TheBanyanTree: Zombie Behind the Wheel

[B Drummond]

There it was ahead again.

Through the haze and blur that results from hours of interstate highway 
driving I managed to work out the words at the bottom left corner of the 
billboard,

"234 miles" it said,

to Ron Jon Surf Shop Cocoa Beach

While I wasn't going to the Space Coast on this trip, and while I have passed 
those huge highway signs hundreds of times over the years,  this time the ads 
caught my my eye, piqued my attention and helped to keep the slumber out of 
my eyes by giving me something different to think about.  Yes, something, 
anything else to think about. That was a good thing. Otherwise there was 
nothing to keep me from slowly becoming a full blacktop zombie seated like 
the living dead behind the wheel.

I can only drive so many hours now before I become interstate addled.  
Normally I stop and take a break.  Just the action of walking around frees me 
from the forces of drift, the same for a deep breathing of air not passed 
through a car's duct work of plastic and foam and sealants, the reorientation 
of position, the freeing myself from the confining box that is the inside of 
a vehicle insulated from wind and weather.  It becomes a brief liberation 
from the surreal movie screen that flashes before me mile after mile behind a 
wheel.

Nay, but not on this trip.  Time was short, time was of the essence.  There 
was too little of it and too many miles between A & B.   You see, I could not 
stop.

Just how old are Ron & Jon now? I thought.  Their billboards were there when 
I was a kid, before interstate highways, when major thoroughfare highways 
still ran through the center of towns -- when redlights and residential areas 
were the bane of interstate travel, when cattle haulers with a truckload of 
stink on the hoof plied concrete ribbons through a Florida of sand and pines 
and palmetto scrub.

Two surfers holding up pointed boards jammed in the sand, with Ron Jon in 
Chinese brush swipe letters,  the ocean in the background and decades of 
time. Another stop, another cup of coffee and a honey bun.  Life, a blur for 
another unknown quantity of time and another sign telling me that Ron Jon 
Surf Shop,  that One of a Kind, Open 24 Hours, 7 Days a Week, 365 Days a 
Year, Just Like the Beach Itself is now 196 miles away.

<Miles go by and I'm drifting again>

"Surf's Up on the Millpond" we used to joke in school.  Made us laugh but so 
did everything else.  "Do you love me, do you, Surfer Girl?" Bonnie Leigh 
wanted me to sing to her at the beach at Blue Spring.  I did.   California 
Dreaming with Mama Cass, John, Denny and Michelle. Oh, you can bet your best 
Tiki Bar shirt that I dreamed of it . . . again and again.   Oh, man, was 
Carol hot, hot, hot in that pastel blue bikini!  Whatever happened to her?  
Didn't remember seeing her at the class reunion.

<Miles go by and I'm drifting>
 
Valdosta blurred into Lake City and palmettos, hay fields and cattle, and 
Gainesville;  Gainesville into Big Daddy Garlitts' Racing Hall of Fame, Ocala 
into Wildwood and the Turnpike but there remained one constant: Ron Jon's 
Surf Shop, bigger than life, high in the sky and beckoning me east.  The only 
variation was the numbers in the lower left corner. Wildwood became Orlando 
and signs said take the Bee Line to Cocoa Beach and the Cape  -- straighter 
than a tight string all the way to Cocoa Beach,  the Banana River and Ron Jon 
Surf Shop.

But no, not on this trip, Ron or Jon.  The Turnpike's smooth roads carried me 
without stopping to Yeehaw, to West Palm, within rock-throwing distance of 95 
and then away past Royal Palms and canals with gators sunning on the banks.  
Egrets and buzzards and parrots lifted on wings above in azure skies. They 
rode currents of air above the signs that proudly told of Ron Jon Surf Shop, 
Ft Lauderdale.

At last I pulled up to the hotel lot where I'd made arrangements to stay, 
sleepy, dead-dog tired and ready for some few hours of much needed shut eye.  
There I was accosted by a man down on his luck, some of it his own doing, no 
doubt.

"Hey, buddy," he said, his hair looking like the tassel on an stalk of corn. 
"You got some change to spare? I'm hungry," he continued. He stood there 
before me in clothes that he must have worn to bed for a week in a row.

I dug around in my pockets and gave him what I had left from the change 
received back from the tolls on the Turnpike. 

"Hey,  man," he then said, "I've been kinda' out of it for a while. Haven't 
had my meds for a while.  Just where devil am I?" he asked.

"Oh, I'd say . . ." I halted for a moment. "I'd say you're about 174 miles 
from Ron Jon Surf Shop, " I said, quite to my own surprise.

He stared at me for a moment, his brow wrinkled in a puzzled look.  I could 
just hear the gears in his head turning.   Then slowly his face relaxed and 
his visage reflected a quiet peace.  

"Thanks," he said smiling.

"Don't mention it," I said as he walked off the lot, through a row of shrubs 
and away into the south Florida night.



  bd
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