An excellent day can disintegrate into an existential crisis with the introduction of an unpleasant idea.
Just the other day, I was enjoying a really good wedge of pineapple cheesecake when my phone chirped to tell me I had an email.
I was hoping for a reply to an email I had been obsessing over, but the message was actually from medicare.gov.
This was in the subject line: Choosing a Nursing Home. What to Know.
Dang it! They’ve found me, I thought. And when I say they I mean the “theys” everyone blames for most everything: George Soros, the Illuminati, the Oligarchs, the Elks, the Mafia, the Masons, MAGA, Methodists and possibly the Mennonites. (Good thing alliteration isn’t taxed, eh.)
“You’ll never take me alive,” I shouted at my phone. “I ain’t ready to sit in a rocking chair and watch reruns of Lawrence Welk.”
I deleted the email, unsubscribed from Medicare.gov, and decided to light out for the territories ahead of the rest in my Dodge with the magnum V-8 engine and four-wheel drive.
I wanted to “smell the whiskey burning down Copperhead Road”* and all that. I needed to feel alive before I am placed in the custody of somebody who will treat me like a houseplant.
So, I turned south on Highway 441 — which I call the Tom Petty Highway because of the “An American Girl” song — and before I knew it, I was rumbling through Pearson, Tyreek Hill’s hometown.
The tailpipe hanging from a metal clothes hanger wasn’t making too much noise, and I had almost forgotten “Choose a Nursing Home” when I saw Relihan Funeral Home on the right. Well, every town needs at least one of those, I reckon.
I looked in the rearview mirror, but I didn’t see anybody following me, no Masons of Mennonites as far as I could tell.
A few minutes later, I found myself in Homerville, a city I had never heard of, in Clinch County.
I passed the Harvest Time Church of God and then the Lighthouse Assembly of God out by the Homerville Airport, which reminded me of an old joke.
“When an airline passenger dies, it doesn’t matter if he’s going to heaven or hell; he’ll have to change planes in Atlanta.”
Highway 441 is known as Fargo Highway when it passes by Bruce’s Honey Shack. (They’re beekeepers, man! Get your mind out of the gutter.)
It was comforting to know there were so many houses of worship out on the road, including Calvary Hill Baptist Church and Bethel Missionary Baptist Church.
Highway 441 leans west south of Fargo and crosses into Tom Petty’s home state.
If you make it as far as Lake City, you pass Pine Grove Baptist Church on the left and Church of God-North Lake City on the right.
Just so you don’t forget the competition, you’ll find Weggie’s Saloon and Five Points Liquor Store on either side of the road, a few blocks south.
Things got pretty grim for yours truly at that point. Death was everywhere: Combs Funeral Home, A Direct Cremations, Ferreira Cremation and Funeral Service, Guerry Funeral Home, Gateway Forest Lawn Funeral Home and Crematory.
By the time I arrived in Gainesville, I was feeling pretty morbid.
I headed north through Jacksonville and drove past the ghost of the Gator Bowl, where Lindsay Scott caught a touchdown pass 45 years ago.
I can still hear Larry Munson shouting: “Run Lindsay!”
I watched that game in my parents’ living room, my father in his recliner and my mother in the kitchen.
I suddenly felt painfully homesick.
I drove across a bridge over the St. John’s River with the intention of heading home, but I realized that my idea of home no longer existed. I was here alone now — no mommy and no daddy — and I had nothing much to look forward to but Lawrence Welk.
But I drove on anyway, like all lost souls do.
Selah.