Of Potholes & Smashed
Potatoes
con’t from JAUNTING
Not paying very much attention to my route, I notice that the very high
bridge, which I have been flanking, is now suddenly in front of me, with a sign
pointing ‘thataway’, To U.S.A. Uh-oh.
* * *
HISTORY ALONG THE ROAD
HISTORY ALONG THE ROAD
Yikes! I don’t want to go to the
U.S. of A., especially since I don’t have my passport with me or Sofie’s
papers. Luckily, there’s a sharp right
hand turn coming up and I crank the steering wheel, feeling very Dukes of Hazard(ish)
– I can almost feel the car tilting onto two tires. Just kidding but sometimes it’s fun to let my
imagination go nuts.
Squinting into the sun, something glows brightly on the horizon. Wonder of wonders, just ahead of me,
salvation in the form of two Golden Arches.
Yippee! Mickey D’s, 4 gazillion
served.
Finding a parking spot not
too far from the door, I speed-walk inside and make a beeline for the
bathroom. Oh joy, no line-up. I hit the stall and sigh with relief as I
make room for coffee #2. Coffee in,
coffee out. Kinda like beer – you don’t
buy it, you rent it. I make for the
counter and sigh again as I spot the line-up there. Oh well, at least I don’t have to pee
anymore. Finally, the fresh-faced, young
girl (she looks all of 12) behind the counter asks, “And what may I get for you
today, ma’am?” The ‘ma’am’ grates, but I
overlook the polite address.
Asking for a medium-size Arabica roast to go into my travel mug, I
succumb to the special of the day, two hot fruit pies for the price of
one. Can’t resist – one apple, one mixed
fruit. Inhaling the tantalizing aroma of
fresh ground beans, mixed berries and cinnamony apples, I make my way back to
the car, where Sofie’s on guard. She
leaps back to her side, as I settle in the driver’s seat. Turning the GPS back on, I punch in the next
leg of my backroads trip, and include a local park as a via point, then exit
the parking lot, as directed by the electronic rendition of a female voice.
Comfy, satiated and looking forward to my now-cooled hot fruit pies, I
find that the park is really just a grassy knoll, with a solitary splintery bench, but
convenient parking. I perch gingerly on
the rather wobbly bench, and enjoy my coffee and apple pie, while Sofie has her
bathroom break and then a big slurp of water.
I keep a watchful eye on Sof, even though she’s not inclined to wander
away. Sudden noises tend to startle her
into flight mode, no matter what the cause or proximity and I want to head her
off at the pass if I have to. Broiling a
little in the late morning sun, I lean back against the bench, and Sofie,
although very interested in a particular patch of grass, lays down, panting,
pink tongue lolling. It’s that hot. We head back to the car and still with the
windows down, start moving, creating our own zephyr.
Onward and westward, I tool along Highway #2, singing at the top of my lungs to one of my favourite songs. Life is good.
* * *
A ways to go - I start seeing signs for Long Sault, which brings back
happy memories from my childhood. I
recall the hot summer weekends, usually a Sunday morning, when my father would
come home from his second job and pack up the car, the four of us and my mom,
for a rare trip to the beach at Long Sault.
My mother always spent most the evening before, cooking, making
sandwiches and baking cookies. Then she
would pack my dad’s ratty old army duffle bag with our underwear and extra
socks and who knows what else, because, as she would always say, “Just in
case”.
My father, not the most patient of men (being of Irish descent and
suffering from sleep deprivation after working all night), would sometimes
glare at mom and growl, “Mother, why you packing so much? Are we going for a week? Do you have to pack the whole house?” My mother usually had an answer, which at
least mollified my dad, and away we would go after the hour or so that it would
take him to pack everything, and us, in the car.
I especially remember one summer when my dad had a convertible, a big,
shiny red one, with huge tail fins. Away
down the highway we would zoom, with the top down, our long hair whipping into
impossible knots and the odd tissue or paper flapping around before hitting the
slip stream and taking off like a seagull.
What fun!
Upper Canada Village slips by the rear-view mirror, keeping me on memory
lane and all the fun field-trips we had there with school. That was the field-trip just before school
let out for the summer – Vermont and sugaring off was the late winter trip,
hopefully before all the snow melted. One year, I ate so much maple syrup-covered-
snow, I got sick and threw up all the way home.
To this day, maple is my least favourite of flavours! Good Canadian girl am I, eh?
\
Morrisburg, Iroquois and Cardinal conjure up different thoughts and images as I try to figure out where the names came from. Hmm, Morrisburg after the man who founded the hamlet way back when?
Johnstown is next and immediately, for some bizarre reason, saloons and barmaids spring to mind. Big, flouncy, ruffled dresses and pinafores barely cover their ample bosoms.
The rich, pine scent seeps from the sawdust
spread with a liberal hand on the wide plank bar floor. A hard-bitten cowboy, shouts to the barmaid,
“Bring us a round of sour mash and beer chasers and make it snappy!” The red-headed barmaid flicks her hair and turns
her back on the cowboy. She ignores him
now, but later, after all the other drunken rowdies stumble through the
swinging doors, she’ll be heading up the back stairs with him, supplementing
her pitiful saloon stipend with the ‘Johns’, engaging in the world’s oldest
profession.
As I draw closer to Wexford, the sun shimmers on the asphalt, creating
undulating waves in the still air. I
slow as directed by the highway sign, 50 kph, and watch in empathy as I catch
sight of a thin man, who’s encased in the de rigueur gear of serious
bicyclists; skin-tight black unitard, with bright red and yellow accents, which
stretches tautly from throat to ankles.
As I drive past, I watch in my rear-view mirror, and catch the gleam of
his sweat covered face, and the shiny patina on his balding head, as he pushes
his bicycle up the long, sloping hill. He’s got quite the convoy going - first
his bike, with its bulging saddle bags, one on each side. Hitched to that is an empty child trailer and
hitched to that, is a great, big thick-coated furry, dog plodding along in
perfect rhythm with the man. Odd.
I pass them and turn abruptly left, when I spot a sign for an historical
site, The Battle of the Windmill. Ah, I
think, maybe a good place to stop and stretch our legs and Sofie could use a
pee. It’s not too far up ahead, but as I
slowly advance down the road, I feel like I’m driving into a time warp in a
long ago era. Even the air seems cleaner
and smells like freshly-washed laundry, drying on the line. Suddenly though, a thin frisson of je ne sais quoi skitters across the back
of my neck and down my spine. Weird.© 2019 UNDERCOVER CONFIDENTIAL aka PHYLLIS MAHON … IT’S UNLAWFUL TO REPOST, COPY OR PUBLISH CONTENT FROM THIS WEBSITE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION.
