By TEDDY ALLEN/Designated Writers
If you are on Interstate 20 and want to get to Troy, Alabama, take my advice:
Buckle your chin strap.
There is no easy way. I have been here several hours and have seen a lot of people — at hotels and restaurants and gas stations — and don’t know how all these people got here. It must have been by accident. There is no other way.
Louisiana Tech plays baseball against Troy’s baseball team this weekend. At Troy. That is too bad for Tech — because they have got to somehow figure out a way to get back to Ruston. And the guy who got them here has no idea how he did it.
I drove my own car and applaud him for his honesty because I don’t know how I got here either.
Donald drives the Tech bus and is one of the great all-time guys, not to mention bus drivers. I rolled in to the Troy hotel at the same time he did. I had spent the past two hours on roads with no shoulders. I grew up on roads with no shoulders but have gotten spoiled I guess. So has Mr. Donald, or Heavy D, as I call him.
“Hey Heavy, I might have to get you to tell me how to get out o….”
“I don’t know how we made it!” he said before I got through asking. He was not happy. Again, this is My Guy. If he, a professional driver and easygoing guy, is rattled, what chance do I have?
It sort or made me proud that I had at least gotten to Alabama Proper.
Seriously, if you leave Meridian, Mississippi and let Google Maps talk to you, you’ll hear something not too distant from what I heard from when I was a boy: “Go to the Ford Farm, take a right, drive about a mile and take a left at the stump,” and on like that.
Here is a part of Google’s instructions from Meridian to Troy:
Turn left onto US-31 N 1.5 mi.
Turn right onto AL-97S 9 mi
Turn left onto Meriwether Rd/Old Meriwether Trail 450 ft
Continue straight onto US-331 N 0.6 mi
And then it was roads named for people. Named for families. East this and West That. Each propelled me toward Troy, but not anywhere near the interstate system, God bless you General Eisenhower…
And on it went. Inch by inch on roads named for uncles and aunts. Onto Lapine Hwy for six inches. To E. Helicon Rd for 40 feet. Turning left on Cty Rd 55/Shady Grove Rd and then to Country Road 101 and to N 3 Notch St for 0.1 miles and finally, right after I’d heard banjo music, there were lights. And a Popeye’s. And a Ruby Tuesdays. A Jack’s advertising two sausage biscuits for $2.22.
Glory!
Again, I’m sure it’s a great town. There is a Waffle House in our hotel’s parking lot, so I can’t complain
Troy’s just hard to get to. Like the Holy Grail is hard to get to.
I pray it’s easier to get out of.
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