Out of Your Way

Milton Jordan

August 3, 2025

You will notice on your highway road map

the route through our town is not the shortest

distance between the two points people choose

to visit traveling through our high traffic state.

We’ve always been out of the way people

who mostly get in one another’s way

and seldom drive the shortest route.

Some of our sisters and a brother or two

found other roads in their atlas inviting

and drove away to points that tourists visit,

cities with larger dots on those roadways

whose names sound much more familiar, but you

might drive down that winding road that tracks

the river and curves into town some miles

out of your way and some years behind your style.

Milton Jordan, native to the area, prefers to drive East Texas back roads on his trip to Paris, rather than prepaid airfare and lodging travels to the European version.