An Itawamba Adventure

The funny thing about life is that you really just don’t know where you may end up from one day to the next.

Sure you can make a good guess that since you’ve had the same job for the past 4 years, excluding the odd vacation day, chances are you’ll be at your desk come 8:00 a.m. Monday. For those of us who are control freaks and must have everything happen at a specific moment in the day and not just “whenever” or “sometime”, we try our best to plan life out to the minute. It’s funny that we are the most shocked when all this planning just doesn’t come out the way we want it.

It could be that we set the alarm in the dark, and since it’s kinda new, it goes off at the wrong time. I’m always caught off guard when the baby spits up on me as I’m walking out the door.

My point is, you never really know what is around the next corner or where it will take you. This weekend it took us to Itawamba, Miss. Specifically to a no named fish restaurant, some 2 hours from our house and the rest of civilization.

Lucy’s dad, Pops, has a girlfriend, KK, and she was giving a surprise birthday party for her mom. Pops thought this would be the perfect time to show off baby Fred. So, being a sucker for a free meal and somebody who owes a lot to his father in law, we signed up for the road trip. Pops in his ultra cool 2006 Corvette and us in tow in the what-a-wagon (a 2003 Ford Focus wagon; what a wagon!)

The last time we left town on a road trip, we forgot food for the baby…this time we forgot diapers. With Tuscaloosa still fresh on our minds (see “HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION”), we panicked. We couldn’t turn around, because that would mean we’d be later than we already were. The question was could we really chance having only one diaper? Finally we decided that since we had to stop and pick up the birthday girl on the way, we’d just confess our sins and run out to buy a new pack before we headed to the restaurant. We stuck with this plan and sure enough, we were able to break away without much time being wasted.

The surprise party was pretty uneventful. Dinner was great, the birthday girl had a good time, and of course Fred stole the show.

However I did learn a few things on the way:


Whenever you are going to a birthday party being thrown by your father-in-law, do not tell him that the no-named restaurant he picked looks like it has a stripper pole and a stage covered in chicken wire inside. Nobody but you will think this funny.

The Itawamba Times is the only newspaper in the world that cares anything at all about Itawamba County. I know this because they list this fact underneath their name on the front page of the paper.

There are wild dogs roaming the back woods of Mississippi and although they are in plain site, people refuse to acknowledge their existence. Does this make them less deadly? I’m guessing so simply because no matter how many times I said “There’s a wild dog across the street” no one would look up. Since I am the only one that locked eyes with him, I was merely left with a snarl and show of teeth.

The teenagers in Belmont, Miss. like to hangout in front of the City Hall building at 9:00 on a Saturday night. I can’t figure out if this is because they are so dangerous that even the law is afraid of them…or if we just got lucky and didn’t have a break down somewhere in the middle of Children of The Corn Eight. I swear one of them looked just like Malichi!!!

Finally, there is something magical about driving down a back road, somewhere not listed on the map, the windows down, and the radio up just a hair. Not so soft where you can’t hear the tune, not so loud it drowns out the sound of your wife and child snoring in the back seat. It’s almost enough to make you forget how much money you are wasting on gas.

See ya around the next corner,
Charlie Blockhead