We drove 3,400 miles over 11 days from St Paul MN to where the Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico and back again. The Great River Road route is a designated zig-zag of mostly two-lane state or county roads going through rural mid-America. Very little freeway. Some town roads. Thirteen miles was a very narrow, harrowing one-lane gravel road.
This trip was about the journey, not the destination. We saw some cool destinations, the World War II Museum in New Orleans is awesome. The National Military Park in Vicksburg Mississippi is great. Mostly we discovered that rural life outside of the big city and off of the is freeway sad and lacking in hope or good news.
Maybe I will post more some other time but I wanted to share one story now.
Day three, the two-plus hour drive through St Louis Missouri was frustrating and took much longer than it should. Saw the Arch but the area around it was under construction. So we stopped, looked up, and then drove on.
About 60 miles south of St. Louis we needed to use the facilities. As we approached the small town we were no longer surprised how rundown many small towns looked. The bigger cities we had driven through were growing and busy. However, most of the small towns were in various stages of disrepair. Most small towns we had driven through looked years into hard times.
In a bigger city, we would never have stopped at this rundown convenience store/gas station to use the restroom. But we were not in a bigger city. We knew by then this was likely as good as we will see. Half of the store was empty/dark and the rest was only marginally stocked. The very friendly clerk greeted us with a Hi y’all. She pointed us to the restrooms with a smile on her face.
At these stops, we made it a practice to purchase, at least something for providing for our needs. It just seems fair. As the clerk rang up my bottle of soda, I asked her about the town. She responded that she had only been in town less than a week so she did not know much about the town.
Linda responded with something like, “Oh really, less than a week”. The clerk then explained, less than a week earlier she decided that living in St Louis was too dangerous. So she grabbed her two kids and drove away. She added, be careful who you make friends with. Making friends can be dangerous. Very dangerous.
She said she did not know where to go, she just headed south. She stopped here for some gas. As she walked in to pay for the gas, the previous clerk was screaming at the owner and quit. So she told the owner she needed a job. He hired her on the spot.
She said she found a room and the next day, enrolled the two kids in school. She said she was ready for a new life. She said she “ain’t never going back. This time I ain’t going to get to know anybody. The kids are the only people I need to know. If I don’t know anybody, ain’t nobody going to cause us problems.”
We wished her luck and we were on our way.
On the front door of the store was two small clear plastic zip-lock bags filled with water and tied onto the door handle. One on each of the two doors. Curiosity got the best of me. I turned to ask her about them. Her response was, “There are two pennies in each one. Everyone says they keep the flies away from the doors.” All I could say was. “Really”. She just nodded reassuringly like you would to a young kid who was not sure if you were teasing.
As we drove away, it was several minutes before either Linda or I had digested enough of what we just heard to even speak. We lived in a different world from this young lady. I hope things turned out well for her.
Everyone we interacted with on the whole trip was nice. It is just that some of those people had a very different life than ours.
Pennies In Bags of Water Make Flies Flee
What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com