GPS and Banjos

     When I was a boy, we lived out in the boonies of West Virginia (yes, it’s a whole other state) where roads frequently became paths and those paths often stopped in someone’s yard. I know that concept may be unfamiliar to many of you, so let me repeat it. THE ROAD ENDS!!! No intersections, no round-abouts, just a car on blocks in the middle of an occasionally mowed area we will call a lawn. Usually, the owner would look darkly in your direction as his half-wit son would stop playing the banjo, prompting a quick wave and u-turn to get out of there in a hurry.

     Not really. That’s the sort of stuff we tell the tourists to keep them from moving in and setting up another Starbucks. More often than not, if …no no…WHEN you found the end of a road, there was no one home or you could have a nice visit and make a friend (not the Ned Beatty kind of friend.) Seriously, who believes that stuff? The boonies can be dangerous, but hanging up your truck in a ditch is about as bad as it gets.

     Actually, holler hoppin’ was a frequent pastime for me and Lori. I had a little Subaru wagon with 4-wheel drive that could put a young hormone-driven couple in the remotest areas. Not that parking was the only goal of our drives. We had no money, and gas was cheap, so random drives were our best entertainment. Even when we were out of college and could afford those fancy picture shows, we would often rather take a drive down a new road just to see what was there than spend a couple hours in a dark smelly room with a hundred strangers.

     As a quick aside: somewhere in Braxton county there is a back road that has a wooden bridge over a railroad track. It is on a little dirt road and the bridge arches steeply, leaving a blind drop where you just have to pray there is no turn at the bottom. If any of my WV peeps knows where that is, drop me a line.

     Flash forward to Fall of 2010. The family is loaded in the Freestyle AWD on our way to a wedding reception, when daddy decides to try out the GPS function on his phone. I know how to get where we are going, but I just wanted to check the toy out. Lo and behold! The GPS says there is a shorter route which will cut 20 minutes or more off the trip. What it doesn’t show is that a bridge is out on the chosen path. No problem, I’ll just hit this handy dandy “re-route” function and viola, a 4 mile detour pops up.

     I hesitated when the detour started with a left turn onto a gravel road, but forged ahead. I was a little nervous when the road narrowed and we bounced over some rock ridges, but pressed on. The GPS was with me and was my guide and comfort. When the GPS said “turn here” and all I could see was a deer path, yea verily, I was filled with doubt and misgiving. I looked over at my wife of 20+ years and saw the sparkling eyes of that little red-headed girl in a belly shirt from the 80’s and knew in that moment, that we were taking the kids on their first off-road experience.

     What Sprint Navigation called a road was a series of welltender paths meant for ATV use only. Two narrow mud ruts casually defined our new route across the ridgeline of some unknown hill in Doddridge County. The squeal of brush scraping down both sides of the Ford was matched by the two girls in the rear seats. For awhile, I thought we had lost them when we splashed thru a couple hundred yards of creek bed as a road, but they were just drawing in breath to squeal again. Good times, good times.

     Eventually we found a house (no banjos) and gradually the road led back to pavement. We had a good time at the reception and when the time came to leave, we considered the detour again, for about a second. The mud quickly washed off the roof of the truck, but I hope the memory sticks with the wee ones. It was a good trip, and a great reminder that the boonies are never more than a couple of turns away.