Foggy

 

               It should be understood that my brain is somewhat foggy most of the time, but that is not the subject of today’s “flight of fantasy”.  Actually “flight of fantasy” is a misnomer, in as much as this article is all true.

               Today is Monday; I am sitting on my rocker waiting to take Gabi to school. I have a cup of coffee to sip on as I wait. This morning there is fog in the area but it is not too foggy; I can see to the end of the block. I have noticed that every bird in the area seems to be making some type of noise this morning. Possibly the fog has caused me to focused on the bird sounds. There is one bird that has an annoying sound and I think he knows it.

               This fog started me thinking about fog in Sothern Illinois. For those of you that have never experienced a southern Illinois fog you may not totally understand or believe what I am imparting to you.

I lived in Cape Girardeau, MO which was located on the Mississippi river. There was an old narrow bridge that was kind of shaped like an arch that crossed from Missouri to Illinois. At its highest point it was approx. 150 feet above the river. 

Across the bridge from Cape were thousands of acres, all flat southern Illinois farm land. This farm land was black-land reclaimed from the Mississippi river. 

In those days, I was just a kid of 17, dating a girl who lived in southern Illinois. Normally the drive to and from her home was easy. The roads were fairly straight with one intersection. The drive was about 6 miles and there was usually a lot of truck traffic. Also there were several bars on the Illinois side of the river, which cause you to watch for drunks late at night.

One particular night about 11:30, my date and I started towards her home. We drove over the bridge toward Illinois and as we descended from the bridge to the river bottoms we ran into the densest fog I have ever seen. You may have heard the saying, “it was so foggy that you could not see your hand in front of your face” it was that foggy.

Anyone with common sense would have turned around and went back to Missouri but I was a know it all kid so I kept going. The broken white line in the center of the road was how I knew I was still on the road. At one point I was hanging my head out of the window to see the center line. We were driving very slow and after a while we arrived at the intersection. There was some pole lights that helped us know we had to stop.

Not being able to see 20 feet in any direction we took a chance and pulled through the intersection to get on the road to McClure. It was about another two miles to McClure. We unintentionally drove past McClure and didn’t know it until we saw a motel that had those, “yellow bug lights” they used in the olden day. The yellow lights were visible through the fog so we pulled in and turned around. Now we knew we were about a half mile past McClure so we started back. As we approached McClure we were able to see some lights from the Bar (The Why Not Club) which helped us fine our turn into the little town. 

I dropped her off at her house and instead of just staying put for the night I started for home. Somehow I made it back to Missouri without being in a wreck.

As usual, when I got back to Missouri I met up with my buddies. We would run around doing things we shouldn’t for the rest of the night.

 

I hope you have a good non-foggy day.

 

Don Ford