The Road To Nothing

An Essay

We got a road down the ways from where I live that has been in a perpetual state of re-construction for as long as I can remember. Lord you should’ve heard the way they talked about it when I was a kid: “oh it’s a mess now, but once they get done it’s gon’ be wide as a ball field and slicker’n owl grease!”

After a short while though, people were no longer considering the future prospects worthy of the pain in the ass it was becoming in the present. Traffic was steadily becoming an all day thing and no longer reserved for Rush Hour. Not that down here we get in too much of a rush anyhow, but hell.

One day in the mid 90’s, the traffic got so bad that my uncle (RIP) got out and whooped a construction worker’s ass right there in front of God and everybody. If my Uncle had told us this, we might not have believed him on account Meth always made him tell tales outta school, and he’d been doing meth as long as…well, as long as they’d been working on this damn road! Thing is though… he didn’t tell us. Coincidentally the local news had just arrived on the scene to do a story on how the expansion of this road would affect commerce. Just over the newsman’s left shoulder, you could see my Uncle teeing off on some poor ole boy whose only crime that day was showing up to work in an orange vest. We all thought it was funny but then sorta understood why our Momma, though she loved him, preferred not to leave us in his custody unsupervised.

Every year they’d make some big announcement on how great this god forsaken road was gonna be, and every year we noticed not one iota of change.

My Nanny Sue (Dad’s Mom) had grown up in a house on that road, and once she passed and the deed fell in my Dad’s name, he used her house as his office. It was really cool for us kids. Dad’s office was in the back bedroom, his Secretary worked in the sitting room up front, and the living room had a comfy couch and a VHS player right around the time Disney was lettin all them old cartoons outta “the vault”. I’m sure I’ll write more about that time period later, but good lord what a time to be alive and be a child!

Well several years later, another announcement was made by the county saying that they were finally getting to the “widening out the road” part of this on going construction party. This meant that the day had come for long time residents to be shooed outta their homes and move somewhere that presumably had a road that didn’t have nothing wrong with it (if such a thing exists). They of course were offering to buy these homes, and at least from what Dad told me they were fair on the payment. Granted, Dad’s place was long paid off so it was all gravy to him. This, by the way, is still only my Dad’s 4th favorite gravy. Before Dad sold it, he had heard through the grapevine that the church on the other side of the road had gotten substantially more money on account of it being a place of worship. Daddy then naturally tried to convince me and my buddies to start hosting candle light services and playing gospel guitar on the porch. Once it was made clear that psychedelics of any kind were not permitted on the property, we had to humbly decline the offer.

Fast forward 15 years from Dad selling the house to the county and the only thing that’s been widened is our hind ends. That’s 15 years of my Dad working from home, and if you ask me, the government owes my momma some money for pain and suffering.

This whole deal sorta reminds me of American politics. You get a whole Buncha old white men telling you how great something is gonna be in the future, and now that the future is here no one has even painted a yellow stripe down the god damn middle.

Either fix shit or quit telling us you will, cause waiting around on false hope ain’t doing no one no good cept you assholes!!

‘ Corey

Photo by Muhammad owsama on Unsplash