Why is it that life throws you a curveball when you least expect it? I mean, honestly, is it too much to ask for a simple man like me to be granted the mere satisfaction of a nice Saturday afternoon excursion into the heart of yesteryear?

When I set out yesterday morning to explore the “Great Unknown”, I didn’t intend on committing vehicular homicide. Oh, well. At least I can prove now, without a shadow of a doubt that a deer really is prone to staring at headlights. Tuning the radio out in the sticks can be a dangerous proposition for deer, I guess. The poor little bugger never had a prayer.

If it wasn’t for the occasional interruption of a four-legged nuesance, driving would be my personal Nirvana. Riding on the high lonesome is something of a pastime for me, actually. Just me, my automatic four-wheel drive pony, and endless amounts of road ahead of me. Some people like to fish in these parts; others go hunting, while a few old souls sit around the decrepit wood-burning stove in Quincey’s General Store in downtown Clearwater, chewing the fat and drinking a Coke.

Never let it be said that time hasn’t passed the community of Clearwater over. She sits nestled in the foothills of the Georgia Mountains, and stands as a relic from a by-gone era. Truth be told, she isn’t much to look at, really. A small building that serves as both the Town Hall and the city police station stands at the intersection with the town’s only traffic light. The Clearwater Baptist Church Group held a bake sale at the one-room schoolhouse several years ago to raise money to build it. Just down the road from there is a small tavern known affectionately as “The Minister’s Alehouse”. It got that name from the drunken minister who would frequently patron the joint. More often than not, members of his congregation would have to drag him across the street to the church on Sunday for the morning service. No one knows what it was originally called, because the facade on the front of the wood structure was torn off during the great Clearwater Tornado of 1976. Two of old Farmer Brown’s chickens lost their lives in that storm. Not to mention a few feathers.

I’ve never actually stopped in the little town before. Clearwater is merely an afterthought as people from Murphy and Helen pass through on the way to Atlanta. But I have passed through there many a time, on the way to nowhere in particular. You know you’re getting close when you can smell the greasy hamburgers cooking at Jenny’s Diner. The place looks like your typical ’50s fare, except with a small Confederate flag fluttering above the pastel paint scheme coating the diner. The flag is in worse condition than the building is. Of course, the putrid aroma of the diner is quickly overpowered by the smells emmanating from Craig’s Gas Station just down the street. Old Man Craig doesn’t actually own the place; instead, he just sits out front drinking moonshine on a rickety old rocking chair that probably serves as target practice for the annual Clearwater Turkey Shoot. Hell, it may have been the target, who knows. Clearwater is a strange place.

Then again, there is something uniquely romantic about that little spot in the road. I once saw a father and son pair (in matching overalls of course) walking to the ballfield by the fishin’ hole with their gloves. There is nothing greater for a young boy on a Saturday afternoon than having a catch with his Dad. On sunny days in the spring time, you can almost taste the buttered popcorn that the Miss April makes for her school children. The General Store is always teeming with life when I pass through, though the building itself looks like its one great huff away from blowing down. Old men with faded John Deere hats play bottlecap checkers while the young ‘uns run around the rough wooden counter with their crackers. Clearwater may be small town in the middle of nowhere, but damn if there isn’t something strangely pleasant about the place.

I guess half the fun of Clearwater is getting there in the first place. I’m a sucker for a drive through the Southland, you know. Driving through the backwoods of the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia is a religious experience for me. It used to be a religious experience for the American spirit, as well. No one just gets up and drives anymore; they can’t afford it. Today’s world is seemingly stuck in the clutches of money, and we’re on the outside looking in.

One day, towns like Clearwater will disappear off the map. The old pharmacies, hardware stores and grills that used to line Main Street, U.S.A. will soon be gone, replaced by Wal-Marts, Walgreen’s and McDonald’s. The content faces of the townspeople will be erased as quickly as the identity of the town, as the American Spirit slowly dies. Is it enough to ask why the changing landscape takes away as much as it gives? Or that it seems as if times change only to break your heart? I wish I had the answers… I wish someone had the answers.

Looking through my cracked windshield at the exact spot where a brave buck made its last stand, I can only sit idle in the driver’s seat, listening to the invading static of the radio. The sun is slowly starting to set on the horizon, by now. There’s no way I’ll ever catch up to it before the darkness overtakes the land.

If Clearwater sounds remarkably like your town, that’s because it is your town.

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