Another country

Wayne, who sells lemonade at Fleming and Duval, passes these out -- and I had to stick one on the old SUV we have in the Keys as soon as we got Monroe County tags in February. If it makes just one person smile as much as it tickles me, I'll have had a good day.

Besides, it reflects the island mindset so well. In three months by myself, I went through only about a half-tank of gas, but almost all the tread on a set of Crocs flip-flops.

Alas, I dusted off my mental passport a week ago (if you hadn't noticed the dearth of construction pictures), and headed back to America for a few chores.

It occurred to me as I packed that I hadn't worn shoes that tie, shirts that button or pants that go below the knee in more than three months either, and I hadn't ventured beyond Stock Island.

As the mile markers rolled up (US 1 starts at zero a few blocks from the house), I was looking at it as an excellent adventure into another country.

Then I hit the 18-mile stretch -- a straight-arrow two-lane pretty much north and south on the right edge of the very lowest Everglades. It's adapted from the old Flagler railroad right-of-way, linking the Keys to the mainland. Some might describe it as desolate -- but hey, there's a quarry along the way, and a correctional center waaay off among the sawgrass, and every car going north or south, and the occasional osprey.

(In a silly way, I appreciate Flagler a lot. An original robber-founder of Standard Oil in the first Rockefeller days, he's famously quoted as saying, "I'd be a rich man today if I'd never come to Florida." Makes two of us.)

They're doing a big job putting in a taller bridge at Jewfish Creek, and adding two new lanes for a few miles north of it, and the southbound conga line in the picture is from about Mile Marker 109.

The next morning, my eyes had widened in proportion to the road, which you can see on the left, and I really was in another land.

Why do Atlanta (in the picture) and Miami have to be such nightmares? All I could do was smile knowing that some onrushing bumper-rider who'd been to the Keys might put my Monroe plate and the "Slow Down" sticker into perspective to get his own smile for the day as I kept drilling north (with Cuban jazz on the CD and a big, dumb grin on my face). At least nobody honked.

Onward north, and into even worse drivers, and finally the sky showed mountain mists shrouding hills and then mountains themselves, when the sky wasn't taken up with billboards.

Finally off the interstate, and up Tennessee hills I hadn't rolled over since I wore shoes, and then off the blacktop, and onto our little county road, and along the frontage fence on another two-lane.

And at long last back to another "another country," this one landlocked rather than surrounded by the sea, but with gates to keep the world at bay as best they can.

Home of sorts. But nothing like the home I can't wait to get back to.

- - -

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

-- J.R.R. Tolkien