Dream 285

 My niece asked me to drive some boxes to a place in Georgia.  She said I could use her car.  I agreed, and drove to North Carolina to visit and pick up her car.  Since I had some boxes I wanted delivered myself, I drove her car back to Tennessee and loaded them up, then headed south.

The car was quite crowded with boxes, but the trip went fine until around the Tennessee-Georgia border.  The car started misbehaving and I parked it at a small roadside restaurant.

My friend Tom came by and offered to help.  Since he knew cars, we soon had the car back up and running.  It turned out that he also had some boxes to deliver and he settled into the passenger's seat.  It was a bit crowded, as he brought several additional bags with him, but I was grateful for his help and his company.  We drove on and soon crossed the border.

We decided to stop for lunch at a cafeteria on a corner street in a small town.  I sat down next to an attractive older woman at the buffet line.  Tom put a paper bag next to me.  "Hey, I brought a special diabetic dish just for you!"  I opened the back, and it was a glass tray with what looked like sliced potatoes in a pale white sauce.  I said thanks, and smiled at the woman next to me.  And I started to eat Tom's dish.

It was cold and what little flavor it had was awful.  I ate what I could, what I thought would be polite, then suggested we should get back on the road.

We drove through the city streets, uncertain of direction.  At one point, we went onto a ramp for an exit we did not want.  We reversed back on the road.  People backed up to let us pass, and I made sure to thank them.

Eventually we found the exist we needed to get back on the highway.  We drove down, passing several abandoned buildings.  When we got to the actual exit, there was a man there who flagged us down.  "You can't go down there.  There's a building on fire."

"If we go left, here, onto this access road, " I asked, "could we eventually get back on the highway?"

The man laughed briefly.  "You can sure try, I guess.  That might work."

We drove down the access road.  As we could see the highway, it was clogged with emergency vehicles, and all cars seemed to be at a standstill.  We drove past the next exit, hoping we could find a way to continue onward.