down the road
Author's Note: I wrote this about eight years ago as a preface to a collection of anecdotes. I'd still love to finish the collection one day.
My parents just moved out of the old farmless Indiana farmhouse where I spent the first twenty or so years of my life.
The hundred-and-fifteen-year-old two-story house was only remarkable in two ways. One way was that, regardless of how well we painted it, it always seemed to have paint peeling from it somewhere--the other way was that it sat on The Road. Our Road. The road about which this collection of fact and, sometimes, fiction revolves.
If you could still find it on a map, The Road would be called "South River Road" starting at the westernmost end, and "Nail Road" starting at the easternmost. The map would show it tracing a giant semicircle along the south side of the largest bend of the Maumee River just east of Fort Wayne, and intersecting the blacktopped Parrot Road at each end. My house sat at the northern peak of the semicircle that formed The Road.
Whereas the name "South River" always made perfect sense, "Nail" never made any. Most people only called the far eastern end of the horseshoe-shaped road "Nail" (maybe because it went straight south for a half mile--like a nail--I doubt it). But, rest assured, they only called it that when turning onto the gravel road from Parrot Road, never when hitting the half-mile straight after driving the two and a half miles of washboarded gravel and dust that was indisputably "South River."
Local legend has it that the reason it was never paved was because it was "technically" just a driveway back to Old Dan Beetham's house and not a "road" at all. While this story may explain it's origin, the fact is more likely that no municipality claimed it and The County wouldn't invest in a road that flooded so often.
The Road was three miles from Fort Wayne and four from New Haven. Our address read the former but our phone exchange indicated the latter. Each doubtlessly thought the other would claim it and neither ever did.
We did, though--my two older brothers and I. The three of us staked our childhood--our claim--to that road.
Our Road.
Author's Note: I wrote this about eight years ago as a preface to a collection of anecdotes. I'd still love to finish the collection one day.
My parents just moved out of the old farmless Indiana farmhouse where I spent the first twenty or so years of my life.
The hundred-and-fifteen-year-old two-story house was only remarkable in two ways. One way was that, regardless of how well we painted it, it always seemed to have paint peeling from it somewhere--the other way was that it sat on The Road. Our Road. The road about which this collection of fact and, sometimes, fiction revolves.
If you could still find it on a map, The Road would be called "South River Road" starting at the westernmost end, and "Nail Road" starting at the easternmost. The map would show it tracing a giant semicircle along the south side of the largest bend of the Maumee River just east of Fort Wayne, and intersecting the blacktopped Parrot Road at each end. My house sat at the northern peak of the semicircle that formed The Road.
Whereas the name "South River" always made perfect sense, "Nail" never made any. Most people only called the far eastern end of the horseshoe-shaped road "Nail" (maybe because it went straight south for a half mile--like a nail--I doubt it). But, rest assured, they only called it that when turning onto the gravel road from Parrot Road, never when hitting the half-mile straight after driving the two and a half miles of washboarded gravel and dust that was indisputably "South River."
Local legend has it that the reason it was never paved was because it was "technically" just a driveway back to Old Dan Beetham's house and not a "road" at all. While this story may explain it's origin, the fact is more likely that no municipality claimed it and The County wouldn't invest in a road that flooded so often.
The Road was three miles from Fort Wayne and four from New Haven. Our address read the former but our phone exchange indicated the latter. Each doubtlessly thought the other would claim it and neither ever did.
We did, though--my two older brothers and I. The three of us staked our childhood--our claim--to that road.
Our Road.
I was out in the middle of the night with LadyCat on "
I have blisters on my left ring and pinky fingers from trying to prematurely remove Cinnamon and Brown Sugar Pop-Tarts from my toaster this a.m.
That's one of the many great things about LadyCat. We both saw the cliched-Woody-Allen irony of having Chinese take-out in those little white boxes on the floor of her loft studio on our first date, and we both loved it. We didn't feel pretentious or pseudointellectual or 