Originally published in the Ortonville Independent on June 9,2020 as part of the ongoing series, “Tales of the Whetstone River”.
Time drags, but the days go by quickly. Organized, responsible people forget what day of the week it is. With seemingly less to do, people feel overwhelmed by the inconsequential. Those who are calm by nature get irritated by the smallest thing. Some days fatigue settles in early and refuses to leave.
This is how I’d been feeling when I received an offer I couldn’t refuse.
“Want to ride along with me to Albany?” my son, Steve, asked. The city is about an hour away from his house in upstate New York.
“I’d love to. Why are you going?”
“To drop off my nail gun. Have it repaired.”
It was a perfect spring day, and I’d have no responsibilities. All I had to do was enjoy the passing scenes. Steve had driven the route innumerable times, but when approaching a notorious interchange of two major interstate highways he missed the exit.
“Here,” he said, handing me his cell phone, “read the directions as we go. The audio’s not working.”
Distracted by an old magnolia tree in full bloom directly across from an intersection, I read the instructions too late, and I missed calling out the turn. It wasn’t just me who was out of kilter, but time and again by the time the instructions appeared it was too late to make the turn. This happened time and again. We were often going back in the wrong direction in order to go forward.
The directions brought us into a luxurious suburb. I was torn between looking at the beautiful houses with wonderful landscaped property or reading the screen. My eyes went back and forth between flowering crab trees, beds of jonquils, and redbuds and the screen that would intermittently give another turn right or turn left. Then, unexpectedly, a woman’s voice spoke up telling us when to turn. The audio was working.
“I can’t believe we’re going in the right direction,” I said.
“Me neither, but I don’t have a map with me. Let’s give the GPS a little more time.”
The “grand” homes turned to “fine” homes which after a time became “normal” homes. But gorgeous trees and lush foliage continued to amaze me.
Steve took the phone from me.
“What the hell!”
“What’s wrong?”
“It says we have another hour and twenty minutes before we arrive at our destination!”
The shop was closing in fifteen minutes.
This time he pulled over, looked at the screen again, and started to laugh.
“It says more than an hour, but that the shop is only a mile and a half away! The GPS is out of whack today!”
We didn’t have a map, but not wanting to take time to boot up a different GPS site, we continued following the woman’s directions. Another “turn right” brought us to an industrial strip. On one side of the wide street stood vacant buildings, some with ornate brickwork, others with richly carved wood pediments. Incongruously, there was also one small business, a Vietnamese take-out. On the other side newer utilitarian buildings housed storage units and construction supply companies. Everything was one drab color except for a magnificent red crab apple tree standing on pavement without a blade of grass in sight. It was all rather otherworldly.
The street signs were hard to read as the GPS woman’s voice continued to whip out directions. By chance, Steve saw the company’s logo high atop a group of low buildings, made a quick exit, and pulled up in front of the shop. We’d made it with only five minutes to spare.
That afternoon Steve and I’d been at the mercy of technology gone haywire with no way to fix it. Just as these days all of us feel helpless in an out of kilter world. In time, Steve’s GPS will right itself, and in time, I trust the world will also.
Meanwhile time continues to drag. Fatigue settles in early. We’re all still out of whack.