State Road 593

My Beloved calls this the "new" bridge over the Mississippi. He likes to reminisce about the trips back and forth between Jonesboro and Pittsburgh when he was a kid. His grandmother drove it countless times right up into her 80's. She always drove straight through and just stopped for a nap at a truckstop or rest stop. This scandalized her friends back home who thought she was brave to the point of foolishness. To reach the old bridge one drove straight through downtown Cairo and on the other side worked one's way along the highway to visit downtown Hayti. These towns go by unseen now that there's the "new" bridge and bypasses. Still today the interstate peters out soon thereafter and we connect the dots through the Missouri "Boot Heal" (or "Boot Hill" if you speak Southern) to Kennett, Paragould and finally Jonesboro. This trip we missed Kennett (the home town of Sheryl Crow as I've been repeatedly told) because My Beloved (AKA: Rand McNally) missed a turn. We ended up on State Road 593 and had to pull into Paragould via Highway 49 rather than on the "Kennett Highway" from the east. Paragould used to be a bigger town than Jonesboro but now it is the last place to buy alcohol before entering Craighead County which is "dry" as they so quaintly put it. Whenever My Beloved would visit Hazel as an adult she would get numerous phone calls "Hazel, I saw your car at the county line."