The Long Cut

Or-the result of me taking a shortcut down a twisty country road.

I think I’d just passed the wooden sign on private land by i-65 that reads “Go to Church or the Devil Will Get You” when I smelled something burning. I was driving with my baby daughter to visit my dad. He was still living in the same house I grew up in, nestled in the hills of a small community in the middle eastern part of Alabama. I’ve been a big city girl since adulthood. The smell persisted long enough that I started to think yikes! Is that coming from my car? I decided to pull over at the next exit, popped the hood and took a gander. In my very professional opinion, everything looked fine.

But I still was not sure what to make of the smell when I got back in the car. My daughter was napping like an angel in her car seat. As any parent knows you take advantage of nap time to drive as far down the road as you can. So, I hopped back on the interstate.

There was a short cut to dad’s house I’d learned about. My Uncle Joe had told me about it when I’d seen him on one of his snowbird trips from Wisconsin. It saved about half an hour and it was less miles. This was not a route shown on the navigation systems of the time, which were very fond of interstates and state highways. My uncle was very matter of fact and showed me on his paper map exactly which numbered roads to take.

I’ve taken Uncle Joe’s short cut since then and here’s the directions I would give: Take the exit just a piece down from the iconic Big Peach water tower in Clanton but also uncomfortably near a cliff-with a gargantuan Confederate flag that flies over the interstate. The road you exit onto is Highway 31, but you are only to stay on it briefly. From there you wind and turn your way down gravel top country roads that cut through masses of pine trees until you reach civilization again.

Before learning Uncle Joe’s way, I’d taken more inhabited routes. You know like with signs of people? But that fateful day, with my sweet baby girl snoozing in the back and a faint burnt smell in the air, I decided to use the short cut. Be like Robert Frost and take the road less travelled, save a couple bucks on gas, but most importantly, get to Dad’s before my baby woke up.

The signs of habitation dwindled as I got further and further from the highway. A driveway here, a mailbox there, a Baptist church sign which surely had a message like “Think it’s hot here? Hell’s hotter”, and then…pine trees…and more pine trees. That’s when I felt the heat on my right leg.

I looked down and noticed the middle console next to my leg had a hole in the side. I darted my eyes back to the road for a moment then looked again at the hole. Peering through the hole I saw my car was on fire! If I had been alone in the car I would’ve screamed and swerved off the road. But remember I had my precious baby sleeping peacefully in the back. So instead, I screamed in my head and calmly moved forward.

The road I was travelling on had a ditch on both sides of the road making it difficult to safely pull over. But soon, I saw a side road, turned on to it and pulled over just past the stop sign. I quickly grabbed my phone and carefully extracted my daughter from her car seat then briskly walked towards the main road. I went a distance far enough away that we wouldn’t be hurt when the car blew up like in the movies.

I called 911 and was shocked when someone answered. They told me the fire department would be notified. I called my daddy. He said he was on the way. And then I waited at the T in the road. About five minutes passed.

Now I would like you to imagine you’re a man driving home from work one day on the familiar country roads you patrolled when on duty with the Sheriff’s department. You’re excited to get home, take off your shoes and stretch out in your living room when you see emerging in the distance: A young, attractive woman, with an adorable baby on her hip pacing along the roadway with only pine trees standing guard.

The poor man had no choice but to pull over. He was in an unmarked vehicle. When he walked over to me, he quickly handed me his business card and told me he was off duty but just checking to see if we were okay. If I had to describe him, I would say he was a handsome Jeff Foxworthy without the redneck jokes. I don’t remember his name so for the sake of clarity we will call him Handsome Jeff.

I told Handsome Jeff my harrowing story and that the fire truck and my daddy was on the way. He said he would wait with me if I didn’t mind. And here’s the reason why he didn’t want to leave me there: because recently a couple in the area had pulled over to help a man and instead been held at gun point and robbed (and I don’t remember maybe he also said they got shot too!). And the gunman was still on the loose.

We chatted, I waited for the car to go up in a hell fire, and we turned our heads towards occasional vehicle sounds hoping it was the fire truck. About another ten minutes passed. Handsome Jeff asked me if he could go to my car and check out the situation. I told him, sure. He took a minute or two to investigate and walked back over to me. Handsome Jeff said he saw the burnt hole but there didn’t appear to be any fire behind the hole. It was dark in the hole. I was relieved. Not only because he did see a hole so I was not deemed crazy, but there was no fire so maybe the car wouldn’t blow up? He said he thought I would be fine to drive it again but that we could keep waiting for my daddy to get there. I asked Handsome Jeff to keep waiting with me and cancelled the fire truck I’d ordered twenty minutes ago. Pretty soon Daddy arrived, we thanked Handsome Jeff profusely. Daddy drove my car because I still didn’t trust it, and I drove his. We planned to call the auto shop in the morning.

The next morning the auto shop agreed to take a look at my car right away so that I could feel safe driving it back to Nashville. They pried open the console and immediately located the issue. Inside the console is a lightbulb that illuminates the gear shifter. The bulb had come out of its housing somehow and leaned onto the inside wall of the console. The heat from the bulb burned the console and eventually burned out the bulb.

I’d smelled burning, I’d felt heat, and maybe I hadn’t seen fire but seen the light!

I kept Handsome Jeff’s business card until I got back to Nashville. I sent him a note thanking him again and giving him an update. I knew he’d be tickled how things had turned out.