Still So Vivid in My Mind’s Eye

Still So Vivid in My Mind’s Eye

I see it still so vividly every now and then when it comes to mind. From a car window, along a rural stretch of Interstate Highway 95, somewhere in the vicinity of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, decades ago. It was late in the afternoon, the sun was beginning to think of setting, hanging low across the sky, shining its light on endless acres and acres of broad dark green leaves of a tobacco crop. And in the midst of it, within yards of the highway, was a dilapidated old farm house, white with faded green trim, and a man and a boy, suppose his son, shirtless on a hot July day, in worn denim overalls, settled on the bottom two front porch steps, looking across the rows of tobacco at the highway.

And it has stayed with me all these years. I was just a kid and we were on an ill-fated family trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando. It was recently newly opened and we were new vacationers, first trip ever. I was put in charge of the AAA triptik, which back in the day was a loose leaf type of paper map of the route we were to take. You could even calculate how many miles you had gone and how many still to go. It all fascinated me, traveling and following along on the triptik, a great sense of accomplishment when you could turn one page and move along to the next, each time getting closer to the destination.

Not having been outside my smaller Long Island town much, seeing all the farms and rural towns and wide open spaces was so different and so interesting to me. I remember having always been curious about things that I came across and all these new places and people I was coming in contact with amazed me. I do believe this all fueled a life-long interest in road-tripping and traveling across America, even though we never made it to Disney World those years ago.

I wonder what became of those two people and that farmhouse and the fields of tobacco. Like many rural spots from those days, perhaps development has taken over by now and the fields and the farmhouse are gone. The man must be an old man by now, maybe he is still there, hanging on while the next generations farm the land, if the farm is still there. The boy, like me, must be getting a bit long in the tooth. Maybe the both of them are long gone.

In my mind I can still go back to that place and that time as if it were yesterday and not decades ago. It’s funny, isn’t it, that when I think back to those days, it’s that late afternoon glimpse into a different life than what I had known and not the Disney World ultimate destination that did not come to pass, that is most stirring to me. Had I actually made it to Disney, perhaps it would have been different, but I don’t think so.

Today, I’m not dreaming of finally getting to Disney World, but I do wish I could find that spot in rural North Carolina again, and those two people, and talk to them, and remember together what is still so vivid in my mind’s eye.