ADAM ARMOUR: Facing the uncertainties of a winding Mississippi road
Jun. 20—The pickup rounded the corner I'd traversed just moments before, the gargantuan, diesel-fueled monstrosity barreling down a drunken strip of fissured Mississippi blacktop barely wide enough to contain it.
Based on the panicked rough estimate I made while eyeballing the machine in my rearview mirror, the truck was moving at least twice the speed of my pokey Toyota Yaris. It quickly closed the gap between its front bumper and my hatchback door, finally slowing down when it was near enough for a chameleon to stand on one and lick the other.
My fists gripped the steering wheel just a bit tighter.
"No way," I told the truck's reflection, answering its unspoken question as to whether or not I wouldn't mind hurrying up.
My eyes instinctively dropped to the 5-year-old passed out in her car seat. Her head bobbled back and forth as we wound our way through rural Mississippi toward her grandfather's house.
Returning my full attention to the path ahead, I mumbled something along the lines of "I hate this bleepity-bleep road" — only, you know, replace those bleeps with your vulgarisms of choice.
As if that winding trail of asphalt and death could hear me, I rounded a bend and quickly had to dodge another turtle. That would have been my third that morning. Like the Northeast Mississippi take on Japan's "Suicide Forest," creatures are inexplicably drawn to this rural patch of Pontotoc County to die. Dogs, cats, deer, entire flocks of birds and a shocking number of shelled reptiles fling themselves in front vehicles with such frequency, it can only be intentional.
Because this particular road is narrow enough that, if we had a camel, we could use it to test whether Jeff Bezos is going to be able to waltz through the gates of heaven some day, dodging these creatures almost always requires steering your vehicle into the other lane. Which, of course, poses its own threats. The road weaves like a lush, unpredictably winding its way over hills and around bend after treacherous bend like it's uncertain of where it's going and isn't in a hurry to get there anyway.
Rounding one corner immediately presents you with another, so it's impossible to predict what hazards lie ahead. And because these hazards could just as likely be on one side of the road as the other, you'll find yourself at any given moment face-to-face with an oncoming car, truck, tractor or golf cart that was just doing its part to avoid splattering some sad-sack hound or forlorn livestock all over the place.
Every time I turn onto this road ... which is multiple days weekly until summer's end brings with it my snoozing daughter's return to the classroom ... my jaw instinctively tightens. Uncertainties await me around every corner, and there are an awful lot of corners along that shadowy stretch of bucolic Southern asphalt.
So, as I made my way gingerly along, alert for melancholic creatures or oncoming vehicles as my tiny hatchback juddered and kicked its way to Papaw's house, I did my best to ignore the impatient pickup behind me and instead focus on what was ahead. Eventually, the truck swerved into the oncoming lane and sped past me, engine growling as it zipped by.
"Godspeed," I whispered to myself as the truck disappeared around the bend ahead. Soon after, I did as well.
ADAM ARMOUR is the news editor for the Daily Journal and former general manager of The Itawamba County Times. You may reach him via his Twitter handle, @admarmr.
