Living on the wrong side, traveling time warp, and the greater truth

I just realized there is a difference between leaving the country and leaving the Country. The latter requires passports and stuff while the former just means driving for an hour or so.

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

I went to the city yesterday. I don’t know why everyone is making such a big deal about it. Just because I haven’t left the country for six or five months doesn’t mean I can’t leave, it just means I don’t like to.  After all I’ve been out of Southside Virginia three times-been to two hog callin’s and a chitlin’ strut. I’ve seen everything worth seeing.

We won’t even discuss that there are some rumors that I once lived in a city and in several other states. This is my story and I get to tell it like I want and although everything is true I get to leave out some of the truth.

In any case as I am going through the third toll booth (or was that the first toll booth the third time) I told the attendant I was going to drive until I ran out of money or gas and then they could decide what to do with me.  She was very nice and concerned and offered to give me directions. “Where’s the fun in that?” I asked and left.

I did arrive at my destination on time. Then I arrived at my second destination on time. My final destination was home and I needed to be there by 4:00. Everything was going great and I was only 10 minutes from a road I know when something happened.  I don’t know what it was or how it happened but the next thing I knew I was going the wrong way on the wrong road. By the time I figured it out I had driven an hour and was an extra half hour away from home.

Somehow I left Petersburg and ended up on the wrong side of Richmond.  My theory is that they moved the roads or something. Maybe they moved Richmond.  If you must blame me I intend to blame the shortage of coffee.

Speaking of the wrong side of Richmond-my brother once lived there. According to one of my relatives he not only lived on the “wrong” side of Richmond, he lived on the wrong side of the wrong side of Richmond. In fact he lived in the wrong apartments on the wrong street in the wrong neighborhood on the wrong side of the wrong side of Richmond.  Apparently he survived since I talked with him yesterday.

That’s one of the great things about living in the country. We don’t have a wrong side of anything. We barely have towns to live on the wrong side of.  Although the son was once stopped by the police for being on the wrong street at the wrong time when he was in college, there really isn’t a wrong side of town.  The story he told (keeping in mind that the whole truth doesn’t always leak out until years later) was that he was driving around with four or five young ladies at 4 a.m. when one of them asked where Cocaine Alley is located. As he was giving them the tour of the wrong street he was stopped. The officer wanted to know what a white boy with a car load of girls was doing on THAT street at THAT time of night.

The son claimed he didn’t know Cocaine Alley was a “no white boys after dark” sort of street.  He and his friends left and went to a non-segregated street.  For all of the people who claim the son is a carbon copy of me only smarter, this proves they are wrong.

I would have started with a “This is 2008, I haven’t broken any laws-there isn’t a single reference in the Code of Virginia prohibiting white boys from Cocaine Alley at 4 a.m.-what was the probable cause for the stop?” On the other hand I would have probably talked myself into a pair of handcuffs. As they say, he is smarter than I.