NEWTON'S LAW: BLUE HIGHWAYS ARE GETTING A LOT HARDER TO FIND THESE DAYS

They carry a mysterious cast of blue, and it's that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.

From "Blue Highways"

by William Least Heat Moon

Kevin Costner has made it fashionable to quote the Sioux but it was a college buddy, not Least Heat Moon, who told me first that no serious thoughts were ever held on a four-lane.

Dave Martin was a poet with a fisherman's deportment, a hero in the literary and guitar-slinging crowd I ran with in those days. He was a city boy once-removed from Texas and brought to the small-town campus scorn for urban traffic.

Interstate travel was limited for Dave to when speed was of the essence and he hoped higher education would afford him a life where speed was non-essential. Silly boy, but it never hurts to dream.

Practical instincts intact, he would reason that as long as his car was traveling back roads, a couple of rods and a box of tackle would be appropriate cargo. Occasionally he would stop to cast his lot on unsuspecting waters.

These lessons were revived recently, fueled by a spirit of renewal and a general need to get my head right. You set out with the sun low in the east and follow no route that has an "I" as its prefix.

Spend a day in harmony with a device made by Zebco. Commune with nightcrawlers. Be within reach of a sharp pocketknife.

Okay, the times have made us all a little soft. Still, this is heady stuff for people with cable television.

If the American countryside is there to be experienced, why not get to in a Japanese vehicle, with a Japanese tape machine playing a seafaring Jimmy Buffett yearning for "a smart woman in a real short skirt."

Such are your rural delusions that you offer a quiet, obscene scolding to the microwave tower that mars the beauty of a rolling landscape. Later, you check your wallet for a phone credit card, in case you run late and need to call.

This annual gathering of friends is an all-day affair and that used to mean three cooked meals. These days we rendezvous at a Hardee's and eat the sort of breakfast they advertise on TV. From there, we separate into teams, one heading to a nearby Kroger's for provisions, another to a live bait shop. I volunteer to acquire the worms.

The bait shop is attached to the rear of the merchant's house and, though he informs us his business doesn't open until after he returns from church, he invites us in as long as we've "come this far."

"We're here to serve," the gentleman tells us, and I, for one, count his mission as a noble one. We do our business quickly, thank him profusely and wonder later if we have been put on the bait shop's "heathen list."

It is hardly past nine and already, with many miles charted, most of our activities have been commercial and not outdoorsy. Still, I don't discount the resourcefulness found among our number. One man knows where to purchase Sunday beer. Another predicts correctly a channel catfish's taste for shrimp. In the cabin where we headquarter, all but this writer seem to know the folly of drawing to an inside straight.

The call of the open road is hard~er to hear these days. You might want to rough it but it helps to carry plastic. The miles are entertaining even if you lament the race for a new outlook yields so greatly to the outlook left behind.

I haven't seen my friend Dave in years. He is a Floridian now and the last time I spoke to him he was writing nothing more lyrical than software. After work, however, I know he steals away to some lonely jetty to raise hell with the bonefish that inhabit the gulf coast and watch the sun sink into the sea.

His lessons stay with me, even if they are, regrettably, seldom dusted off.