The usual route I take when coming and going from New Orleans passes through Shreveport, Lafayette, etc. I really enjoy this drive. There's never any traffic and it's just me, the blaring iPod, and my regrettable singing voice which nobody is around to complain about. There is another route too, which is a little longer and one I used to know well. When leaving New Orleans this past Tuesday, I decided to take this other route.
My reason for going west toward Houston is that I wanted to stop in Huntsville (TX) and visit my mom for a couple of hours. I don't get to see much of her and she can no longer get up to visit me, so the extra time is well worth it. This route however, brings with it some emotional baggage.
The baggage begins as I approach the town of Vinton, La. I've written about Vinton before, about the scary place there, and my reaction to it. Last time I went past there, I had someone with me. This time, I didn't. As I got near, I felt the usual tension coming on and told myself this was just stupid! In the area between the east and west bound lanes of I-10, there was a large tree, complete with moss and all. As I saw it, I had a really terrible thought, which actually came out of my mouth, and an equally disturbing vision. I don't want to mention what exactly it was, so you'll have to forgive me on that. I noticed that I was physically leaning to my left, away from the town and the scary place. The feeling there is so overwhelming that it makes me cry and I can't shake it for hours afterward. Something really terrible happened there and for some reason it has such a strong effect on me. Try as I might to tell myself it's stupid, I just can't shake it. The feeling didn't begin to subside until I got to Orange, Tx.
Once I got to Orange, I pulled over for a few minutes and decided to check the GPS for the loop I could take around Houston to avoid that mess. It suggested that the shortest distance was actually the way we used to go back in the old days when my family would drive back and forth from New Orleans to Trinity, Tx, for Thanksgiving and other holidays. I decided to lighten the mood and let Jasper (what I call my GPS) lead the way. It had probably been 20 years since I took this back woods, east Texas route, and as I headed north on 287 from Beaumont, I was suddenly flooded with memories of all those past drives. Most of the memories involved my step-father, Walter. As we drove past the signs for DeRidder, just as we were all totally bored, he would say, "DeRidder," in a high pitched ultra fast way. For some reason, we always giggled at that, and it became one of those family joke things. The other silly family joke always occurred later when we passed Kickapoo. Our nickname for Walter was R.Poo. There's a long silly explanation for that, but somehow the name stuck and even our friends would refer to him by that name for many, many years. Anyway, I can't remember all the details of how it started, but whenever we drove past Kickapoo, my sister and I would start kicking the back of his seat. We told him we were just following directions on the sign. Just one of those silly things we'd laugh about. Early on when I first turned north at Beaumont, I realized that the next day marked the 6th anniversary of Walter's passing. I had just left his beloved New Orleans and was now driving down this road of happy, silly memories.
It was around this point that I said, "'Jasper', go home, you're drunk." My GPS seemed to be sending me down every possible back road it could find. I let out a little laugh and even wondered if Walter was having some fun with me too. I just went with it and enjoyed the ride. Back road East Texas is kind of fascinating. I even went past the Big Thicket. Another memory involves a trip with a few of my fellow fraternity little sisters many years ago from Denton to New Orleans. We were driving in the middle of the night in a 2 door car that only had one working door. My three passengers were sound asleep in the back seat, I was driving, and the headlights went out. Great! We were on a two lane road in East Texas in the middle of the night with no headlights. Fortunately, the moon was full and incredibly bright. With the bright moon and staying on the white bumps in the middle of the road, we made it to Beaumont without any other problems. I woke everybody up and said we had to stop there until the sun came up so we could go on the highway. After waiting an hour or so, it was light enough to go on our way. We climbed back in through the single working door and drove on to New Orleans. When we finally go into town, my friend's father checked out the headlight issue and informed us that the alternator was completely dead. He had no idea how the car was running at all much less how I was able to stop for an hour and then get it started again. One of those little miracles, and I've always felt like we were being watched over.
Although the memories mentioned above were happy ones, by the time I turned west at Woodville, I was crying. I was thinking about Vinton, thinking about all the old trips, thinking about going to visit my grandparents, and thinking about Walter, and it was all too much. There are too many emotions for me along this "other" road home. I anxiously headed as swiftly as possible for Livingston and then my mother's in Huntsville. One last observation along the way. I drove past a Valero convenience store and gas station in Onalaska and saw a rather disturbing scene. There were probably eight police cars and a swarm of cops there and the whole place had been roped off. There was one car at the pumps, but I clearly saw a shotgun on the ground. It was clear that something bad had happened, and I'd had enough bad images passing that tree on the way toward Vinton. When I finally rolled into Huntsville, I was relieved, but it didn't stop there. More memories flooded in and the crying started up again. I drove past the street to the cemetery where most of my family are buried. I thought of the happy memories of my time in graduate school there at Sam Houston State. I thought of visiting my great-grandmother in the little brick house which still stands on Avenue O. I thought of all the time I treasured being at my grandparents farther up the road and of how much I missed them. Then I thought of the innumerable weekends my ex-husband and I spent at his parents' apartment when we first married. Almost every weekend we made the drive from Denton to Huntsville to visit them. For me, it grew very old, very quickly. I loved them too, but there was all sorts of other drama involved in it as time went on.
I got to Mom's and had a really nice visit with her for a couple of hours. I told her about all the varied emotions and memories I had been experiencing that day and came to the conclusion that I simply can't take that road home anymore. It's too hard. Even with the happy memories, there's just a bittersweet and sad feeling that I don't like, and Vinton still sticks with me for hours.
In general, I find it exciting to take the road less taken. In this case though, I need to take the happier road full of my bad singing. I've got nothing to prove to myself.
