“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.
