Morning Walk
This morning Barnie and I took a walk along the highway outside McIntosh Manor RV Park, which is too small for a walk of any length. Traffic was light on the highway at first light, so we headed out. There’s something about walking along an unfamiliar street or highway in the early morning. It’s an even better feeling when there’s water on the ground from a recent storm. Leaving the park, we were greeted with a Piggly Wiggly right outside the park that looked nearly magical with the dark, misty sky and the water on the ground reflecting the lights.
We passed by other empty looking businesses on our way to the four-way stop that’s the centerpiece of the small town where we’re staying. Each added something to the scenery of the walk in their own way. Sure, a quiet walk through nature is great, Barnie and I both love it, but an early morning walk through a small town is interesting, too
Yesterday while we were driving to get a new battery, we saw a red phone booth that looked very out of place (the only way a phone booth can look in 2024) until we saw it was right outside of a squat redbrick building housing the Darien Telephone Company. It looked like something from another time. Well, this morning we found it’s satellite office: the Darien Telephone Company, Eulonia, GA. It didn’t have its own phone booth outside, but at 6:30 on a Saturday morning it had a similar out of time feel.
The encounter that most stood out, however, was the volunteer fire station. It looked empty yesterday when we drove past it during the day, and it certainly didn’t look less empty this morning. That’s why it was a surprise to hear sounds coming from it was we walked past. We were already past its driveway when I heard something behind be. It sounded like someone talking on a phone from far away. It didn’t concern me enough to turn around, since there was a house or two nearby, but it perked me up. I soon realized I was hearing a communication (dispatch) radio. It sounded like it was coming from the firehouse, so we turned around to investigate. Sure enough, it was coming from inside the empty station. It sounded like it was just a scanner, but the feeling it provoked was strong. It felt like a being in a video game where the player comes across and empty radio station and learns something or is given a new mission. Obviously, it was in reality a mundane occurrence, a police scanner at a fire station, but in the emptiness of the early morning, it became a near otherworldly encounter.
