WHICH WAY ?

We love to go out into the hinterlands and find new roads, get lost, lose our way. This weekend we were able to do all three in one run. We eschew the crutches of those so crippled of spirit that they must know at every given moment just where in this world they might be. We want to lose or find our own way in our own good time.

We have no GPS much less one which shoots off it's artificial mouth. Why in the name of radial tires would one pay money for a squawk box which yammers endlessly at the driver often giving bad advice which it scolds the driver for not following. One might as well hire a hooker, put her in the back seat and have her pretend to be a mother-in-law.

We don't put much stock in the widely worshiped Map Quest. We've seen that program knock geometry out of the ball park. Sometimes it presumes that the user is a drug dealer trying to shake tailing cops. It can send you in such a circuitous route as to trigger vertigo. No thanks, none for us please.

When a ship is launched, She is said to have gone "down the ways." In this case we're 'twixt the ways, halfway between the Ways as it were. How would the GPS work here ? What would the mother-in-law say now ? Not since the ever popular blog WALK THIS WAY lost its way when Journal Space lost its way, has there been greater confusion.

Well, just a half mile, not two drag strips away, we did find our way or the way to Halfway at least. We are parked at Halfway Gut Road. It sounds like painful and incomplete surgery or slipshod deer processing. If anyone knows what this means, we're all ears. Now, if there was some device, some gadget which could lead us to such oddly named places we might be willing to cave in a bit and buy one.

Liberty's Horizon

Even our low scholarship in Botany is enough to suggest that the flag did not by nature emerge from the tree's limb. It strikes us as a gesture of independence from or opposition to accepted mainstream thought. This took some thought and effort toward visibility and permenance

We love the open road, the uncluttered winding paths of both the old and familiar, the new and exciting. These are the roads less taken along which no two houses are identical nor are the families inside of them. As mass culture takes us for that last ride it will be upon the interstate highway system upon which every one in every car and every mile is about the same.

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Those words first spoken not by whom you think, but by Thomas Paine. There is a great movement upon the land, a single minded tidal wave of following which overruns the levies today. There isn't much room for independent thinking or varied voice in such an elemental force. It has gone from polemics to physics so those cards are no longer in the deck. As Dickens begins, these may be "the best of times, the worst of times ."

Paine again warns, "When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon." This we post on a large regulation DOT yellow warning sign along the way.

Yet again Paine instructs, " Lead, follow or get out of the way ." To lead suggests that one must take charge, perhaps alter or oppose the movement. The second choice is to fall in and follow the mob. We choose door number three: we're getting off at the next exit. We're neither for it nor agin' it, but getting out of its way and hoping against hope that it will work.

Our Star in Hollywood

Kneeling at our left forward wheel well is Mrs. Miriam Morrison Green, the star player at Morrison's Burger Hut in Hollywood, SC. We came upon this, "The smallest eatery in town...with the biggest taste!!!", on the way to somewhere else.

Our friendly and outgoing hostess is a lady of faith. Devotional reminders appear on the building and she quotes Proverbs 3:5, "Put God First," on her business card. In the matter of faith she is unequivocal.

Mrs. Green is making it in Hollywood with her hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries and other fast food. She gets far more bang for her square foot buck than any dining establishment in our experience. She invites all to, " Stop By..Ketch-Up and You'll Relish the Flavor ." She may be saving up some mustard gas for the Health Department inspector who awarded the Hut a "B" rating. What do those guys know? It was probably the wrong wattage bulb somewhere or an unapproved salt shaker. We give Morrison's an "A" rating for their individuality, colorful building and especially for their friendly welcome to the hungry of the highway.

A Clean Start for 2009

This is January 1, 2009. As we wash off the dust of 2008, we recall that not all trails we've traveled have been happy ones for others. We're lucky. We're still on the road and in one piece (after some mid-year mending). Gasoline is a little cheaper and the times a little stranger. We find that the cost of optimism is still a relative bargain as opposed to the sad song of defeatists. We paraphrase the state motto of South Caroline: While we roll, we hope

Happy New Year