Short Stories and Essays

OUR UNPLANNED TREK FROM BALD KNOB TO FIRETOWER ROAD
by
John E. Enslen
(Copyrighted 2022)

I want to tell you a true story. It is one of those stories that I would have difficulty believing had it not happened to me. The story centers on me and my wife Dianne’s unplanned Bald Knob-to-Firetower Road trek almost 50 years ago.
 
Dianne and I were living on the most eastern side of a small, brick, one story, duplex apartment belonging to my parents, who formerly lived across the street, but were then living in their new residence on the other side of town. We were renting the duplex apartment from my parents for a very reasonable rate. (I would later buy the duplex from them and then, in time, sell it to my friend Jimmy Turner.)
 
This duplex is located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Hillside Drive and Enslen Road, and only a stone’s throw from where Bald Knob Road commences its upward climb. The Hillside Drive Subdivision area, as well as Bald Knob itself, had been Enslen family land belonging to my great-great grandfather, and Daddy had developed the Hillside Drive Subdivision in partnership with C. C. Knight, our former across-the-street neighbor on Brookside Drive, who furnished the money to go with the land. C. C. Knight was half owner with Cecil Barrett in Wetumpka’s Western Auto Store on the west side of Company Street in Wetumpka.
 
Dianne was pregnant with our third child, who would be named Joshua, and it was the late summer of 1975, the first part of September after a long dry spell. We were about to begin construction on our own new house near my parents—on what would become Chapel Road. We would later move into that house the same week that Joshua was born. He was born about two months later on November 5, 1975.
 
I had purchased a new, solid blue, two-wheel drive, pickup truck. Back then, you could get a good deal on a ‘75 model before the ‘76 models appeared in the late fall. I cannot remember whether my new truck was a Ford or a Chevrolet, purchased either from the Collier brothers or the Landrum brothers, respectively. I bought vehicles from both.
 
I decided to take Dianne for a ride. She had never seen the other side of Bald Knob, the highest elevation point in Elmore County, and it had been a long time since I had been over in that direction. The older John Yung (older than Daddy), Daddy, and I had done some quail hunting in a jeep in that area in my early teenage years when John Yung was viewing the higher Bald Knob properties for possible purchase. Yung ended up buying several hundred acres of it from Daddy, and years later Yung sold it to Dr. Windell Vickers.
 
Someone was watching our two younger children, Georgia and Jacob, for us, but I don’t remember who it was. We had not specifically secured a babysitter so that we could make a run to Bald Knob; we just happened to have some free time for a leisurely ride on a Sunday afternoon. So, we hopped into my new truck. Well, I hopped, and Dianne slowly climbed.
 
I drove the Bald Knob Road route to the top. The road was not paved at the time, but there was no problem in getting to the top on the curvy, orangey-colored, gravel road. After reaching the top, I drove down the hill on the other side of Bald Knob to show Dianne a little pond that I had remembered being there.
 
There was not much of a road past the top of the hill, and my original intent was to turn around and come back home after viewing the pond. But there was no place to turn around on the pond’s narrow dam, and it seemed better to go forward further than trying to back up the steep hill we had just traveled down; so I continued, originally expecting to go only a relatively short distance before turning around.
 
As we progressed, the road got a little better for a short distance, and any concern I had lessened. I knew I could always turn around and get back home. But as I continued, the road became bumpier and less defined. You might say, the road became more challenging, and I was getting into the adventure of it. I kept going, to prove that I could with my masculinity handle the situation, while hoping that the road would soon become a traversable road or intersect with an improved road. My hopes were not realized.
 
As I trudged on, the road definitely grew worse. At one point, well into the journey, I made a conscious decision to press on, believing that we had passed the halfway point and that it would be a shorter route to keep going than it would be to turn around and cover again the bad areas that we had luckily navigated.
 
Continuing on, and continuously jostling pregnant Dianne, who was frantically holding on tightly with both hands to anything she could grab, we made it across some more ditches in near miraculous fashion. From that point we began climbing, dodging trees, running over smaller trees, and weaving and winding our way the best we could whenever the old logging road totally disappeared from view.
 
After what seemed like a long time, probably about 45 minutes, we finally came in sight of the 150 ft. tall fire tower, which gave us the hope we needed. I knew that the county road would be within a few hundred yards of the other side of the fire tower. The road improved vastly as we approached the fire tower, and without further difficulty we passed the fire tower on its southern side and made our way to Firetower Road. What a relief! I was overjoyed that Dianne was still pregnant.

We had traveled through the wilderness the entire distance from the top of Bald Knob, where the small round metal marker is located, all the way to Firetower Road. We had, unknowingly, traversed the full diameter of the meteorite crater, passing in almost kangaroo fashion through its lowest points. A 16mm filming of the episode would have been a successful TV commercial for whichever type of truck I was driving, although there could be no claim that the paint on the truck was scratch proof.
 
That was an amazing adventure to which Dianne should never have been subjected. I know Dianne must have been thinking to herself, “How stupid can this boy be?” Being the angel she was, she kindly never spoke derogatorily about my poor choices in pursing the trek. Perhaps she had trained herself to focus on some positive character trait that I had exhibited—like dogged determination, which often flirts closely with stupid stubbornness. Or, perhaps she was so totally consumed with relief from being delivered without delivering, that she never ever mentioned it again. I could not blame her at all for wanting to forget the whole experience. I, myself, have rarely mentioned it, and then only to the closest of relatives—until now.
 
By the way, today, Joshua, who survived his own full quota of ill-advised adventures, is a tenured professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

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