It’s A Sign

Sometimes it’s not a word that calls out to us and sends us down roads and paths and into dark forests.

Sometimes

it’s a sign

I was driving through a town last summer- it was somewhere in the Midwest when I went through a town that barely, hardly, almost had no pulse.

Most of the stores were closed up and had boards over their windows- as did the houses and the churches ( there was one on each corner- I swear to God that’s true ).

But hello- what is this I see just before I leave the dieing town?

A Funeral Home.

Darnell and Sons.

It was boarded up too- and the front doors were chained (!) shut.

Chained Shut.

Not nailed shut, not boarded up with giant sheets of plywood but …

Chained Shut.

I know there’s a million reasons to make sure no one busts into an empty Funeral Home.

Still.

I was curious.

Why Chained Shut.

So I called ahead and told my husband I was going to get some ‘spooky’ camera shots for my blog and that I would be a little late and then I got out of my car in front of Darnell and sons and walked around to the back where the doors had not been chained shut or boarded up but

 the doors had been completely removed and entrance way had been bricked up.

Why.

This just keeps getting better and better.

So there I was halfway to my car and halfway to the chained door and across the street was a boarded up Ice Cream Shop called Bevy-Anne’s.

In her better days Bevy-Anne’s must have been a pretty place to get a Soda or an Ice Cream Float. Now it was just empty and dusty and there were cracks all around her foundation.

In fact.

I looked up and down the street, there were cracks in front of and all around every single boarded up building for as far as I could see.

Except for Darnell and Sons.

There was one deep gouge in the pavement that ran from Darnell’s front door- the one that had been chained shut- and that crack in the cement turned into many more that ran up and down that street.

Instead of going to my car ( of course ) I walk up to the door with it’s chain and reached for the lock

and there inside of the lock

is the key.

It’s right there in the padlock where anyone can walk up and turn it and then unwrap the chain from around the door handles and then anyone could open those doors and either step aside or step inside

and then what I wondered?

I looked at the lock and  at the cracks in the road and the boarded up buildings and houses and decided…

I liked not knowing for sure.

I let the lock fall out of my hand and as it banged against the door I heard a little thump coming from the other side.

So I got into my car and I left that little town in the Midwest, the one that barely  had a pulse, and as I drove away I saw a giant billboard at the side of the road. Despite the fact most of  what had been painted on it  had been worn away by years of rain and ice and snow and heat you could still see the image of a cow in a bonnet and there was a balloon coming from it’s mouth and inside of that balloon there was a message.

It said.

See you soon!