How I unexpectedly saw Pocohontas, Mississippi and had a police officer threaten to arrest me in Georgia in the same day

Hello, y'all!

As usual, things have been crazy in my world.  I was supposed to leave last Sunday morning, the 23rd, to drive out to Texas to my mom's.  She had a hip replacement the week before and I was going to help her out once she got home.  Instead I spent Sunday the 23rd in the bathroom and in bed because I had food poisoning.  So I left on Monday the 24th instead.

The trip out was great!  It was long (11 hours) but nothing crazy happened.  I just drove and drove and drove down I-20.  Between my house in Atlanta and my mom's house in Texas there are 4 turns.  Doesn't that seem insane?  A 700+ mile trip with only 4 turns involved.  The most disappointing thing was that I couldn't binge on junk food while I was driving which is what I always do on road trips because my stomach was still a little gross feeling after the food poisoning the day before.  Instead I had ginger ale, Gatorade and stopped for a bowl of soup in Vicksburg, MS. 

My mom was doing really well from her surgery.  She has minor pain but she says it's nothing compared to the pain she had been living with on her bad hip.  She can't bend over yet so I helped her get undressed and dressed, cleaned her incision, helped her with her physical therapy each day, helped her get in and out of the shower, kept her house picked up, dishes done, and answered the door approximately 43584502384 times each day because so many of her friends and people from their church stopped by to visit, bring food, etc.  The only things I had to make were toast, one turkey sandwich, and a bowl of soup because people fed us dinner every single night I was there and we normally had leftovers for lunch the next day.  Her husband was getting ready for a huge meeting at work this week and I helped him with some stuff too (typing up meal menus, forms, etc).  And I know that doesn't sound like a whole lot, but we honestly barely had a minute to talk to each other one-on-one or relax because we were busy almost every minute of every day and the week was over before we knew it.

I did take a few minutes one morning and raided her gift wrapping supplies to try and jazz up her walker a little bit and make it a little happier.  Y'all don't laugh - I had very limited stuff to work with, okay?  I gave her a little basket to carry small stuff like her cell phone, etc.

This past Saturday I came back home.

And it was one of the worst days I've had in a very, very long time.  It was kind of like hell if I'm being honest.

It started off okay.  When you're coming through West Monroe, Louisiana on I-20, the Duck Commander Headquarters is approximately 5 blocks off the expressway.  I've only watched Duck Dynasty twice so I would not say I'm a fan, but since I was so close I decided to stop.  I pulled in the parking lot, jumped out and took 3 photos and got back in my car.  I did not go inside.

I don't know these people but I want to know why this man thought he needed to hold these poor kids up against the wall as though they were going to run away.  And I think he thought they might cast him in the show with the beard and the clothes.   There were a few men wandering around the parking lot with a similar look so I got out of there.

This is some sort of camper/trailer thing they had in the parking lot:

 And here's something they don't show on TV.  I assume they don't anyway.  I don't watch the show so maybe they do, but this is what's behind the Duck place.  Glamorous, huh?

At this point in my trip I was a couple of hours into it and things were fine.  I just kept driving and driving and driving.  And then I crossed the bridge over the Mississippi River:

Mississippi is when things went bad, y'all.

I have some family in Jackson and I had arranged to stop and meet one of my aunts at Cracker Barrel as I went through.  I told her I would be there between 3:00 and 4:00.  I called her at 3:00 when I was about 30 miles from Jackson to let her know how far away I was and she said she had been out running errands and got done early so she was already there sitting in a rocking chair waiting for me.

And then everything changed about 15 minutes later.

I came around a slight curve in the road and saw the most horrific thing.  A semi was stopping and pulling into the emergency lane.  A pick-up truck had stopped at a weird angle in front of me.  And cars had stopped in the emergency lane on the opposite side of the expressway and people were running as fast as they could through the median to my side of the road.  More people were jumping out of their cars on the other side of the road.  Right in front of the pick-up truck was an SUV in a crumpled mess laying on its side in the eastbound lanes.

Then I saw the people scattered all over the expressway.

The SUV was in the left lane where I was.  A lady was two lanes away in the emergency lane where she had been thrown from the car. 

Y'all, it was the most awful thing I've ever seen and it had happened mere seconds in front of me.  Had I been just a couple of seconds further up the road, that SUV could have flipped right into me.

I sat in my car and I prayed for those people.  The lady in the emergency lane wasn't moving.  People were running from everywhere.  I have no medical training and I figured I might just be in the way since there were already so many people swarming around the scene so I did what I knew I could do.  I prayed hard.

A man was in the median next to my car sobbing on the shoulder of another woman.  There were two young (pre-teen) boys sobbing and wandering around in circles.

I saw part of a person sticking out from under the SUV.  I saw a teenage boy sitting up in the median where he had been thrown.  I saw part of a person in the road in front of the SUV (he was partially hidden by the car).  There was another person completely hidden from my view by the car.

Within a couple of minutes police cars started coming.  An ambulance or two showed up.  A fire truck.  Then the life flight helicopter came and landed in the middle of the expressway.

What I learned later was that a bunch of people were headed westbound from a church event.  I guess they kind of had a caravan of vehicles.  A rear tire blew out, the driver lost control, flipped across the median and landed in the eastbound lanes.  In all, there were 8 people in the vehicle and 5 of them had been ejected in the crash.  Three people were life flighted.  Four people were in critical condition.  But miraculously there were no fatalities.  Most of the people I saw running across the median as I drove up were people who were in the caravan and they knew them.  I found out the man I saw sobbing in the median was the brother of one of the victims.  Oh, y'all.  It was so awful.  I've looked online to see if I could get an update but I can't find anything new about the accident.

I spoke with my aunt several times in the hour or so I stood there in the middle of the expressway.  I told her I didn't know how long I would be there and to not feel like she needed to wait.  Eventually a police officer told us they were shutting down the expressway probably for hours and we needed to cross the median and head back westbound.  I said a final prayer and then followed his instructions.

I had less than a quarter tank of gas so I stopped at the first exit I came to and as I stood there filling up I realized the man at the pump next to me had been standing on I-20 with me a few minutes previously.  I told him I was trying to get to Atlanta but had to meet my aunt at Cracker Barrel and asked if he could help me get around the accident and back on I-20.  He told me it was going to be a long detour but he wrote down directions for me.  I called my aunt and told her where he instructed me to go and that I was driving to meet her but I had no clue where I was or how long it would take.

"Do you see Highway 80?" she asked.

"I see cows."

"Do you see a college?" she asked.

"I see more cows.  Oh wait.  Now I see a horse!" I responded.  "But no college.  I'm definitely not seeing a campus of any sort."

I went to Flora, MS.  According to the internet, the population of Flora in 2012 was 1,896 people.  There are probably more cows than people living there.

Then I saw a sign that I was in Pocahontas, MS.  Do you know what?  I've never heard of that place before I was driving through it on Saturday in a completely unexpected turn of events.  I have been to Pocahontas, Arkansas though.  I spent an entire weekend there for a family thing.

By the time I sat at the scene of the accident and then went on this approximately fifty mile detour through the country to get around it, my poor aunt had been waiting at Cracker Barrel for TWO AND A HALF HOURS, y'all.  

And I couldn't possibly rush through dinner and then jump in my car after she waited that long.  So we sat and talked for over 2 hours.  By the time I was getting ready to leave Jackson, MS it was already 9:30 p.m. Atlanta time.  She begged me to drive an hour to her house and spend the night with her and my uncle, but I just wanted to be home by that point....even though I knew home was still a minimum of five and a half hours away.  I promised her if I started feeling sleepy or thought I couldn't make it that I would stop and get a hotel room, and then I hit the road again.

Aaaaannnnd crap.  I can't finish this because I have something I have to do here at work.  So you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out how I was threatened by a police officer with arrest before I made it home.  It's really a post all of its own anyway.