I went west out of Clewiston on U.S. Highway 27…..
I came to my turn, Secondary Road 833 heading south. In this area I saw a lot of fields with new sugar cane plants starting to grow. This road had a canal running parallel to it. It seemed that every field had its drainage ditches around it, and then they ran into canals.
The sun was beginning to set when I came upon a parked car and four guys, two men and a couple of boys. They were standing along the canal with a 22-gauge single-action pump rifle, and were taking turns shooting at a big fat cotton mouth moccasin on the other side of the canal. I stopped to watch. This snake was big, not too long, but real fat! We got to talking as they took turns shooting. One of the men had been in Korea in the army. It seems that everywhere I went I met guys who were in the Korean war.
I bid goodbye and continued. It was getting real dark now, in fact, pitch black! and I would soon have to find a place to camp. There hadn’t been any traffic on this road since I got on it. Just then a car’s lights came by from behind, not one but two cars. They went down aways and then stopped, both of them. Then I realized that they were turning around! Oh, oh, this did not look good. Luckily my side of the road didn’t have a canal. I crossed the slight depression in knee-high grass and then up and over into the field. I dropped my pack and got down low. My face pressed into the ground, beads of perspiration forming on my forehead mixing with the dirt. My heart was pounding. I hoped that they couldn’t hear it! I had acted fast enough and had gotten out of sight before they got turned around and their lights shown my way.
They came back real slow. I hugged the ground! They went down the road quite aways and then turned around and came back, this time as fast as they were going when they first went by me. I don’t know just what they were up to, but I was sure they thought that they were seeing things when they couldn’t find the guy that they thought they had seen walking along the highway.
About the Author: After getting out of the Army Bob Kranich backpacked from the Georgia border to Key West in a 40 day adventure walk across Florida. His recently published book A Walk Across Florida is available from his website or Amazon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment