Calling on the Doctor & the Final Leg

This is my final entry for the journey from Little Rock, Arkansas to Portland, Maine and back again. It was a wild drive that covered over 3500 miles in 7 days of almost continual driving with a host of side trips. It saw me and my nephew and later wife, daughter, and her boyfriend on a meandering ride with many unexpected side treks from Niagara Falls to Gettysburg and on the last leg a surprise that even I never expected, and nor I suspect, will you. For previous adventures check out the previous six posts.

We rose early, abut 7 in the am in Christianburg VA with 11 hours left before us. We had to get back as everyone had to get to work and the Kickstarter needed her final push. The four of us ate quickly, loaded up and headed out, hitting interstate 81 south, through some wet wilderness.

This area of Virginia, the Appalachians I believe, with climbing hills of green forests cut by pastures with small herds of peacefully grazing cattle is a little surreal. Old barns look down upon a highway of speeding cars, large trucks and all the wise assortment of vehicles that lumber and race down the blacktop. It is hard to escape the dichotomy. The lingering memories of lives spent in weather and labor, settling a land with deliberation, in a life of slow-moving mules and barking dogs, whose ghosts dwell still in the fields they broke, watching the never ending clatter trap of motion and noise that surrounds their descendants in air conditioned wifi with screen-mapping destinations and a people that push the idea of settlement into new and unimagined fields.

Not long after we started, my daughter Rachel, late from her studies in York England, took over direction of the trip. She guided us to the exit for Highway 90 and a little town in Virginia called Rural Retreat. It was the only real request she had on the whole journey, to go to Rural Retreat. There, she said, she had a surprise for me. What that could be I had no idea. I hadn’t even any idea of where this surprise lay nor how she got it there to surprise me. But enjoying any excursion I happily guided the car off 81 and onto this small highway that turned to Main Street almost immediately. It led up into the Virginia Hills and an old town of quiet calm. We passed into town beneath the shadow of a retired caboose that sat near the old train station. Over the tracks and through downtown, the Veterans Hall and old red brick buildings and into well-manicured neighborhood of old houses. From there we passed up a green hill, patches of mist clinging to distant pastures that lay beyond the little town.

It was amazingly peaceful and quiet, another calm corner on this long journey. Once the news is turned off America is an amazing country.

To my continuing confusion we entered a cemetery and stopped the car. Rachel was beside herself with joy, laughing and curious as to what my response would be. I had no idea why we were where we were until Kathy spied it and said “There it is.” I looked and could see nothing at first glance. What forgotten ghost of America’s past had she brought me to see?

And then I spied a familiar name on a stone and I thought that strange. I walked closer, a little confused, but slowly the realization dawned on me.

“You have got to be kidding!?” I lost it laughing first and then  raced across the green yard, careless of the restful dead, something I never am. But it was meant to be because there beneath the wet, green grass, lying in peaceful repose with a tall headstone standing high above him, was the inspiration of my greatest comfort. Here beneath the green sward lay the man who inspired the elixir of my living days. From the age of 10 in Monticello Arkansas to just moments before Kathy stopped the car, I consumed its joy.

Here lie the final resting place of the esteemed gentleman of yesterday, Dr. Charles Pepper. Though a host of stories abound about how the drink got its name, it is obvious that Pepper played a role in it. There are rumors of lost loves and early jobs abound, but regardless of all that, here I stood at the door step eternal of Doctor Pepper whose name eventually adorned my drink of choice.

I’ve been to the Lourve in Paris, slept in Hyde Park in London, visited Saint Stephen’s Dome in Vienna, the Grand Canyon and lately Niagara Falls, I’ve lived on two oceans, parachuted from planes and repelled from helicopters…but all paled to the tomb and grave of Dr. Pepper, whose name alone has carried me through five decades, across two centuries and a millennia.

This was an excursion that made a worthy trip worth more. Rachel had outdone herself. I couldn't stop laughing and nor could she. It was a euphoric moment!

I toasted the old man with a cold drink from a cold can and we rambled on.

The journey from that point was one of driving and more driving. We cut through Tennessee down to Knoxville where I played soccer as a child of 12 and on to Nashville. The weather held nice until we hit Jackson and it opened hotter than a “pepper sprout” hammering us all the way to Memphis, only breaking as we crossed into Arkansas. The flat plans and crop lands opened wide as we cut through the state to Little Rock. The rain came on again in torrents, welcoming us home and cleaning all the foreign dust from window, wheel and bumper. The rain broke as we crossed the Arkansas River and the fading light of the setting sun slipped beneath the horizon a few minutes later. We pulled up in front of the house at dusk, completing this wild, wonderful journey.

It was time to get back to work, but first there was a cool Dr. Pepper and a turntable with my name on it.