Petersburg is so small you can easily miss it as you travel on US 431 between Lewisbug and Fayetteville. I would say that Petersburg has seen better days, but I don't know when they might have been. It suffers from the same problem many small towns do, no real economic base. When I spent time there in 1971, there were several businesses open on the tiny square, but few of them survive today. One of them is the antique business owned by Maggie's dad, Turk. Turk is somewhat of a legend in Petersburg. He is 89 years old now and still going. The day I visited Maggie, Turk and his wife were off to Pulaski in search of more antiques to buy. My strongest memory of Turk is the size of his hands. Big, bony hands that would swallow yours up in a hand shake. Not bone crushing, just huge. Your hand would disappear inside his! I'm not sure he liked me much back then, and I know he didn't trust me, being a Yankee and all. Mostly he just scared me.
After a nice visit and a glass of water on Maggie's front porch, I decided it was time to high-tail it to Georgia and John Pluschau's place. It was getting late in the afternoon and I still had about four or five hours of riding ahead. It was still very hot, in the 90's, but it is such pretty country, I just rode on. The route took me through Suwanee, home of the University of the South and up the switchbacks on US 64 to Monteagle. I stopped for a snack at the junction of US 64 and I-24 and got in line behind a bus full of a girls' volleyball team at the checkout. They all had snacks and all paid with a credit card! How to I pick 'em anyway?!!
I arrived at John's place in Roswell around 8pm and John had the steaks on the grill. He and Pam and I had a nice dinner and caught up on the latest family stuff.
On Friday, John and I took off for Lake Lanier, where John keeps his Boston Whaler boat. John bought the boat a couple of years ago.
John and I also go back to Martin College. John came to Martin my second year in 1972. He and I were the only two students from New York. John is from Massapequa, Long Island although he's been living in Georgia for 30 years. We were the resident Yankees on the Martin campus back then. We also went to Western Kentucky University after Martin, where we were roommates for most of that time. John has worked for United Beverage for 30 years. He's a booze salesman.
When we were in college, I visited John's home in Massapequa several times. On one visit, we went out in his family's Boston Whaler, which looked much like his current boat. We went to a seaside bar and when we headed back for his dock, we ran aground out in the bay, about a mile away from shore. It was pitch black and chilly, as I remember. The tide had gone out and we were stuck on a sandbar, we couldn't move! We spent the night in the boat and finally got moving when the tide came back in about dawn. It was cold and creepy out there!
This day was different, as Lake Lanier has no tide and we have a little more sense! We spent a couple of hours zooming around the lake and stopped a couple of times to go swimming.
The water temperature was 82 degrees.
We had another great grilled out dinner that evening. My plan for the next day was to leave early and ride up to North Carolina so I could ride the "Tail of the Dragon" at Deal's Gap. US 129 between Robbinsville, NC and Madisonville, TN contains the Dragon. 318 curves in 11 miles! Here's a a web site dedicated to the Dragon: http://www.tailofthedragon.com/ . I've ridden the Dragon twice before, but never on a weekend. As it turned out, the forecast was for rain to move in by Saturday night and all day Sunday was forecast to be rainy. I probably could have gotten in and ridden the Dragon, but then I would be riding home Sunday though a lot of rain. The radar didn't look promising.
I decide to head for home Saturday morning instead. I headed out up I-75 towards Chattanooga, Nashville and home. I ran through a little rain north of Chattanooga, but otherwise it was a beautiful day to ride. Much cooler than it was going down, so very nice. I arrived home about 6pm Saturday, 1300 miles later. A really good trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment