The Road Home

This is actually the road home in reverse. This is the path we take from our front door out to the paved road on the way to work or to the store almost every day. Tomorrow I'll post the slightly different route that we use coming back home from town.



If you checked earlier in the evening today, this part will be new to you. I realized after the video posted that I should probably have included some information about what you're seeing. Basically, the fairly boring photos of my place in this post got a surprisingly positive response, so I thought I'd give another take on where I live.

The video starts in my front yard. By the time I clicked record on the camera, we'd already backed out of the carport and started turning around. If you look at my driveway, you can tell we're the only one's using this "road". The only part not covered in grass are the two tracks our tires typically follow. The really weird thing is that our driveway can be found on the map in my GPS, including the name on the street sign that I had thought was a gag gift for my grandmother several years ago. Apparently my aunts actually got the driveway named officially by the local government. Weird.

After we turn out of the driveway, you'll notice that the weeds in the ditches are quite tall. It's rained a good bit here this summer (we've been in the small portion of the Georgia to be out of drought conditions for almost a year) and the weeds have just gone crazy. On the other side of the weeds are actually cotton fields. You can see the cotton easily when you're actually in the car, but for some reason you can't see any of the fields behind the weeds from the camera's video.

When I turn to the side for the first time, I'm taking in the local greens farm. They grow sweet corn during the summer and collard and mustard greens during the fall and spring. Right now they're in between crops (if you're from up north, our growing season starts early in March so harvest is really early). There's no point in growing greens during the summer. Hot weather makes them more bitter, so people who know what they're doing plant them for a late fall harvest and/or an early spring harvest. The green shed is actually their processing plant. They season and cook the greens and then freeze them for sale. We usually buy unseasoned greens from them. Good stuff, except K won't eat them. E will.

The second time I turn to the right you may notice a dilapidated shed between two trees. If you were in the car you could see an old hand-scrawled sign proclaiming "Keep Out". This is an old moonshine shed that I didn't even know was there until this area was logged a few years ago. There's another similar shed close to my parents' house, although sadly without the great sign. My sister and I used to walk down the train tracks to visit the second shed when we were kids and pretend there were skeletons stashed there by crazed rednecks.

The next time I scan from side to side is just the railroad tracks. This is an active set that runs inland from the coastal ports. It stops at the nearby lumberyard for woodchips and "The Mill" to pick up the carpet backing they make. There are no overpasses in town, so when they stop to make a pickup they can back up traffic as they block every intersection in town. The section of the tracks about a half mile to the east was actually one of the favorite playgrounds for my sister and me when we were kids. Yes, we played on the train tracks. My parents weren't always good at adult supervision when they were at home.

And finally you see pavement. This is a really good shot to show just how flat it is around here.