Count Your Metaphors

4:10 pm. Easing cautiously south on McDonald Road a little east of Newton Factory Shoals, my gut's knotted with dread. I'm chasing a hot assignment: Find a Red Clay Democrat! The Rolling Stones blast from the Beagle's overdriven speakers, baiting my hook like a dough ball dangling in front of a hungry channel cat.

 

"Well there's a place you really get your kicks
It's open every night about twelve to six
Now if you want to hear some boogie you can get your fill
Down the road, down the road, down the road apiece."

 

We boogie mindlessly around a blind curve and happen upon an olden steel truss unattended, abandoned, and disrespected. Its planks commandeered by brigands for duty elsewhere. And, in spite of everything, determined to shake off decades of sticky gooey red clay.
The backroads score again. Always delirious; and chock full of chestnuts, parables, precious old expressions, homonyms, antonyms, synonyms, and even a few m-and-m's. Like, I wish I could have seen this truss when it was new…. Or, the end of the road is not end of the world. All roads lead to uncertain outcomes, and opportunities foregone. Once a path is chosen it cannot be undone.
Some say a broken down old truss is worse than a hazardous eyesore, it's a useless pile of junk! Robert Frost might indicate otherwise:

 

  "Then took the other just as fair
  And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear."

 

Note: Log your most revealing metaphors about this photo in the "Comments" section. Each will be awarded a copy of my next book, and will become sole property of Doctor Flowers Enterprises, Inc.

 

Title: © Bear Creek Truss. r0396-08
Series: Road Scene
Location: Newton County, Georgia
Date: Sunday 13 October 1990

Comments

[jack straw]

Damn. This is what Walker Evans would look like in color.
Some see the glass as half-empty, but I see her underwear as halfway off.

[Harold Reheis]

2/8/05: This is my first visit to your site, and certainly not the last. Great stuff, Doc! Harold