This is an opinion column

I didn’t think anything of it the first time it. It was just a young guy in a pick-up truck who was looking for the Commissioner’s Pit restaurant in Camden. It was still hunting season then, I figured he was from out of town and was turned around using verbal directions. He stopped while I was at the front gate. I told him how to backtrack and get to where he was trying to go.

The second time, I will admit, gave me pause. It was in the middle of a Saturday morning. I had slinked out to the mailbox when a car stopped directly in front of me at the driveway. The passenger window rolled down and a nicely dressed couple out of Tuscaloosa asked me if this was the local funeral home.

They were looking at my house with a strange expression and I was looking at them with a strange expression too. They let me know they were late, and I let them know they were lost, before giving them directions to where they needed to be.

That happened twice, someone stopping and asking if this address was the funeral home.

I doubt I have ever expounded upon Perry Johnson Road too much. It is a one way in, one way out paved path of a road that y’s off of a county road. It is very rural. So don’t drive out here being curious, thinking you are not going to be noticed. Right now there is not a sign marking it. It got hit, again, and hasn’t been replaced. That aside, there are stretches of the road that are lovely, especially this time of year when the treetops on each side of the road meet and overlap forming a natural tunnel.

A couple weeks back the gate was open one afternoon and a car pulled into the driveway and drove up to the house. It was a woman looking for the Caravel. The Caravel, is a small local club with a large reputation. My son is very familiar with the place, but here is not there. The car had a Clarke County tag. I just gave directions. I didn’t ask questions.

But a few days ago that I started thinking there was a problem. I was in the back of the house early one morning, and I started hearing this beep. The kind of beep like when a big truck is backing up. I couldn’t think of any reason I would have been hearing such a beep, so I go to the front of the house and peep out only to see the huge blood mobile attempting to turn around in the driveway.

One of the workers had jumped out and was standing behind it with her arms flailing around, attempting to give hand motions to the driver so that the gate, fence, and mailbox remained standing.

Later that same morning I ventured into Camden and the blood mobile was parked out in front of the Piggly Wiggly taking donations. That is when I decided that evidently there is a glitch within GPS.

Since the blood mobile, a professional bass fisherman driving a matching truck pulling a boat covered in sponsor stickers had to turn around, along with a box truck carrying bottled water.

If I noticed that many without trying, I feel certain there have been others that go unnoticed or turn around past my house – which is an adventure within itself.

I do not know how to correct GPS coordinates, I don’t know who anybody would call to even get such a process started, but Perry Johnson Road is not the Camden Bypass.

Amanda Walker is a columnist and contributor with AL.com, The Birmingham News, Selma Times Journal, Thomasville Times, West Alabama Watchman, and Alabama Gazette. Contact her at [email protected] or at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist.