Country-Ass Roads in the C.O.V.

The town of Covington in Newton County is a place that probably has a very different history from the cities I grew up around. I hear that the apartment complex where I live was farmland just a few decades ago. Back then, they say Atlanta was a much smaller town that was far, far away from Newton County’s residents. Now, Newton County is one of the fastest growing counties in the country. The development and urbanization scares some of the folks around here – there was a local politician who made his campaign slogan “Let’s keep Atlanta in Atlanta!”

Wow. I could tirade for hours about the ultra-conservative, racist undertones to a statement like that, but I leave that to another post, or to my commenters. From my view, Covington still has a character to it that you cannot get in a more developed place, like the sprawling city that lies within I-285, 35 miles west of me.

I’ve never minded long drives with no destination or direction; it usually gets me lost temporarily, then allows me to prevent myself from getting lost in the same area later on. I inherited my grandmother’s car two years ago when she passed on; I was still in Providence at the time; I was lazy about getting my driver’s license because of the public transit in the northeast and the thought that I would never get a car until I could afford one. Most of my aimless driving trips have been in Covington, Atlanta and in between, but my first was in Providence; I drove through providence, Pawtucket, and another town I can’t remember before I ended up in Cumberland. Hungry and lost, I ate lunch at a family Portuguese restaurant, found some directions back to the highway and made it back to Prov. just in time for a staged “chance meeting” to quickly greet my girlfriend’s parents before they headed to the airport. That meeting and the history behind it are also worth a separate post.

Back to aimless driving, no longer in Prov., now in Cov. The roads here wind and meander through middle-of-nowhere areas and into your town square; they can pretty quickly take you into the next town's square and into the next county before you notice. If you’ve lived and driven in a city all your life, it’s very interesting. Signs are less abundant since the roads are for the locals whose best road guide is their memory. You can’t get directions without someone referencing the local church or some other story-worthy landmark. And trees… trees, trees and more trees. The trees give you a comfortable feeling of solitude in your car without making you feel boxed in. The music that goes best with these country road drives is stuff that comes from this type of geography. Without me telling it to, my Ipod seems to spit out “American Pie” by Don MacLean or some Nappy Roots when I’m on these drives, listening to my library on shuffle.

I’m sure that my writing turns something very exciting for me into something boring and random for you to read, but take this away if nothing else: grab some good music, and your phone, or some other form of emergency communication (you will get lost if you do this right), and go on a drive with no particular destination. See what you see, and let me know how it feels.