Asking directions

One of the observations I’ve had while doing the motorcycle thing is that overwhelmingly my riding partners hate to ask directions. They’ll gather around a faded printout from a Google or MapQuest map, studying the little lines like ancient runes on a cave wall, everyone pointing in a different direction while not being certain where we even are at that moment.

Me, I’ve learned to love to stop and go in somewhere and ask. I’ve met some of the nicest and kindest folks on earth who don’t mind admitting that they don’t even know how to get out of town. I’ve met little old ladies who will give you minute details of each landmark but cannot tell you the name of the highway; I’ve talked to guys from Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq and one from Kenya.

Many of the clerks are young ladies in their 20s, trying to get by on a minimum wage check. Most are either single moms or from their talk they are about to be (single, that is). In almost every instance though there is a common thread.

If they aren’t busy, they all love to talk and laugh. Even the sourpuss at the Stop and Get It in somewhere Mississippi (if I knew, I wouldn’t stop to ask directions). At 24, she had the attitude of a 20-year veteran of convenient stores. She was surly with the two customers in front of me and when I stepped up to the counter, her frown deepened.

There I stood, black T-shirt covered by a leather vest, black do-rag on my head, worn blue-jeans and heavy leather boots, fingerless leather gloves and a pair of biker glasses shoved back on my head. Just another dummy lost on the highway.

“Some mornings it just doesn’t pay to chew through the leather straps and escape, does it?”

She moved her hand slightly toward the cell phone on the counter.

I laid the worn map on the counter and tried again. “I know where I am I just don’t know where this is on the map. I don’t mind going back where I came from, if you’ll just point out how I got here. And I know I probably can’t get there from here so if you’ll just send me somewhere else then show me how to get there from there, that’d be a big start.”

I noticed the corners of her lips sort of quiver as they turn up toward a smile.

“Honey (I knew I had her there…when a southern gal calls you honey, you know it’s going to be okay) I don’t know where you’re headed or where you’re from, but if you wound up here, you gotta be lost. No one comes here from somewhere else on purpose. Let’s see if I can get you to somewhere else.”

I learned she’d been working there 3 years, had son “fixin” to start school this year. Married at 16, divorced at 17 (she and her brothers pitched him out when he decided to take his depression out on her). She was pregnant when they married, miscarried, then got pregnant again right before the divorce. He was going to start school this fall. She just received her first child support check and her lawyer let her keep it all even though she owed him money. Her dream was to open her own beauty shop; she already did hair in her mama’s garage. Two nights a week she made almost as much as her day job. I wished her luck, both with the job and the child. She wished me well on my journey and got me back on the road with a free cup of coffee.
She stepped outside as I saddled up. Her smile stayed with me for many miles down the road.


I hum a little Simon and Garfunkel:

kathy, Im lost, I said, though I knew she was sleepingI
m empty and aching and I dont know why
Counting the cars on the new jersey turnpike
Theyve all gone to look for america
All gone to look for america
All gone to look for america
***
I don’t mind asking directions… on the side roads or highways of life you need all the help you can get. Sometimes you give as good as you get.