We stopped at a gas station cum coffee shop cum souvenir stand along an old US highway near a bridge from a somewhat remote part of Virginia to a somewhat remote part of Maryland. “On the bridge, you don’t have to pay the toll this way do you?” Todd asked the bored-looking young woman clerk as he paid for a coffee. “My memory is you just pay coming into Virginia.”

She pushed her classes higher on her nose and wrinkled her forehead as she thought a moment. “That’s right. You just pay coming into Virginia–like anyone who got out of this place would ever want to come back.”

Photo by Dmclane101 [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons