I Prefer to Be Lost
Taking the long way back home.
The truth about traveling by myself is that I don’t always miss home. No one I meet knows me so I’m free to be a fuller version of myself. I play my own music that some others I know find abhorrent. Stop at however many historical markers and roadside attractions I wish. Turn in early, stay up late, hog the whole bed just because I can.
Most of all I am the single guiding light to my destination. When I come to an unmark intersection, or worse, a traffic circle, I feel pretty good about my directional abilities so long as I don’t encounter a deranged person or an animal bent on ripping me to shreds. It’s just me and the road. A pure form of anarchy if ever there was one.
This is essential to remember when the last sighting of civilization is a tiny town a few miles back and cell phone reception is beginning to cut in and out. The road narrows and curves sharpen while the shadows burrowing through the thick forest begin to creep across the blacktop. There is honor in continuing onward down this chosen path. Then again, the shoulder is really a steep ditch so there’s no turning back.
Then, around the next bend, a very small but well-lit sign appears on the side of the road: The Hillbilly Hideaway Restaurant. I execute a far from graceful spin into the jammed parking lot and circle around a few times until a sliver of space is found near the dumpsters. Social acceptability has left me long ago on this venture to the point where I really haven’t paid attention to the state of my appearance that includes unwashed jeans and a dark smudge a third way down a wrinkled shirt. One remedy that really doesn’t work is to pay a nominal amount of time taming my hair, followed by excavating the tube of melted red lipstick from my bag and smearing on a fair amount. That’s good enough to haul my creaking body out of the car and shuffle toward the low-slung building. I’m so concentrated on getting inside that I don’t consider the possibility that the people sitting in pews on the porch might be waiting for a table. I shuffle in and am full of gratitude for the warm greeting issued by the woman stationed by the cash register.
“How you doing, honey? You alone?” She asks.
“Yes,” you say.
“That’s lucky because those people out there may have had a problem you cutting in like that.”
The entrance door seems to be a thick enough deterrent but, still, a cautions glance across my shoulder seems warranted.
“Hungry?” She asks.
“Starving.”
She smiles. “We got a table for you right here. You want to follow me?”
It’s about this time when I begin to wonder if I have intruded upon the woman’s grandmother’s log cabin. The portraits of at least five generations of relatives hang on the walls, intersperse with vivid-colored landscapes and still lifes and samplers, one of which is a cross-stitch of the serenity prayer. There’s plenty of gee gaws1 strewn about and heaps of woven baskets dangling from the rafters. Across the room stands a life-size Santa Claus: he’s leaning a little forward perhaps because of his armful of gifts. The only not very grandmother décor touch is all the things people have scrawled on the planked walls: doodles, caricatures, reviews, names of couples linked by hearts, many I was here!, and a handful of not very nice personal slurs. It has to be noted that there are a lot more Whites than Blacks in the room but everyone is having a very good time, their shouting and laughing accompanied by a steady clang of utensils.
The woman glides me up and around the cramped rows of tables and wayward chairs, diners’ feet and elbows, rolling carts, waitresses, and that Santa Claus on the way to an empty seat at the center of one table. She pats my shoulder to sit down and join the eleven people who are conversing as families do with one another. But it turns out not everyone knew one another before they sat down, although they do now. The people nearest me set to interviewing starting with my name and where I’m from. That’s a distance the gregarious man across the way notes and moves on to asking what I’m doing down here and looking for and how did I find the Hillbilly Hideaway which commences a general leaning in toward me to hear my reply. Considering the lack of human contact for the last seventy or so miles, I’m pretty proud of my rambling recital of all the thrills this part of North Caroline has to offer and the miracle that led me to our table. A measure of their entertainment is in the amount of bowls filled with greens and mashed potatoes that get passed my way because I look pretty hungry after all my travails.
Two observations suddenly occur: the Hillbilly Hideaway does not serve alcohol and you don’t have any say in what you want to eat. There’s sweet tea and soda served in large cups that are never allowed to stay empty for long, and a parade of waitresses keep pushing along wagons laden with plates and bowls of different kinds of food. Empty plates and bowls are gathered up and replaced with new plates and bowls. It’s best to settle in and act like it’s Thanksgiving.
Here’s what is being passed around at any one time: fried chicken, chicken gravy, country ham, pinto beans, fresh taters (mashed), green beans, corn, apple sauce, coleslaw, hoe cakes, cornbread, cucumber pickles, and a variety of unfamiliar sauces. The Hillbilly Hideaway is open Friday through Sunday and each day offers something special. The gregarious man recommends coming back on Saturday when barbecue pork ribs are on the menu.
By the time it gets to choosing slices of pies and cakes we have all fallen into a comfortable dissection of everyday life, sassy patter, and exchanges of so much personal details that I, for one, no longer feel the necessity to run back to my therapist.
Little by little, my new relations scrape their chairs back and go off to pay their bill. Eventually I have to do the same. The woman who took me in when I first arrived asks where I’m off to. I say the Oak Ridge Comfort Inn, on the way to the Greensboro Airport for the flight back to Brooklyn.
“It’s getting too dark out for you to try making it there,” she says.
I seem to remember Oak Ridge is only about 30 minutes away but she’s not exaggerating: an impenetrable country night is waiting outside for me.
“You go listen to some music over in the Music Hall. No one’s at the cabin right now so we’ll get it ready for you.”
It’s pretty obvious few people disobey her and the cabin is reasonably priced so I fall in behind a load of people emerging from a Baptist church bus who waste no time entering the Hall. The audience’s seats look to have originated from vans, amply padded in gray-ish Naugahyde. The front is quickly filled: the back row suits just fine. The congregation whoops and hollers when the band takes the stage and the ensuing concert becomes another time when this all feels like home even though home is nothing like this.
The restaurant is just wrapping up its evening when I return and find a teenage girl waiting to lead me down the hill to a little house set in a dip off the road. She opens the door and leaves me to walk in alone. There’s a cozy kitchen and inviting overstuffed furniture in the living room. A big comfy bed waits in another. It smells a little musty, but that’s to be expected when situated in a dark, humid forest. There’s no getting around the multiple horror movie scenes howling through my mind. But it’s after 9 p.m. and it seems saner to stay inside rather than outside in the dark.
I wake up the next morning happily in one piece after the best night sleep I’ve had on this trip. The road is clear and straight, and cell phone reception kicks back on after just a few miles. I make good time to the Greensboro Airport Marriott and, after showering off the road, I call my family and hear about everything I’ve missed. Comes my turn, I describe everything they missed. Then about last night. A total surprise, not on the official agenda, the unexpected highpoint of a fine and lonely outing away from home.
Yes! Of course! I never understand when a passenger asks why I'm stopping and climbing over trees and fields, wandering into vacant building, and talking the ears off of unsuspecting tiny store owners. Obviously, we have to go on a road trip!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who stops for historical markers. (I also stop for cows in fields, dilapidated barns, general stores and majestic oaks.)