I was driving my mother, my aunt and my mother's dog, Gracie, to Savannah for a few days. The hardest part was eating - finding places along the route that were dog friendly and would accept Gracie's company. Somewhere in north Georgia we slid off I-95 and found a fast food drive-thru . We ordered take out plates of chicken, fries and bread, and the ubiquitous half-gallon sized cups of ice and sweet tea. After dragging the bags through the truck window we set about trying to find a place to eat.
It was hot. Georgia hot. Southern hot. The hot that makes the red clay dry and crack and crumble, and you wish there was breeze enough to blow the red dust away. It was humid. The kind of humid that makes you take a deep breath just to remember how to breath. The kind of humid that instantly makes your shirt stick to your back, and, despite the glare of the sun, makes it impossible to wear a hat. Despite the heat and humidity, because we needed to get out of the truck and stretch our bones, we set about to find a place to eat outside. We found it.
Somewhere along a black two-lane road, several miles from the interstate, past the gas stations and fast food joints, the barbecue pit and the local mechanic's shop. Past the few old brick ranch houses with red dirt driveways and browning lawns hugging the edge of the road. Past a derelict schoolhouse built during the Depression by a crowd of young men who worked for the Roosevelt relief organizations when the farms and banks failed, and which was ultimately closed when those young men came home from the war and moved their families from the farms to the factories for better jobs. We finally came across a small brick church with a white wooden steeple a hundred feet off the road.
I told them we'd eat there - surely there was a picnic table - at least there were some giant oaks shading the parking lot and the back of the building. I eased the truck down the dry red drive and around the church only to find a beautifully kept graveyard shaded by live oaks dangling Spanish moss. We parked under a tree and ate on the tailgate and in the cab. We drank tea and talked about our own churches. We bundled up our trash and placed it in the fifty gallon drum that had a piece of tin held on top by half a cinderblock. Mother walked Gracie through the shaded cemetery; I tried to decipher the worn epitaphs in the oldest stones. No morbidity, just a stop on our way. At a friendly churchyard off the interstate. It was a good lunch.
