Lost in Lufkin

Dear Lufkin:

I'm sure that very nice people live within your city limits, but whatever engineering flunkie designed the roads and highways around you should be strung up, flogged and left to be mocked in public.

Sincerely,
Ticked in Texas

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Up until this point, we had been making good time, and I was now certain that we'd have some time to kill once we got to Huntsville. I was feeling confident. Apparently too confident.

Mom and I got on "the loop" in Lufkin, trying to find the elusive Highway 94 for which we never saw signs.

"Do I stay on or exit?" I asked my map-reading mom. The exit was five seconds away.

"Well, we're on a loop."

Not what I needed to hear.

I exited.

Big mistake.

We soon discovered that we were heading in quite the opposite direction from where we wanted to go.

Turn around. Head back into Lufkin. I was already formulating much more vulgar-sounded alternate names in my mind.

Back onto "the loop." To stay on the loop, it turns out, you have to acutally exit the loop; otherwise, it turns into a highway going in yet another direction other than where we wanted to go. We, unfortunately, did not exit.

I let out a primal, frustrated combination of a yell and growl and a "dammit." My mom was still looking at the map, still telling me that we needed Highway 94. Signs for said highway had never yet materialized.

Finally, I decided it was time to pull over and ask for directions, so we did. There was a man getting his mail at a house we were about to pass. I pulled over and rolled down the window, catching his attention. I proceeded to ask directions, only to find out ...

He was deaf.

Of course.

He was able to read my lips enough to figure out what I was asking, and I was able to make out "loop" (argh!) and "turn around."

Okay ...

Heading back into Lufkin (it was the third time in an hour I had seen this place), there was a sign assuring passersby that God answers prayer. Unfortunately for Lufkin, I was praying that a giant sinkhole would open up and swallow the whole place, along with its roads, so someone who had gotten higher than a "C" in civil engineering could have a go at it.

We found Highway 94. Finally. And we left the Purgatory that was Lufkin. Finally.

We passed through towns and stretches of highway that seemed pleasant enough in the daylight, but they had that eerie quality that made me pray that our car wouldn't break down in the area anytime close to sunset. Scenes from "The Reaping" kept coming to mind (thanks, Chris).

We passed Horton's Hollow, which may be where he heard the Who.

We passed a rotted wooden sign marking a side road that proclaimed that down that road was the "Boggy Slough." I don't know if it's supposed to be a camping area or what ... but if I was going to promote an area, I wouldn't name it the "Boggy Slough."

Somewhere just outside of Hudson, Texas, we passed Mike's Bar. Across the street from Mike's was Linda's Bar. About a hundred feet down the road was Pete's Bar. I'm serious. I wondered whether Mike, Linda and Pete all lived in the same trailer park close to the Boggy Slough or Horton's Hollow.

We had lost whatever lead we'd built on our time to meet Jeff and Robyn, but we did eventually get to Huntsville (way down by Houston, for all practical purposes), and I finally got to meet my sister-in-law and nearly-here Josh (due June 27).

And aside from the fact that the fuse for the car's radio died in Huntsville (waaaaaay south in Texas, remember) and we didn't have a radio (or a CD player ...) for the entire trip home, the rest of the day was good. I even triumphed over Dallas traffic and landed Mom and I safely in Norman, Oklahoma, that night. Because I'm a rock-on awesome driver like that. A rock-on awesome driver who had fortunately packed an iPod with about 22 songs on it ... driving with one earphone in is an interesting experience.