where lies your dependency?

Lord, what are human beings that you care for them,
mere mortals that you think of them?
They are like a breath;
their days are like a fleeting shadow.
Psalm 144:3-4

(Atlanta’s interstate fire and collapse courtesy CBS46 Atlanta)

There were so many titles for today’s post….
“Atlanta is burning…again”
“The domino effect”
“Catastrophe under, or is it of, the road”
“S’mores anyone…
as the camera would then pan to a sea of stopped cars stranded for hours as
they waited to be literally turned around and rerouted from one of the nation’s busiest
interstates.

If you haven’t yet heard, Atlanta was on fire, again, Thursday.

I say again because if your history lessons have failed you,
you may recall that a certain General T. Sherman burnt Atlanta to the ground
as a Christmas gift for President Lincoln during the Civil War.
And that is now the reason as to why the mythical creature the Phoenix is Georgia’s
sacred state bird…that is, besides the brown thrasher.
For the Phoenix is a symbol of how a smoldering Southern city rose up from the ashes
to become a major US metropolitan megatropolis…
along with the world’s busiest airport,
and a horrific gridlock of interstates….
but I digress….

Our son called late yesterday afternoon asking if we knew Atlanta was on fire.
He had seen this during his commute home from work.
We flipped on the television, and sure enough, Atlanta was on fire…
or more exactly a large swarth of area underneath a section of I-85 near Piedmont Rd,
what is known to locals as the Mid town area….
If you’ve ever driven north or south through Atlanta, you’ve driven over this stretch
of road.

This was a Thursday evening, at rush hour.
The interstate in both the south and north bound lanes were shut down as the fire
raged.
The heat so intense, a large section of the interstate buckled under the strain and collapsed–
which may have been a good thing as it helped to snuff out much of the inferno.

And miraculously, no one was hurt.

Still not certain as to the actual cause….
But what is certain, a major US artery is now shut down for travel for who knows how long.

Listening to the various news stations and the reporters who,
as everyone watched in real time, first the fire then the collapse,
gasped in obvious overwhelmed amazement.

What would happen with all those cars now stuck?
What would happen in the days to come?
Where would all the traffic be rerouted?
What about Atlanta’s notorious Rush hours?
How much longer would it now take to get to and from work?
What about all the soon to be Spring Break travelers headed south to Florida?

On and on the mounting panic became palpable as a million questions flooded
the thoughts of everyone….

I had to drive over to Dad’s today to meet with the funeral home in order to gather up
some needed papers and documents.
It was not a pretty picture as traffic was rerouted over to my usual route….
bypassing around the city.

There had also been an early morning crash just this side of the Georgia / Alabama state lines
shutting down all of I-20 east bound. That swarth of interstate closed until late afternoon.
Meaning more rerouting, with all that traffic, with an endless line of tractor trailer trucks,
being rerouted again, to my particular route of travel….
and I have to go back today….
sigh….

And with all this burning, collapsing and rerouting nightmare…it’s all gotten me thinking.
Thinking of our dependance upon our own limited abilities and vision…

Our world, the world in which we, man, has created is so tenuous and superficial.
Yet we assume and even take for granted that it is invincible.
Our massive buildings, our sprawling shopping meccas, our spaghetti maze of roadways,
our expanding bridges, even our modes of travel…
all seemingly built to last…
That is…until there is a bizarre or freakish event of catastrophic proportions…
which in turn sends us, much like ants, scurrying in an endless state of pandemonium.

There are no guarantees.

I can vividly recall watching the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake out in San Francisco…
the quake which collapsed and sandwiched the 880 interstate,
crushing and trapping both cars and people.

It was a horrific reminder of our fragility.
Just as each catastrophic earthquake has been in recent months in central Italy.
Centuries old buildings reduced to instant rubble in the blink of an eye.

It matters not the disaster…
It matters not if the victim be historic, modern, structurally sound or state of the art..
Nothing that we put our hands to, which we arrogantly assume is built to stand the test time,
will in turn do just that…last to kingdom come…
All will eventually give way to ruin…

For all of our ingenuity, our hutzpah, our try, try again mentality and and our plain
ol good intentions..
none of it will last….
for it will all pass away, just as we shall pass away to the very dust
from which we were formed in the hands of the Creator…

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:7

Beware the gators

“Because we focused on the snake, we missed the scorpion”
Egyptian Proverb

(image borrowed from web of a gator crossing an interstate near Naples, FL)

Maybe you’ve heard about them…
or
maybe you haven’t…

Interstate alligators…

And no, I’m not talking about actual alligators crossing the road as in the image above…
Rather I’m talking about something that is equally as dangerous and equally as deadly…
The only caveat is that it’s just not a living creature.

So now that your interest is piqued and you understand that we are not discussing reptiles…
I will explain what exactly an interstate alligator is all about.

An interstate alligator is the dubious moniker for the remnants of the shredded tires from tractor trailer trucks.

More times than not, those big rigs, which are driving on very worn tires, will lose the most worn tires off their rigs to the rigors of constant wear and tear…all while driving on car infested roadways.
As they race up and down the highways, freeways and interstates across this grand country of ours, these worn steel belted tires will basically begin to disintegrate and shred while the truck is clocking 70 to 80 mph.

(image courtesy Real Truck Driver Blog)

Add to that the heat of summer, as the pavement reaches deadly hot temperatures…
With worn tires riding along an inferno of cement and asphalt, we’ve all got troubles!

Imagine huge chunks of tire being slung off a spinning rim, most often unbeknownst to the driver, as the driver isn’t about to be slowing down or moving over to the far right lane in order to exit or move to the emergency lane in order to stop…

Next imagine being the cars behind and beside these big truck as the tire is shredding.

Needless to say there have been many a damaged vehicle as there have been many a fatality as a result of these shredding tires.

The alligator part comes into play when the remnants of these tires are left where they fly then fall—that being the middle of lanes, along the shoulder of the road…just anywhere they finally lose the momentum of flight—as they now lay in wait, lurking and waiting for those poor unsuspecting drivers who are on top of them before being able to slow down or swerve safely out of the way while attempting not to ram into a fellow driver…

Today’s journey to Atlanta, on its infamous perimeter, was like navigating a backwater bayou at full speed while trying to dodge and miss a plethora of both big and small gators all before it being too late before an impending collision.

Cars were slamming on their brakes, erratically changing lanes, hoping the cars beside and behind could get stopped in time.

Holding on for dear life as I made my way through the cement minefield,
I smelled it before I saw it as the air was rife with the acrid smell of burning rubber.
Dodging debris big and small, I soon road past the culprit. A big rig’s second to the back tire was disintegrating faster than he could move over and slow down.
Tire was slinging left and right as cars did their darnedest to dodge the deadly shrapnel.

As I miraculously made my way past the truck and the sea of tire parts without being hit, without running over anything and without being hit by my fellow dodging drivers, I was struck (not literally thank God) by the sheer magnitude of how things can change in one’s life from good to disastrous in literally the blink of an eye.
A ‘now you don’t see it, yet now you suddenly do’ sort of life’s scenario..

Yet we don’t much like thinking of life in that regard.

We don’t like to dwell on the possible and potential negatives of life…
those ‘could be’s’ or those ‘what if’s’ in life…
but what of the sudden and sheer catastrophic…??

We don’t want to live life constantly fretting and worrying.

Yet we do need to always be ready…
Ready for those very instantaneous what if’s.

As in…what if I’m taken out by this interstate monster right here, right now—am I ready for that?
Am I ready if my life is snuffed out just like that?

There’s no time to think,
No time to suddenly and quickly introduce yourself to a God you’ve just kind of always kept in the back of your head…
Kind of like a Santa Claus—
calling on Him in a pinch or when you really need or want something….

This isn’t like the “oh please God don’t let me get caught by that red light again” sort of thing…
Rather this is…there’s a big black chunk of rubber and steal, that’s just come up out of nowhere, hurdling through both time and space with lightning speed right for your windshield and face sort of thing, leaving you nowhere to turn, nowhere to run, leaving you nowhere to duck and cover….

Your relationship with God cannot wait.
It’s that dire, that urgent.

Not because you need to be saved from flying projectiles or hungry debris alligators who are lurking and waiting for when you lest expect it…but because time will not always afford you the luxury of waiting, pondering and deciding, if you want your soul to be lost or to be found…

There is true comfort in knowing that no matter what happens in this life…no matter the dangerous and deadly perils that await us…the catastrophes, the accidents, the random horrible things …
that in and through it all…God is yours and you are His…forever and ever…Amen!!

May you travel in safety my friends…

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 1:8-9

oh it ain’t no thing…

“The Americans have found the healing of God in a variety of things,
the most pleasant of which is probably automobile drives.”
William Saroyan

(my uncle Paul and my dad, the kid working the last drop of Coke, circa 1936 / on the steps of the state capital of Baton Rouge, Louisiana—road trip via Hwy 78 out of Atlanta)

Sitting for over two hours this morning on the interstate, not moving more than an inch every 15 minutes, I felt almost compelled to roll down my car window and personally shout an apology to all those license plates around me.
“On behalf of the Governor of the state of Georgia and the Mayor of Atlanta, I want to personally apologize to you Texas, to you South Carolina, to you Tennessee, to you Alabama, to you Mississippi, to you North Carolina and especially to you Connecticut…that your journey to your destination, wherever that may be, has found you sitting tangled in this jumbled mess of woven concrete known as the interstates that weave in and out of Atlanta….
I AM SORRY”

This country’s interstate system, which is mostly known as the Eisenhower Interstate System, is celebrating its 50th year of existence. Sitting as I was this morning, debating whether I should simply get out of the car and walk, I was not in any mood to put on a party hat and eat cake.

According to Norman Mineta, the US Transportation Secretary….
“The Interstate highway system is essential to America’s prosperity and way of life. Since its beginning 50 years ago, the Interstate network has provided a vital link for connecting goods to markets here and around the world and bringing together people from our nation’s cities, towns and rural communities.”

The Federal Highway Administration states on its website that…“From the day President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Interstate System has been a part of our culture as construction projects, as transportation in our daily lives, and as an integral part of the American way of life. Every citizen has been touched by it, if not directly as motorists, then indirectly because every item we buy has been on the Interstate System at some point. President Eisenhower considered it one of the most important achievements of his two terms in office, and historians agree.”

Please excuse my eyes rolling in my head, but I’ve just spent almost 6 hours in my car today traversing said networks of prosperity intended to link my rural world to my dad’s urban world—something that should have consumed all of 2 hours max of some of this time of mine remaining on this earth verses the 6 that I graciously offered up to Father Time with no chance of getting even a millisecond of it back.

I wonder how Ike would have felt sitting for 6 hours on one of these roadways of his when he could have been out playing a round or two of his beloved golf instead?!

Yeah, yeah, I know….the interstate system was touted as being the bees knees for linking our country together…on saving time, money and gas as now point A and point B would be seamlessly connected… smooth and easy sailing…
Those roadway founding fathers had no idea that the commuting public would multiply like rabbits and that the number of cars which would fill up those roadways would eventually become so numerous that the interstates would become obsolete faster than anyone would have cared to guess.

I was having to meet the installers at dad’s today as I had had to get Dad a new dishwasher. The dishwasher is a tale unto itself but today we must focus on one thing and that one thing is the interstate system…at my age, I can only handle one comedy of errors at a time.

The installers were lamenting their commute home from Dad’s this afternoon as there is just no easy way in or out of Atlanta….and I had to concur.

As luck would have it, the dishwasher was up and running just in time for me to hit rush hour traffic. Praying I would make it home before it was time for me to go to bed, plus praying I would make it out alive, I exhaled greatly as I merged into the standing still sea of cars and trucks.
As I precariously snaked my way along the serpentine interweaving of cars, I opted to exit while the getting was good, taking an “old” way home—

This “old way” was in use long before there was a President Eisenhower or a highway system named for him. It was my road home that, as a young man, my grandfather traversed during the early days of his up and coming company—P. H. Nichols and Company.
The road linked him with his clients and customers westward.

This old way, was indeed old.
It was tired and used up like a cheap bottle of wine which had turned to vinegar.
The luster having long faded with bitter notes around each bend in the road.

My aunt called me on my cell phone to check in on how things had been with dad and started the conversation by asking me where I was.
“I’ve just passed Hub Cap City” I unceremoniously replied.
“You got off the interstate?!!” She exclaimed more than asked.
“Why not???…I could either sit on the concrete and pray I wasn’t killed merging onto the next interstate, or I could go a little slower down memory lane….”
Memory lane was calling my name…

This “old highway” was / is very old.
The battered and bruised businesses of days of yore now stand as empty broken shells….
the cheap and tawdry strip malls whispering of grander days all gave new meaning to the word “seedy”.
It was a stretch of road that my mother would have reminded me to lock my doors as my husband would certainly have had a fit that I was even there in the first place.

But this old forgotten “highway” was the same road my dad had taken with his father on his very first grand American road trip.
The same road anyone would have taken prior to 1965 westward out of Atlanta.
It was the time my grandfather, in 1936, had taken his two sons on a grand road trip to Texas and back.
A working trip we would call it today.

As I drove over the great Chattahoochee river, twice, and past roads that whispered of that fateful war between both North and South, reminders of the crossings by those various brave generals and their rebel bands, the signs outside of the used up little cafes and diners boasting of such delectables as “ain’t no thang like a chicken wang”, I couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of things that once had been and those things that are trying, in vain, to remain.

Somewhere between the chop shops, the wrecker services, the long closed filling stations and the questionable BBQ joints, of which I make a mental note, I saw the shadows of dusty country roads that had once seen far more cattle crossings than cars.
Kudzu now engulfs and devours the once proud family owned motels offering many a tired traveler a welcoming respite while on the road. Ghosts and specters of the once proud and booming age of Americans and their automobiles.

The old way was no quick way as I ambled behind school buses, dump trucks and those who thought the “back way home” to be quicker than the interstate.
We all thought wrong.
Red lights, stop signs and those “Sunday drivers” on this Monday in no hurry clogged the road coming and going.
Yet I was met around each curve and each dip in the road by the thoughts of a grandfather I had hardly known.
There was something oddly comforting and familiar in this rotting, decaying and dying American artery.

Hours later after having left dad’s, I called letting him know that I had finally made it home in one piece—Dad thanks me for having come to oversee the installation of the dishwasher and worried over how long it took me to get home…
After recalling the cheeky sign for chicken wings, I offer a wearisome yet contented response…
“oh it ain’t no thing…

Expect. . .

Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.
Henri Nouwen

(a wet quince bloom / Julie Cook / 2015)

Driving on Atlanta’s notorious “top end perimeter, otherwise known as 285. . . the oddly shaped loop which circles around Atlanta proper like a cowboy’s lasso around the neck of a steer, is to any driver, the coming together of the perfect storm.
From stopping suddenly, to herkyily jerkily bolting like a bullet en masse along with tractor trailer trucks, buses, motorhomes, dump trucks, pickup trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, cars and emergency vehicles, all dodging and weaving in a precarious dance between speed, traffic and death is unlike any high stress experience imaginable.
And sadly, it seems as if it is indeed a near or complete death experience, on any given day, for any unfortunate motorist. A sometimes unavoidable necessary evil to traverse.

If it’s not the typical snarl of Atlanta’s Rush Hour, which begins around 5AM or better, lasting until around, say the lunchtime hour, only to ramp back up around 2:30 and lasting somewhere between 7 and 8 PM. . .throw in an accident and the constant ongoing road construction or frustratingly the added construction of the Braves brand new state of the art baseball stadium, any time spent on this particular interstate is truly a white knuckle adventure to say the least.

So imagine my double take this morning as I was barreling making my death defying peaceful morning commute into town to Dad’s when glancing, ever so quickly, over at one of those large electronic roadwork signs perched over the interstate which flashed, not the speed limit, not the travel time between the next conjoining piece of interstate but rather flatly reading. . .
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

WHAT? I quickly glanced back over to the sign but the sign was now about a mile behind me as I was keeping up with the manic flow. . .
What a novel thought.
Pertinent information such as weekend hours of construction, lane shift dates and times, road fatalities are the usual fodder for these giant roadway signs. . .not exactly the place for philosophical waxing and waning. . .yet truly not only a good piece of wisdom for the harried motorist, but for the average person simply trying to navigate throughout their day.

Was God trying to tell me something as I made my way to the awaiting and ongoing loon factory at Dad’s?
Expect the Unexpected. . .hummmm

For good or bad, thinking ahead to what could be either figuratively or literally down the road is a good piece of wisdom.
Take nothing for granted, be prepared, think ahead, anticipate, take no prisoners, go forth, keep going and no matter what, go forward, don’t stop and never go backwards. . .

As I continued on my raceway drive to Dad’s, I considered what lay ahead–of me, of my day and of my life. . .
What would be waiting?
Who would be waiting?
How would poor ol Dad be today?
How would the caregiver be fitting into their lives?
What of the loons flying about, laying in wait with those haunting sounds. . .
Thoughts of what could be, what would be. . .
Yet one thought remained. . .
No matter what was down the road, what was around the corner, what was waiting for me at Dads. . .
God was already there. . .
He knew
He knows
And that’s okay by me. . .

I will always expected the unexpected
I will keep a vigilant eye out for what waits down the road. . .
All the while knowing that God is with me, behind me as well as ahead of me,
as I travel to whatever that may be. . .

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
Isaiah 43:2