At times I get the feeling that I am slowly losing it. I’m not exactly sure what “it” is most of the time, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have as much of it as I used to.

What happens at my age is that little things sneak up on you. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but your mind tells you that when you were younger you never had any of these odd occurrences. Life was more uneventful. Common everyday activities went off without a hitch.

Let me preach on it.

I was in Macon, Georgia today. I’ve been to Macon many times over the years. High school football games. Nursery association meetings. Mercer University. Farm Bureau. Bass Pro Shop. I have the overall layout of the city in my mind.

But I’m not a native. I don’t have the roads memorized. Once I get inside the general area, GPS is handy. Macon is a little bit bigger than Pine Mountain. Certainly, more unfamiliar than Columbus.

Marshall was with me. We were going to meet his boss, who happens to be a friend of mine, for breakfast at some place called J Christopher’s. I was told that the blueberry pancakes are to die for, and after eating a short stack I’d say that they were pretty darn good.

This is for you, Barry. I may have had better in Gatlinburg.

But I digress.

Anyway, the breakfast joint was right next to I-75 on the north side of town. Just off Bass Road which is named for Bass Pro Shop. I don’t have a clue how I got there, but mostly, I knew where I was.

You following this?

So, we ate the chow and shot the breeze for a while. Seth, the guy we met for breakfast, gave me directions to his shop where Marshall works.

“Take Bass Road over the interstate until it T-bones into Tucker Road. Take a right and go until you get to the light at the Thomaston Highway, or Hwy 74.”

Easy-peasy. Once we got to 74, the idea was that Marshall would know how to get to the shop from there. We made it with no problem. No GPS or map needed.

Now, you have to understand that when I travel, I have a fairly keen sense of the four cardinal directions. We came across from Pine Mountain on US 80 which runs east/west. At 6:30 this morning, the sun was beaming in my windshield. Confirmation that I am headed east.

Hwy 74 also runs east/west into town from Thomaston, Georgia. US 80 comes into town a little south of 74, which means that in a vague kind of way, these two highways parallel each other and meet up in Macon.

Stay with me.

So, I’m thinking in my little pea-brain, if I-75 runs north/south and Hwy 74 runs east/west, that gives me a sense of what direction I’m traveling. Meaning that when I left the restaurant on Bass Road and crossed over I-75 (remember the interstate runs north/south) then Bass Road must be running east/west just like Hwy 74. Which means that if I turn right on Tucker I’m going north, then left on 74 I’m headed west.

Make sense? Okay, get out a clean sheet of paper and a box of crayons.

In my mind we headed west on 74 and turned right (north) into the industrial district where the shop was located. So, I’m already figuring in my head that when I leave, I’ll go back to 74, turn right (west) and I’ll be headed home.

The reason I drove over to Macon was to help Marshall out. He got a new service truck and there was no way he could drive his truck over to Macon and get both trucks back home by himself. I hung around for a couple of hours “to help”. They were outfitting the truck with the tools and accessories he needs for work.

When I left the shop, I did exactly what I had in mind to do. I went back to the light at Hwy 74 and turned right.

A few intersections down, I stopped at a red light. I’m looking around. The crossroad at the light was Hwy 41. I’m humming the Allman Brothers “rolling down Hwy 41” in my head. I am in Macon.

It was kind of an unconscious revelation at first. The highway signs read 41 north to the left and south to the right. Mind you, I’m headed west. It took a few moments for my cardinal senses to kick in. Something about that didn’t feel right.

I went through the light and noticed the Hwy 74 sign, the road on which I was traveling home, said 74 east.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever before been confronted with a piece of information that made absolutely no sense to you or not, but it’s a little unnerving. I argued with the signs.

“This is not east. I’m going west. South can’t possibly be to my right. The sun sets in the west. South should be to my left, not my right.”

I pressed on west in an easterly direction until I got to Mercer University. It was there that I admitted to myself that I had lost “it”. I was confused. I was sure the entire world was watching me and my truck wander aimlessly back and forth around Macon, Georgia.

At this point I’m backtracking for several miles. I’m seeing the same storefronts that I had passed only moments ago. When I got to Hwy 41, north and south were on the correct sides of me. I pressed on all the way home with a very uneasy feeling that I may end up in Savannah.

When I got home, I got out my road map. I brought up the map on my laptop to get a closer look. I zoomed in on that area of Macon I had traveled. There was no rest until I figured this out.

It turns out that on the north end of Macon, the very place where I ate breakfast, I-75 makes a huge bend, and for some distance actually runs almost east/west. Which means that Bass Road runs north/south when it crosses over the interstate, not east/west as I had thought.

We traveled south to Hwy 74. Which means that when we turned left onto 74, we were headed east back toward the city, not away from it. Which means that when I left the shop and got back to 74, I should have turned the opposite direction to go west toward home.

Got it?

There are several takeaways in this lesson.

The interstate highway authority should clarify their signage. The highway markers near the restaurant clearly read I-75N and I-75S when, in fact, the road in that sector actually runs east/west. This is confusing.

Next, other drivers should learn to be more courteous when they encounter an old guy who is driving slowly and making illegal U-turns in the middle of the road. Give a country boy a break in the city.

Finally, if you ever go to Macon, don’t ask me for directions.