Scary Road in East Texas

Several times in the past I’ve written blog posts about what we called “The Saratoga Light”. In fact, I even named a quilt “Saratoga Lights”. I just came across this article on Facebook that reminded me of the story and I love that I’ve had this experience and I love the story behind “the light”. Here’s even a wikipedia story about the light.

The road is 8 miles long, and as I recall, when you get to the end, you have tot urn around and go back . . no exit at the end but it’s been 30+ years since I’ve been there. I don’t remember what stories I’ve already told but the first I heard about it was from our pastor, who is a guy I went to school with. He says we met in the church nursery as babies but I doubt that because my family didn’t move to the Lake Charles area until I was 5. Anyway, in his younger years, high school age I think, he was a youth pastor in Newton Texas and that’s where he learned about “the light”. Once he took a group of church kids there. There was an old, rickety house that sat way back off the road and for years, it had just been sitting there looking abandoned. One night some of the kids decided they were going to walk up to the house and about the time they got up on the porch, the way Steve tells it, an old lady with long, wild gray hair opened the door, screamed at those kids and they scattered through the woods. Steve said it took him hours to round them all up.

It was well over an hour and a half from our home in Louisiana but we went to see “the light” often. The way it worked . . we would turn off the car lights, drive very slowly down the road and watch for the light. Sometimes it would appear in front of the car and it would be so bright that you could see the reflection in the hood; then, sometimes, it would jump and be behind the car.

Again, we were with Steve and Susie one night and I had to go to the bathroom. There’s rarely anyone else on that dirt road (or back then there wasn’t) so we decided to open the door, I would get out and do my business in the road but I was scared and I said “I’m leaving the door open!” About the time I got going, one of the guys eased their window down and banged on the roof of the car. I wasn’t done, pants still down around my ankles but I jumped back in that car and when I realized it was just one of the guys . . I was not happy.

Once we had been to a high school football game. This was way before Chad’s time. Sitting at the game, we decided to go to see the light. Again, with Steve and Susie. How can you go wrong when you’re with the preacher. Of course, this was before the days of cell phones. We left the football game, drove to Saratoga, took an hour or so to see the light, then drove to Beaumont and had breakfast at Denny’s or some all night place. We got back home about 4 a.m.

What we didn’t know was that there was a hurricane in the Gulf and it had turned and was headed towards southwest Louisiana. My parents had been trying to call us. They even drove out to our house, thinking our phone must not be working. They were worried and wanted us to know about the hurricane and when we told them where we’d been .  . they thought we had all lost our minds. After all . . we were in our late 20’s or early 30’s . . they still worried about us . . you know how parents are!  

Lots of fun times with many good friends on our crazy trips to see “The Light”.