Phill Senters circa 1950s

 Just a few hundred feet from our house, there is another old dirt road which has no name that I have ever been aware of, except of course, for the name that us kids always called it. This is the road that leads to no where. Thus the name: The road to Nowhere.

Photo nipped from Google

 Nowhere is an unlikely place in a big patch of woods where a huge gazebo-like structure sits in a clearing  which lies a few hundred feet into the woods almost at the end of this nameless old dirt road. I say huge because this thing was at least fifty feet from one side to the other. As the crow flies, Nowhere is maybe a little more than a half mile from our house, but probably close to three times that distance traveling on the roads.

Sometimes late on Friday or Saturday nights at our house, we could hear loud music and laughter and shouting that seemed to originate from the general direction of Nowhere, and of course, being full of curiosity like kids everywhere, we were eager to go and check it out. I remember one night when the music was playing, I asked Mom if James and I could go and see what was going on. “Not on your life!” She yelled, almost as if she thought I’d lost my hearing, “You boys are not leaving this house tonight and that’s that!”  That put the brakes on that great idea! We had to wait till next day.

 Now, of course we had never heard of a gazebo at that time in our young lives and probably would have thought somebody was trying to pull our legs if we’d been told that’s what it was.  We just called it Nowhere. That’s what it seemed to be, nowhere. The nearest homes were hundreds of yards away, through the thick woods with lots of heavy undergrowth.

 We never once saw another human at that place, only the things they left behind. Things like empty whisky and beer bottles and cans, cigarette butts and the empty packs from which they must have come. Food wrappers and containers. Undoubtedly what adults would call a mess! But we loved it. Exploring all around Nowhere the next day after we’d hear the music and shouting and laughter was great! But if we waited more than a day, there’d be nothing. The whole place would be as clean as if no one had even been there. So we always made sure to go as soon as possible the next day.
 
 That’s where James got his Zippo lighter that he was so fond of, and I found a little pocket knife which I kept for years. An occasional newspaper, magazine, or paperback book would turn up. And a couple of times we found girly magazines somebody had left behind. What a find! Our younger sister, Babe was with us on one of these occasions, and she told us we shouldn’t be looking at those things, we’d get in trouble. We never did, but when she’d get mad at one of us for some reason or another, she’d threaten to tell on us about the “dirty pictures”. Luckily, that never happened, probably only because one of us would find a way to bribe her out of it! I still think she used that just to get her way or to get things she wanted from us. I guess it really didn’t  matter because we always had to pay the price to keep her quiet. Knowledge is power, I think might be a fitting quote. I still love you, Babe.

  There are little roads and trails that are nothing more than rutted lanes running all through those woods. There are little ponds and marshy, swamp like areas, huge old oak trees and younger, smaller ones of many different  kinds. There was wildlife there then, as I’m sure there must be still . We saw deer, rabbits,alligators, and snakes, and hundreds of birds of all kinds and colors.