Over The Creek And Through The 'Hood

Sweet Gummi Mary! It's getting so I can hardly make my daily trip to town these days without encountering gridlock on the back roads of Hillmomba!

Today I was tooling along the gravel road beside the creek, getting ready to stop at EmBee before going to town for my 44 oz Diet Coke. The mail has been getting here earlier these days. I don't know if we have a new mailwoman or not, since she/he is getting to be like Santa, sneaking in there when I'm not around to watch. I used to get behind that mail lady all the time on my way home, and have to wait until she mis-delivered our mail.

I had the windows up. There were a few sprinkles falling, but the temperature was in the upper 60s already at the early hour of 11:30 a.m. Even with the windows up, I smelled it. The not-unpleasant essence of crushed cedar needles. Well, I thought, maybe somebody had cut down a tree at that house up the hill where Juno had gotten lost for a whole day, and I was just smelling the fresh crushed needles of the limbs that had crunched upon hitting the ground.

The smell was even stronger as I climbed out of T-Hoe and strode across the blacktop to disgorge the clothing catalog and Acadia bill and junk insurance brochure from EmBee's gullet. Again, I chalked it up to the wet ground and tree-trimming scenario.

As I crested the hill on the county road, I saw TO MY HORROR what was causing the smell. The Rockers are back! They were working in the area right where Juno had been lost. Bulldozing every tree down, clearing an opening to begin their rock harvest. They had a pickup truck and trailer (the ones that had parked themselves on our BARn land a while back) parked at the top of that hill, and going down the other side, two orange traffic cones in the roadway.

Let the record show that this is a STEEP hill. It's like the top of a rollercoaster, right before you plummet down the other side. They had their cones in the middle of the driving lane, so people coming up that side of the hill wouldn't ram into the back of the parked trailer. Nope. They were making it very safe to keep people from ramming into the back of their parked trailer. Yet forcing those people into the oncoming traffic lane to crest that hill! Allowing them the chance of a head-on collision rather than plowing into a parked trailer.

I made a mental note to come back the alternate route, past the auto body shop, from the other side of EmBee. I went on my merry way, thankfully not having hit anyone head-on as I went over that hill. On I went, across the low water bridge that floods so often, up the other side, and saw a semi truck coming down the middle of the road at me. Yet not.

A gray semi truck was creeping along, then stopped. And began to back up. Let the record show that there is NOWHERE to turn that thing around on that road. He would have been better off to keep going and loop up past the Rockers and the auto body shop and eventually come back out on the lettered county highway. But he was BACKING! The road was straight at that point, and he had a car behind him, which had to back up. And another car coming at him from the next hill crest. I couldn't see down in the dips, but I know I wanted no part of waiting to see how the guy got himself out of this predicament. There was no way I could continue and pass by him in my lane. So I turned around at the rental house that just got a new metal roof, and went back the way from whence I had come, up that blind hill in the WRONG LANE past the Rockers. Thankfully not hitting anyone head-on again.

On and on, past the auto body shop, to the T intersection to take me out to the lettered county highway. And there was a blue pickup truck sitting in the middle of the road at the T intersection. He had no stop sign that way. Just a guy sitting in a truck, with it running.

I confess that I only made a rolling stop at my stop sign, before making my right turn. Who knows what shenanigans a pickup man could be up to in a remote area like that.

Let the record show that I remembered to come back home that way, and the pickup man was gone. And that my 44 oz Diet Coke tasted even sweeter than usual today.