After moving home from Nashville back to Biloxi in 1997, for
nearly the next 3,650 days, sometimes twice a day, I made the hour long commute
to Mobile, AL, and back home again. I
was working for Joe Bullard Cadillac-Hummer on the I-65 service drive, which
Mobilians call the Beltline Highway.
People would ask me why I would drive so long to go to work or how could
I spend that much time in a car, commuting everyday. As a kid from the Coast, if I had not moved
away for a while to a much larger, metropolitan area, I would probably have
asked myself one of those same questions.
As it were, however, I had kicked off the white shrimp boots, washed the
sand from between my toes and headed north to the Music City. Many of you Ole Miss fans and Biloxi natives
may remember Floyd Franks, the All-American receiver from West Biloxi, who was
Archie Manning’s number one target, while at Ole Miss. He was my boss as I was working for an
investment and insurance company, selling 401k plans and IRA’s. He was promoted to the position of managing
partner in Nashville and I chose to follow him there.
Our office was right downtown on 3rd Avenue, just
a few blocks north of Demos’ Restaurant, where they served my most favorite
meal all the while I lived in Tennessee: a grilled chopped steak, pasta aioli
with brown butter, and a Greek salad with a homemade Italian dressing. The location and ambience of this little
place, combined with the checkered-linen tablecloths, a candle made from an
empty, straw wrapped Chianti bottle, and excellent service by waiters and
waitresses aspiring to be the next CMT star, made this particular meal a
once-a-week event for Vicki and me (as most foodies or fat-asses could do (and
I happen to be both), I have associated my commuting experience with food, so I
will turn this discussion back toward the topic of my commute, itself). We lived about 22 miles south of town in
Franklin, in an area called Cool Springs.
Being from the Coast and my experience of our travel habit of being able
to be anywhere in 15 minutes, I had determined that living close to the Exit on
I-65, I imagined that I could be parked and in my office in 25 minutes. That could not have been further from the
truth. For the most part, every daytime
inhabitant of the office buildings in Nashville, lived as far south, or further
than I did. Short of borrowing our
office manager’s broom or leasing a helicopter, I could not have arrived to the
downtown area in less than 45 minutes, let alone find a place to park and get
into my office. This is the time in my
life when I learned that commute times were not based solely on distance, but
also traffic volumes, weather, and the ability to avoid being caught driving in
the HOV lane, as the only occupant in an automobile.
Driving an hour to work in Mobile was actually a pleasure,
based on the experience I had just lived while working in Nashville. I was constantly moving at a pace of 70 mph
or greater, I had the coolest new product that GM, Acura, and Jaguar had made as
company cars, and you cannot imagine the things I saw in the brief hour it took
to get from my doorstep to Mobile. You
always saw the haggard mothers, putting on makeup in the rear view mirror,
steering the car with their knees, after dropping the carload of kids off at
school and getting on I-10 like a rocket launched on rails. Another daily sight were those outside sales
reps or service people with coffee in one hand and a stack of papers in the
other, proofreading proposals and sales statistics or workorders and schematics
of some broken piece of equipment, as they sped along in two-thirds of their
own lane and veering back and forth into one-third of mine. Then there were those other banner commutes
when you saw things you wish you had not have seen.
People driving cars that would make those highlighted in the
pages of “peopleofwalmart.com,” do a double take, blush, or regurgitate their
Kool-Aid and corndog breakfasts. Between
the MS-AL state line and mile marker 15 in AL, must be the Bermuda Triangle or
Bizzaro World of interstate travel. I
don’t know what it is, but this is the stretch of interstate where those you
would least like to look at clothed, took the opportunity to dress for work or
school. These oddities of the human
form, oblivious of the world around them, felt it perfectly appropriate to use
their car as a changing room and would don everything from feminine foundations
to sport coats and ties, while their automobiles resembled sail boats in the
America’s Cup Race, tacking back and forth between buoys. At one point, when a much older woman, whose
rather large, yet misshapen upper female adornments had definitely succumbed to
the forces of gravity, was trying feverishly to put on a bra, which more
resembled a sling for launching boulders in medieval times than a bra, I said
to myself that I was glad my son wasn’t here to see this; I’m afraid it would
have turned him against women, forever. This
is also where I saw what had to be at least a 6’ 6” over 400lb woman, wedged in
the passenger seat, flabby shoulder pressed fully against the passenger glass
of a faded red Geo Metro, literally beating and choking her stick-figured
husband, as he swerved across both lanes of traffic and the medians, causing a
traffic delay of 5 miles back to the exit at Franklin Creek Road to the west. One time I saw when a load of goats had gotten
loose from a trailer being towed by a yellow and white, two-tone Chevy pickup,
driven by a very frail, elderly black gentleman-farmer. Goats are not the most majestic of creatures
in the first place and when trying to be cornered by an old farmer, whose frame
resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa with a 45 degree bend, and good Samaritans
headed to the beach, dressed in Bermuda shorts with socks and sandals, goats
can be downright pissy, as they used their heads to knock the would-be
capturers to the ground and repeatedly careened into their bodies as they would
try to stand up and get away. I had to
pull over and catch my breath from belly laughing in hysterics, as these
do-gooder city types were screaming bloody murder and were forsaking the skin
on their elbows and knees to free themselves from the beating they were taking
from these little ole goats. And for
some reason unknown to me or the greatest of minds in nuclear physics at NASA, this
area is also where common sense becomes devoid of grown men who believe that
one strand of narrow gauged string is substantial enough to hold a mattress,
tied down to the top of a car, travelling at speeds well in excess of the
posted limit. As this had become so
common, I could tell when the frequency of the Sine wave would become too great
to withhold the flapping mammoth, that the mattress would launch, as if almost
on cue, and climb to great heights while spinning out of control back to earth,
always directly in the path of some unsuspecting person who thought they had
avoided the line of fire.
Being somewhat socially responsible, I would always stop and
see if I could offer any assistance in many of these occurrences. The unfortunate victim(s) of the said event
would almost always answer me in the same manner every time; with a blank
lifeless stare or a gaze of disbelief, “I don’t know…what just happened…?”
Being a veteran of this daily commute and finding humor many more times than
not, I had to bite my bottom lip and try and explain why goats feel threatened
by humans or why even though mattresses are soft when lying on them, they can
remove the front end of a car, doing 80 miles-per-hour.
So, as I now have the privilege and honor of driving to work
in Covington, Louisiana, an hour in the opposite direction of where I was
headed 17 years ago; I look forward to my commute. My new job, my new coworkers and new
clientele of varied demographics have been like medicine to my soul and a
welcome breath of fresh air to my family as a whole. But I would be remiss if I did not share the
fact that I also look forward to the antics of travel on I-10/I-12 along the
coast of Mississippi, 19 miles into the state of Louisiana. This is not only a new adventure, but an
adventure that promises to be even more fraught with tales of humor and
disbelief, as the colorful characters, sure to become the highlight of these
tales, are rich with the heritage of my family, being of the Coonass, Creole,
and redneck varieties. I bid you all
safe travels in your daily commute to work and hope that you too, will be able
to use this time to energize your bodies and invigorate your minds to prepare
for your job; and as I have often said many times in the past regarding the commute
back home, take that time to decompress and leave work at work. That way when you get there, you won’t feel
like arguing needlessly with your spouses or children, or feel a need to kick
the dog. Remember this as I only had to
be reminded one time, both spouses and dogs have sharp teeth and they will bite
you when they are provoked.
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