It was on this road that my car broke down while I was taking my Dad to see my office and meet my co-workers. As we were trying to get the car going (a familiar experience I had lived many times before with my Dad), we were snuck up upon and surrounded by a pack (Ok, there were only 3 but they looked mean) of gnarly looking dogs. They appeared on the horizon, circled the car and slowly closed in on us. We got in the car and waited them out. I am certain we were lunch. They lingered for a while and even came up and looked in the window at us. They eventually moved on and ate someone else.
This is also the road where I noticed that graffiti began to appear on the backs of road signs near a particular intersection. The graffiti had a specific theme to it—KKK. Over the course of several weeks, the amount of graffiti grew and it was clear that it was marking the intersection as a place to go…I assume for social gatherings of like minded people. I envision friendly soft ball games, family picnics, maybe even bake sales raising money for trips. I became disturbed and tried to find some authorities to look into things. I decided calling the local sheriff likely wasn’t going to help…I assumed he might be the star pitcher of one of the softball teams. I called the state police and they suggested I call the FBI—really. I called the FBI and left several messages, but no one ever got back to me. Finally, I called the Anti-Defamation League. They asked for pictures. I had to go to the intersection, get out of my car, and snap some photos. Needless to say, I was a tiny bit nervous. It is kind of a desolate road where a nosy, liberal, Jew loving, do-gooder could disappear easily…”paddle faster, I hear banjos.”
The ADL told me there were some hate groups in the area and this was likely their work. I don’t what they did, but the accomplished what no one else would or could. They got the DOT to paint over the graffiti on those signs within a few weeks. As a post-script to that happy ending, the graffiti is back.
This is also the road where I found a cat that had been hit and left to die. I drove by the cat, noticed it was in the middle of the road, head up and looking around. I tried to just keep driving, really I did. I couldn’t, though. I turned around and drove back to the cat, parked my car, scooped it up in my shirt, and took it to the roadside. I proceeded to knock on the doors of the trailers nearby to see if anyone owned the cat. No one was home. About 10 miles back down the road I had just driven was an animal shelter, so I decided I had to take the cat there. I scooped it up again and put it on the passenger seat of my car. It let out a few pathetic meows and then laid its head down to rest. Somewhere along the way that poor kitty went on to his reward because when I got to the shelter, he was dead. So I dragged my recently dead cat into the shelter and they took it from me. Thankfully they believed my story and didn’t think I had hit the cat and was trying to dump the evidence and run. They took the cat…and gave me back my shirt.
So this road and I have a strange and unpleasant history. Still I drive it frequently. Monday morning at around 7 am I was tooling along minding my own business, ignoring the KKK signs and the feral dogs…and it happened. I saw the whole thing from the comfort of my driver’s seat. The deer came out of the woods—a good sized four point buck—and trotted along the roadside. I slowed down expecting him to run across the road in front of me. Instead he ran up along side my car. I can still picture the moment frozen in time—me looking at him just inches away on the other side of my car window, him looking through the window at me. He had a crazed look in his eye. You know the one…it is the one a frat boy has when the party is ending and he still hasn’t found a “date” for the evening. I slowed down more hoping he would run on ahead and across the road. Instead he lunged at me, body slamming my car door and obliterating my rearview mirror. Fractions of a second later he bounced off my back door and then the trunk. In my mind’s eye (because I no longer had a rearview to see him back there) I can see him making a second and third lunge at me. As I turned to look back, I saw him scramble up off the road and run back into the woods. I could have sworn I saw him spit at my car as he ran off.
I pulled over and removed the husk that once was my rearview mirror and I found that my back door was open. Apparently, on that second lunge he tried to open my back door and get in the car. Luckily I got away—I don’t what would have happened if he had gotten in. I can’t help but picture an isolated clearing where feral dogs, wild-eye deer and burly men are gathered to burn crosses.
I won’t be going to that office next week but after Thanksgiving you can bet I will consider seriously a new route that avoids Wire Road.
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