Morning arrived and it was time to toss my trusty 1990 quarter into the air and determine my next direction. The options were simple — I could head north towards Washington D.C., or I could head west towards the Shenandoah National Forest. However, I couldn’t go east because the Atlantic Ocean got in the way and my pretty red truck didn’t float. Also, going south was out of the question because I had started too many rumors about what had happened in Georgia. The coin toss decided I was going to head to the majesty of the mountains and avoid the quagmire of the DC swamp. In retrospect, I may not have needed to flip a coin to figure that one out.

I had made a bunch of new connections and a couple of reconnections by this point in the 2018 Purge and Connection Tour. I wish I had time and space to tell you about the time I walked into an eclectic little boutique in Yellow Springs and almost fell over the young lady shop owner. She was perched on a repurposed barstool with her legs pulled up under her, sound asleep, as if she were a roosting parakeet. She awoke as I intentionally rattled around her shop, and immediately engaged me in a two-hour conversation about “life, the universe and everything.”

Or, I wish I could tell you about being invited to break bread with the lodge keepers of one of the mom-and-pop motor courts, in which I found shelter. They were a young couple that had only been married for a brief 64 years – I could write an entire book filled with the stories they happily shared around their dining room table.

Also, I won’t get to tell you about the time I spent an afternoon in conversation with a newly retired gentleman that filled his day with crab fishing from a bridge over a tidal marsh. Monday through Friday, he showed up at the bridge at 7:30 a.m. with his crab netting, thermos bottle of coffee, and cooler containing two sandwiches and an apple. Every evening, at precisely 4:30 p.m., he released his catch back into the tidal basin, packed up his gear, and headed home from “work”.

Maybe it’s a good thing that I won’t have enough opportunity to tell you about an environmental facility that displaced around eight acres of shoreline. When I stumbled upon the place, it was closed and appeared to be empty. The paradox intrigued me – wouldn’t it have been more environmentally friendly to not build an empty building, and leave the shoreline alone? Asking for a friend.

As for the “purge” part of the tour, a lot of life’s road grime had chipped loose. I could see the road ahead and, by design, had no idea where it was going.

As I crossed the rolling slopes of the Piedmont and began my meandering climb into the mountains, something tugged within me at things I didn’t understand. Ignoring the tug, I punched buttons on the dash of my pretty red truck and barked commands into my radio, as if I were Captain James T. Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise. I called my seven-year-old grandson to give him a cheery greeting before he headed off to school, but his response was a course corrector. “When are you coming home, Grandpa? I miss you.”

The tug I had been feeling was the gravitational pull from the Center of the Universe. It was an indescribable force. It was that “thing” that makes home, home — and makes people want to go there. My grandson’s lament was a siren call, and I heard it clearly. The purge was complete — it was time to go home.

Fourteen hours and several interstate highways later, I parked my pretty red truck in my driveway, at the Center of the Universe, in Pure Michigan.

Thank you for travelling along with me on this sojourn. I enjoyed your company. Maybe we can do it again, sometime.

Larry Wilson is a mostly lifelong resident of Niles. His essays stem from experiences, compilations and recollections from friends and family. He can be reached at wflw@hotmail.com.