Twilight Zone

Funny. One of the things I miss most about my radio station job is the drives home in the middle of the night. This is from a few years ago.

I took a trip through the Twilight Zone on the ride home from the radio station in the wee hours this morning. Highway 10, from Milladore to Marshfield bypasses the small towns of Blenker and Auburndale and runs mostly through farmers’ fields. It is not unusual to encounter will-o-the-wisp fog that plays hide and seek with the ponds and cornfields and midnight drivers.

Tonight’s, this morning’s fog was different. Patchy at first, it coalesced into a thick blanket, almost a mist, limiting visibility to less than one-tenth of a mile. There’s little traffic on the road this hour of the morning, and what vehicles there are signal their approach with a nimbus thirty feet in diameter, the actual headlights mere pinpricks. There’s a sense of isolation, the farm lights nothing more than bright smudges off to the sides of the highway, no taillights visible ahead, no headlights in the rear view mirror. And there’s a sense of oppression…not so much from the fog itself, as from the smell. Rotting road kill, eau de dead polecat, paper mill effluence…all are trapped in the miasma and sucked into the car’s air vents.

Things…live in such a fog; come out to play in such a fog. High beams are useless, although some of the oncoming traffic uses theirs. Against the seamless scrim, smears of insect remains on the windshield shape-shift into mysterious creatures that play hob with one’s sense of direction and distance. I’ve passed, and narrowly avoided, two skunks and a rabbit which seem to think invisibility is their protection. Other eyes gleam from the roadsides, all fortunately close to the ground. They are no threat to 1,500 pounds of metal and rubber. It’s the eyeshine level with the headlights that pose the real danger.

Approaching town, a cell tower with its beacon stuck on white strobe flashes like lightning…no like the beam of a waterside lighthouse. Ah…that’s what is missing. For this woman accustomed to the childhood sounds of the South Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha foghorns, and the answering call of passing freighters on pea soup nights, the silence beyond the hum of tires on pavement is offputting. There should be a haunting, basso profundo call and response singing out a warning, singing out an invitation…a siren’s call to dance in the mystery.

In normal fogs, the veil lifts as one nears the heat sink that is paved city streets. Not this morning. This morning the fog is victorious. At the roundabout visibility improves under the sulfurous glare of a dozen and a half streetlights. But even here, the fog only softens the glare and one pierces the heart of a clouded amber jewel…and just as quickly leaves it. I almost miss my turn onto the angled street that leads me home, as the entrance is cloaked in the mist. But finally, I turn onto my own street and scatter four rabbits romping in clover-laced grass.

Indoors once more, the walls seal out the mists and its phantoms, although the open windows admit a slight, muggy breeze. Normal night sounds seem muffled. I can’t hear the whine of the few manufacturing plants a half-mile away and the unceasing rumble of trucks on the highway is muted. It’s past time for bed but the mysteries of the night still beckon just down the street, and on the road as it is said that, “goes ever, ever on.”