Many eons ago I lived in a small town called Norcross Georgia it was a lovely town not too far from Atlanta but far enough not to be bustling. At that time I was married with small kids so every summer we would take trips back home to DC but this summer we decided to pack up ourmini van and go visit my husband sister in Kansas City Missouri. We had mapped out the trip and knew how long it would take so that night we got a good night rest and the next day we were on the road early. I wasn’t too keen on going through the mountains because it was steep and the roads were winding. At one point we came upon a large fireworks store I think it’s called either Hee Haw Fireworks or it’s TNT Fireworks again I’m not sure of the name and this store was brightly lit, you couldn’t miss it if you tried. Apparently it was where everyone bought their fireworks that lived in Georgia and surrounding area’s. We made a few stops for gas, eating & bathroom.
Then there was the open road and nothing but corn fields which I made a joke about how it reminded me of the movie Children Of The Corn. We are listening to music on the radio and I slowly close my eyes but not before being startled wide awake. I know your wondering what scared me and well it was an oil well, I had never seen one before and the highway we were traveling on there was nothing but open fields of corn. There were houses but they were a good distance from the highway. Anyway, it was dark with only a little of the orange sunset still showing through the clouds. As I was falling asleep I happened to look over and see this huge thing going up & down, it looked like it was walking and I jumped almost in my husband lap. He pulls the car over to ask what was wrong and I pointed to what I now know was a oil well and I mentioned how it scared me. He laughed and explained what it was & told me I needed to stop watching so many sci-fi and horror movies and we continued on journey.
We soon pull into this gas station, it was a sort of rinky dink one with a convenience store but it did have what we needed. As my husband filled the tank I took the kids to the bathroom and got them back into the car. My husband called his sister on the pay phone as I was standing in line to pay for my snacks. I noticed how the locals were looking at me which was hard to ignore but I surmised that it was because I was black and maybe they didn’t get many black visitors. All of a sudden, my husband comes through the doors in a panic and walks over to me to say we gotta go but I tell him I haven’t paid for my snacks. For a moment, we are going back & forth because I wanted my damn chocolate and I was going to get it no matter what, because I was a little stressed and if you ever rode with small kids then you know. That’s when the cashier waves me to the front of the store so we could pay and the cashier says “you need to hurry up and get out of here” and that’s when I knew something wasn’t right so as I am walking out I can see the looks from everyone, so much so that the hair on my neck stands up and we get in the car and my hubby floors it out of there but in his haste we take a wrong turn.
I look over at him and demand he slows the fuck down and what was wrong with him and he tells me that this is a Sundown Town which he explains to me what that is & I began to freak out a little. He stops the car because we noticed we are no where near the highway and that we have driven to the middle of town and it’s dark and eerily quiet.
He makes a quick one eighty and drives slowly as to not give anyone reason to stop us. All I see is rows of stores and restaurants closed and no one is walking around. I began to pray and ask for God’s help and then we see the gas station and then the highway and we were so happy to see the highway I told my husband to floor it and don’t take his foot off the gas until we see daylight.
We drove non stop until we reached his sisters driveway, were exhausted and sleep deprived. I was so happy to see her I almost knocked her down in excitement. But I knew we would have to make that drive again so we prepared in advance and knew when we get to that point in our journey that we were not going to stop until we reached the mountains of Tennessee and Georgia.
In the end after all the travel I was very happy to be back home and safe. We never made that trip again.
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