By Buster McNutt
We are finally once again full time residents of the great sub-state of Middle Tennessee! North Central Florida is so in the rearview mirror/ripped out pages in the memory book/what in the world were we thinking? It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. I mean, it’s Florida after all! You know, beaches with scantily-clad college girls (that were 100 miles from our house), fresh fruit and veggies (mostly imported from foreign countries like Mexico, Honduras, and California), and absolutely beautiful weather all the time (only it rains almost every day).
And then there were the hurricanes that knocked out power for a week last year, which meant no electricity to power the pump to pump the water for drinking, bathing, and of course, flushing toilets! Sure, we could bathe in the river, but I wasn’t so sure what the folks up river were using it for, so that was a non-starter. It didn’t seem to bother the Pentecostals all that much. I guess washing sins away is a sufficiently spiritual/out-of-body experience that pretty much whatever floats around goes around, if you get my drift.
And then there were the dirt roads that ate suspension parts like that little Japanese guy eats hot dogs. And forget flesh-eating parasites in the water, a mere distraction compared to car-eating sinkholes, flying insects that carry small dogs away, and don’t get me started on the twice-a-year “love bugs” that, well, let’s just say that if they ever decided to fly on a commercial airliner, they would definitely fly United.
We owned the Florida house for 8 years, and I figure we averaged four trips a year between Florida and Tennessee. That’s 32 trips at 600 miles each way, except the time we stopped at Wicki-Wachee-Mermaid World, which added another 120 miles to that trip. Spoiler Alert: They really weren’t mermaids, although there was the one who appeared to be at the midpoint of the evolutionary time line between Ester Williams and a somewhat svelte manatee. Manatee’s are a protected species in Florida, and for all I know this could have been an affirmative manatee action situation. Ester supposedly passed away in 2013, but we’ve all heard the expression that old swimmers never die, they just get a gig at Wicki-Wachee in Florida. And she did look pretty good for a 97 year old!
The nearest airport that wasn’t primarily a regional crop-dusting/drug-smuggling airport was 105 miles away, so that wasn’t a real option, and even then the only airline with a direct flight was United, and just our luck we’d be on the flight when somebody opened her backpack and a gazillion stowaway love bugs would join the mile-high club in a conjoined effort that, by comparison, makes Olympic synchronized swimming look like bobbing for apples at a retirement home, on the day when all the contestants dentures are out being pressure washed. It could happen. Just like the check-engine light that came on three times when I was right in the middle of Atlanta traffic. You can’t get here from there without driving through Atlanta, which is always a hardship, and even more so when they are having a sporting event, a “cultural” festival, or even if you just happen to be going through town on any day of the month that ends in D-A-Y. Atlanta traffic is the Big Guy telling us to stay home, just as death is his way of telling us to slow down. But do we listen?
My neighborhood in Tennessee has varying degrees of hard roads. Some are crumbly hard, some crusty hard, and others quite obviously miss their gravel roots and are conspiring to return to their glory days of yore. Ours is a relatively-poor and lacking-of-fun-things-to-do county, and sightings of the road-paving trucks are cause for celebration, much as was the sighting of the dirt-road grader in Florida. Vehicles, mostly pickup trucks, line up at the end of the soon to be paved road for hours, so they can be the first to drive on the newly-paved road. The beds of the trucks are lined with lawn chairs, coolers, sometimes a grill, and usually at least one of the runner-ups in the local Miss Turnip Seed contest. It will be something to tell their grandchildren, which will probably happen about the time the paving truck comes back around.
Potholes are definitely an issue in our neighborhood, and many of the locals have taken to filling them in with candy corn left over from the previous Halloween. You just fill the hole with the candy corn, and then top it with a pound of melted Gobstoppers, a 16-ounce bottle of Dark Karo Syrup, and a tin of Kiwi black shoe polish. It dries to the consistency of some of your better asphalt patches, although Consumer Reports has not yet tested it along side its competitors. It generally stays hard for about six months, at which point it gets mushy and you can take it out, put the mixture in a plastic bag or other washing-machine-safe sealed container, and toss it in the washer. Use the permanent press setting if you have an older machine that does not have a specific candy corn/asphalt patch setting. Once the mixture separates, discard everything except the candy corn which you can reuse in the next batch of pothole patch, or, if money is a little tight, you can still use it for Halloween candy since it has been through the washer.
Other differences between Florida and Tennessee are that Florida has very few hills and not many miles of curved paved roads. This is because Florida is essentially flat, and back when the highways were first being built the Florida Highway Department realized they could save a lot of money if they could mostly just buy straight-line lane divider paint instead of the more expensive curved-line lane divider paint. They obviously chose not to share this cost saving strategy with Tennessee where roads and women without adequate curves are simply not part of the culture.
I have to go now because rumor has it that the paving truck will be on our street next week, and I need to order Lady M a Miss Turnip Seed outfit. What do you think: Tractor Supply or Adam and Eve Fantasy Costumes?
Good — it’s unanimous! •
