11/29/07 - Over the River, along the Dirt Road

One would think the technological wonder of a GPS would lead a motorist along the most cutting-edge route to a location. Given the amazing abilities of a GPS to tell the driver what road he’s driving and where he needs to turn, you almost expect the car to leave the road and fly to your destination.

Consider this definition for GPS found on www.garmin.com: “The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation system made up of a network of 24 satellites placed into orbit by the U.S. Department of Defense. GPS was originally intended for military applications, but in the 1980s, the government made the system available for civilian use. GPS works in any weather conditions, anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day. There are no subscription fees or setup charges to use GPS.”

You can feel a bit like James Bond or Batman if you let the concept of the GPS go to your head, especially if it is in your car.

Last week, my family used a GPS to seek a different route to my folks’ place up in West Virginia. For nearly 20 years, I’ve made the trip to West Virginia and back by interstate. This time, we let the GPS find us a different route.

Given the technological marvel of the GPS, one might think we used it to find a cutting-edge route. Instead, we let it take us where it would through Georgia and most of the Carolinas programming it not to designate interstates.

That satellite orbiting the Earth took us down some great backroads that allowed us to see some prime Georgia country.

We saw what must have inspired the words in the old song “Dixie.” Those lines about the “land of cotton” and being born “early on one frosty morn.” It was a cold Saturday morning. As the sun rose, we saw the shimmer of frost on the white fluff of cotton in the fields.

Veils of fog rose like vapor streamers from small ponds and lakes that dotted the landscape. Fields were green and ochre with grass changing colors for fall.

Trees burst into red rusts, the orange of citrus peels, the yellows of yield signs as leaves made their seasonal change along the limbs.

The occasional McDonald’s or Burger King dotted the route but, more often, there were mom and pop shops filled with eggs and griddles, pots of coffee and counters of conversation.

On one occasion, we missed the directions given by the GPS.

The system corrected itself, trying to get us back on track with the route it selected for us. Instead of telling us to turn around and go back, the GPS took us through a series of dirt roads of Georgia red clay.

We bumped along these dirt roads, passing farms and tractors, under canopies of rainbow-leafed trees, staring at cows, goats and horses that stared back at us.

Roads fed into small towns populated with various Southern architecture, deep from the past and as recent as a building permit, styled as deep as well-moneyed pockets will allow or as simple as ingenuity would permit.

One town square was dominated by a massive courthouse. Columns, stone and brick filled the windshield. It was one of those courthouses built decades ago, likely a century ago, when Southern towns exhibited both their prosperity and hopes for the future by investing in the construction of an impressive courthouse built to last as surely as law and justice would last, as certainly as the folks hoped their town would last.