Author’s Note: This email should say at its bottom “Sent from my iPhone . . . after tapping it out while going 80MPH,” and that’d be true, but it required beaucoup laptop keyboarding corrections and editing to be legible.

-Marlow

April 18, 2022

Conversating Signs of Our Times

W and I returned W’s mom to her mid-Ohio home for Easter weekend.

It was a quick up and back covering two long drives.

Along the roadways, we noticed folks are just conversating about things of interest — often spending big bucks to make their points in the long-ago Burma Shave and Mail Pouch Tobacco fashion.

What follows is a stream of consciousness narrative of the things we felt, the images we took, and a few of the signs we saw and post facto impressions we felt as we travelled. Please forgive us for any nonsense that may have ensued . .

For instance — the multiple “not even one leg to stand on” interstate sign carnage that has exploded recently along the South Carolina sections of I’s 26, 77 and 95. WTH? Every 3 to 5 miles northward on these routes, one or more exit, services-at, or distance-to signs have had one or more legs removed after a massive bashing of its green/orange/white/yellow info board. Some of this metal pillage was on the other side of a crash barrier. Might these be indication and warning signs of some new form of states rites anti-federal terrorism from the colonialists that brought us our uncivil war/revolt. Hell, all W, her mom, and I wanted to know was if there was a Panera at the next exit.

Covid conversating abounded in some of the big cities we passed through

With our senses suitably primed to see what was a-happening, we divined that lots and lots of heavily loaded semi-tractor trailers and tractors pulling containers from and to huge ships un and re loading in Charleston’s and Savannah’s massive port operations that stretch mile after mile along their host river banks.

For 700 miles one way the truck traffic was continuously as thick as summer mosquito and no-see-em swarms over Georgia’s marshlands. America looks FWOT (full wide-open throttle) for business.

One more “truck” thing – How do $105K/year trucker jobs and ‘transitory” inflation go together?

RVs were everywhere — heading to all points of the compass — not just returning snowbirds from wintering in Florida. America is rambling and traveling.

Huge SAVE ME JESUS & REPENT SINNERS billboard signs in ketchup and mustard colors have replaced fireworks stand and car dealer ads. Saw a TRUMP 2024 sign when we passed through Appalachia along I77 in the Virginias.

Reservoirs were full — promising good boating and fishing was an early spring bonus for those in the Carolinas, the Virginias, and the Midwest

Pink and white Dogwoods were in full bloom in the Carolinas as the fading Redbuds still there worked to make their points and beauty seen. In the leafless treed Virginias, the Redbuds held center stage courtesy of the state DOTs ladder planting them decades ago up the steep-cliffed roadside hills. On the way back home, we had to stop on the interstate roadside to inspect what was covering the 50 or so miles with continuous deep red ground plantings along the Palmetto State’s interstates. They’re a gorgeous blood red and suitably named Crimson Clover.

Redbuds and white Dogwoods

South Carolina’s Crimson Clover

The united and flowering America we were seeing across these lands where large Armies were raised to fight for the Blue or the Grey, is just shy of 250 years of age — many centuries junior to its main allies and enemies, yet still presents a picture of mild dishevelment — slouched, common gimme political or manufacturer ballcaps and rock concert t-shirts, mud-splashed work boots and jeans. We are delightfully unaware of how we look and don’t give a crap if others think us deliberately discourteous or making some sly or crass political statement. We simply don’t do our laundry frequently enough and our newly online ordered stuff is stuck in some distant supply chain on a delivery truck a container ship somewhere at sea.

On the road we were one and all courteous to one another in tight traffic, nodding or signaling the other to take their place in these fast moving and construction zone lane shifting, 80 MPH mambo lines, smiling all the time, never grumbling at the pump while filling our cars with gas at close to a fin per gallon.

We alternately project and reject authority (speed limits?) preferring a relaxed and confident pose born out of earned not conferred mastery — a look that to most foreigners seems to be from another world.

These strangers just can’t wrap their minds around the facts that over the centuries, Americans, as war winners, fed the defeated’s armies and enabled the losers to clothe, feed, heal their peoples and join in America’s pursuit of life, liberty and happinesses. Let’s call it our mercy of April’s Appomattox trait and gift to the world.

Driving home on His Risen day, the weak powered radio station preachers blared His messages to the narrow mountain and river valleys of the faithful, as “found Jesus on the prison wall” faded in, over, and out of our FM reception range.

All that was missing from our FM radio was a “500 songs about dear old ma” broadcast as we highballed it south through West by God Virginia on an empty almost heaven I77 as we passed several semi-tractor trailers’ rear doors sporting this question.

Blown up for readability

So as Easter receded as the sun set over the Empire’s marshes, we saw, heard, and felt these odd bits and pieces of End Times, Good Times, and a lot of Spring Times as they gave us joy during this Easter weekend’s road times.

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