This title is about walking down the road at about 3 mph, instead of driving 35-55-plus mph, the result being that your foot on the road versus your foot on the pedal puts you intimately closer to your ever-passing surroundings.
Walking, you are “at one with the ground” (Fred Flintstone’s feet were only on the ground when he applied his car’s “brakes”).
My walk down Danville’s Westover Drive to Food Lion was necessitated by my old Alero again being “in the shop.”
Being “at leg’s length” (variation on “arm’s length”) from people’s yards, you see things you would have missed while riding in a car. The time of my Alero’s temporary “disability” was shortly after Easter. While walking, I observed the “half-shells” of several discarded pink plastic Easter eggs lying in the grass of one yard. Sherlock Holmes’ logical deduction would have said that all the jelly beans inside them were consumed “on the spot,” so the “shells” were dropped right there, due to lack of any further use as “candy-delivering systems”).
Kudzu vines’ “tentacles” almost reached me in a couple of places along my route. They had not yet made it to the bike lane, apparently “desiring” to cross the road! Soon, the traffic will “mow” them back! I stepped on a few of their “exploring ends;” but the “mowing effect” of my 170-some pounds is minimal, compared to the automobile’s “double- tonnage cut!”
Next, a lost dime’s glow caught my eye! Despite having evidently been run over numerous times, it wasn’t any flatter than normal. Just as my weight couldn’t “cut” Kudzu; for coin flattening, you can’t do better than a train, or one of those coin-flattening theme park souvenir machines, (after which you get “features” totally different from originally minted).
Returning momentarily to Kudzu: unfortunately, the kudzu will be cut back EARLIER BY AUTOMOBILE TONNAGE IN THE BIKE LANE; because some Westover Drive drivers USE THAT DANGEROUSLY NARROW LANE TO PASS ON THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE OF THE ROAD!! (mini-rant over).
In another section of the road lay a dead tiger swallowtail butterfly. It’s sometimes dangerous navigating Westover Drive by car. Daughter, Rachel and son, Jeremy, warned me about walking Westover Drive. And seeing the dead swallowtail lying there, I said to myself: “It’s also sometimes dangerous traveling Westover Drive by air!”
Further on, nestled around the mulch of a mailbox’s supporting pole were palm-sized sculptures of a fox and squirrel (being a child of the 1950s and 60s cartoons, I wish it had been “Moose & Squirrel”). They were so cute that I’m surprised no pedestrian passersby had pocketed them. Some years ago, at Danville’s Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, someone stole the approximately 4-foot-tall statue of Saint Francis of Assisi from an outside garden area. Epiphany replaced it with an identical statue, locked in place with concrete. I imagine the little squirrel and fox are not similarly anchored; but to me, stealing from the good souls who so placed them there by the road would be about as reprehensible as stealing from the Church.
Along a weedy area was a set of 4 wire “prongs,” 2 stuck in the ground, and another set sticking up. Playing croquet next to Westover Drive would “A bit of a sticky wicket”(borrowing from cricket); but these were the remaining wires of a political poster, now collected, or blown away.
There was one luxuriously weedy-green, “homeless” square-shaped area, with two old tree stumps in the front. The grey color of an old gravel driveway barely shows through mid-spring’s growth; but I’m sure it will be totally covered later, when summer’s “weed riot” rules!
I walked past one lawn with a nice-sized trampoline. It wasn’t being used, and I certainly didn’t stop and use it; but I noticed a certain “bounce” in my step afterwards.
Suddenly, a cute little “fluffy” dog ran across Westover just ahead of me. It then sped up, going down a side road. Hopefully, that was where its home lay! I said to myself: “I hope the little thing’s “street-wise.”
Seeing some discarded, empty, liquor “mini-bottles” on the way to Food Lion and back, I deduced: “Fireball Cinnamon Whisky is popular on both sides of Westover Drive!” (literally).
Another area looked as though it had once been home to a long-departed house. There were a couple of neglected (but beautiful) rose bushes, and a huge, beautifully shaped cedar tree. I thought of my 1950s-60s childhood, when cedar trees were the “rage” at Christmastime (at least where I lived). For us, the “Christmas Tree Farm” lay in the shadowy depths of the woods behind our house, fallen needles of cedar and pine muffling each footstep.
One yard had a faux mini-millstone. I guess pretty much all the real millstones have been collected by this late date; so, there must need be faux ones! (and “faux mini-boulders” concealing septic and water devices).
In my walk, I encountered a few rusted screws and other tiny pieces of metal lying at road’s edge. I imagined these to be the fallen, “less needed” exterior pieces of cars, making no difference in a car’s travel (hopefully). Perhaps, in ancient times, there were tiny “extraneous” chariot pieces along the Appian Way.
The strangest thing seen during my entire walk was like something from a dream, obscured by intervening strands of Spanish moss (but in this case, ivy and Kudzu were: “Spanish moss”). I had never noticed this sight while driving; and just a chance turn of my head in its direction kept me from missing it, even while walking. “What is was, was”(Andy Griffith terminology) a small, very old, dingy stucco house “figuratively” hidden by the afternoon shadows of an adjacent woods, and “more-substantively” hidden by the great “kudzu curtain” dangling from an intervening tree.
“Ancient things” of seemingly utilitarian purpose littered the yard; but the shadows prevented precise identification.
The little stucco house’s front porch was supported by four “sufficiently fat” (but not Doric) pure white columns. The columns stood (no word jest) out from their dingy surroundings. I seem to remember them as fluted; but perhaps it was just the way the ivy vines’ linear shadows fell upon them. Just now, I’m not sure.
I could not pause and gape, for fear the door might open, with some “inquiring figure” stepping out onto the porch of that strange little house to analyze my rude, “analyzing” stare.
Not far away, another old house in the same woods had been demolished some years ago, a falling tree acting as the “wrecking ball!” Not trying to anthropomorphize a bunch of trees, but I imagine the house was too near the woods’ heart for the woods’ liking; so, the woods, using weapon at hand, “lobbed” a massive trunk (with equally massive boughs) towards roof and walls.
The strange and “cute” (in its own way) little house in the clearing must not have seemed so threatening to the adjacent woods; resulting in its being “graced” (and partially obscured) with tree-hung garlands of ivy and kudzu.
Perhaps, as time goes on, if no one is concerned or looks too hard, the old, little stucco house with its fancy columns and hoard of yard items will remain safe, lingering on in shadow, barely out of the woods, and barely beneath the surface of the consciousness of other people, who by chance, walk by.
