographer. We divide into two quartets and claim a seat for the journey.

The adventure begins. Do new things. Have new experiences. Interesting how little phrases can ripple out into a life. Now I’m on a journey to New Orleans to work on home re-construction for a week with a group of almost strangers.

My seat partner, a veteran of several similar trips, draws me into an easy get-acquainted conversation as miles flow by in a pleasant morning. A few hours into the trip the highway drops from the bluff country to flat, rich delta and the crops become more Southern.

“Is that camel real?”

Eyes dart to the right. There, within the fence of a concrete lawn ornament business a real, live camel reaches for a green snack. In a ragged chorus we reply. “Yes.”

An engine overhead alerts us to the next highlight of the morning. A bright yellow crop duster swoops low over the cotton field, climbs and turns in rapid ascent at the end to avoid both trees and billboard.

God has bless this stage of our journey. Variety abounded in the urban areas of St. Louis and Memphis; fields of corn, cotton, and rice; and stands of pine in red Mississippi soil.