There is a remarkable amount of flotsam and jetsam along the side of the interstate.

Castoffs from all the cars and trucks going to and fro, everybody in such a hurry to get where they are going – or where they think they have to be at a certain time – and all of them trying to get there ahead of me.

I have often thought that you could build a car one piece at a time, Johnny Cash style, just by picking up parts along I-285. Bumpers. Side-view mirrors. Tires (and I’m not talking just about pieces of retreads that blew out on a semi, but fully mounted tires on wheels, many of which look to be from Nissan Altimas or Maximas).

There is also a full complement of random household items. Furniture. Milk crates. Ladders. Five-gallon buckets. Mattresses (so many mattresses – why are there so many mattresses?). Clothes baskets.

I get the occasional ladder or bucket that wasn’t secured in the back of someone’s service truck. But a few weeks ago, I saw what looked like somebody’s entire wardrobe scattered along the side of the road over about a 40- or 50-foot stretch. Clothes everywhere. Bright colors. Muted colors. Shirts and pants and undies draped across the asphalt and piled up against the concrete barrier.

Somebody, somewhere, had clearly been moving. And then, apparently, they weren’t moving all of their clothes anymore and they were going shopping instead.

Last week, on the way to a Braves game, I passed an entire armchair sitting upright against the concrete barrier in the middle of I-285.

Not just some ratty little chair either. This thing was almost one of those chair-and-a-half chairs. Cream colored. Wooden legs. Higher back. Sitting there perfectly upright like it was waiting on somebody to come along, sit down with an evening cocktail and a book, and enjoy the soothing ambiance of eight lanes of bumper-to-bumper Atlanta afternoon traffic.

I wondered where it had come from. Where had that chair lived? Was it in some formal sitting room where nobody was ever allowed to sit in it? Or had it been regularly occupied by somebody’s teenager with one leg thrown over the side while eating Doritos and watching television? Were there Cheez-Its hiding under the cushion? That last one is entirely possible because that is basically true of all the furniture at my house.

Furniture on the interstate always makes me laugh.

Years ago, Ashley and I were coming back toward Augusta from a visit to Alabama with the kids in the car. It was late. Pitch black dark. We were getting on the interstate in Newnan when suddenly there was a recliner sitting fully upright in the middle of the on-ramp.

Not tipped over. Not laying on its side. Sitting there like somebody had set it up specifically to watch oncoming traffic head-on from the dead center of the road.

I had to swerve around it to keep from absolutely demolishing that recliner at highway speed. The kids never woke up. Ashley and I just started laughing.

We still talk about the recliner on the interstate.

Somebody was clearly moving that furniture somewhere else to be used.

Then, well… Oops. The chair just fell off the truck. Oh well. Keep moving at 85 miles per hour. Time to buy another chair. Or mattress. Or bed.

I suppose that is part of what is so funny about all of it. And also part of what is strange.

You see enough ridiculous things along the same road every day and eventually none of them seem particularly ridiculous anymore.

Your routine adjusts. The strange becomes normal. Then the normal becomes part of the landscape. And finally, you stop seeing it altogether.

I think that happens with more than just interstate trash.

I have had long, repetitive drives for most of my adult life.

Back and forth from Alexander City to Tuscaloosa when I was in college.

Evans to the Vogtle site when we lived in Augusta.

And now, seemingly, half of my waking hours somewhere between Peachtree City and the other side of Atlanta.

When you drive the same road enough times, you start to know everything without really looking at any of it.

You know where the curves are. You know which lanes back up. You know which exits are always a disaster. You know the landmarks you have passed a thousand times.

There is even a house on State Route 85 on the other side of Fayetteville where the guy lives who makes those alien signs you see around the Atlanta highways claiming that various rich and powerful people are actually Anunnaki (look it up in your spare time – mildly fascinating…). Elon Musk. The Rothschild family. Mark Zuckerberg. Others.

I do not know what is going on in that man’s head. But I know where he lives. I know what kind of riding mower he uses to cut his grass. That is what enough repetition will do to you.

Lately, though, I have noticed myself looking a little harder. Since I started writing here, I have started keeping a running list of notes on my phone.

Something somebody says. Something weird along the side of the road. A bumper sticker. A plant growing through concrete. A thought that shows up while I am driving somewhere.

Sometimes the ideas come in a flood. Other times they trickle in about as fast as the dripping faucet in the upstairs tub at Guy Street.

But I have started noticing them. And once I started doing that, I began realizing just how much of this Momma had been doing all along.

She never talked about “noticing ordinary things.” She did not make some grand practice out of it. It was just how she operated.

She noticed the animals in the yard. She noticed the birds at the feeder. She noticed what somebody said or did.

And she named things. Fatty the squirrel was my favorite. Fatty apparently believed the sunflower seeds belonged exclusively to him.

I regularly threatened to shoot Fatty. Momma did not find that nearly as funny as I did. I will say, though, the squirrels around my house know what’s up and stay hidden.

I am sure there were probably multiple generations of bird feeder critters over the years that inherited the same names. But if you think about that too literally, it kind of spoils the fun.

There are hundreds and hundreds of examples here on this site of Momma doing exactly that – noticing something most people would probably walk right past, thinking about it for a little while, and then writing it down.

I never really considered that a particular talent of hers when she was doing it. I just thought that was Momma. Now I notice it everywhere.

I heard a podcast recently talking about happiness, and one of the things they mentioned was taking joy in the simple, ordinary, everyday things that surround us.

Maybe there is something to that. I am still trying to figure out exactly what I am doing here myself.

I have had a few people tell me lately that they think I missed my calling and ought to be some kind of writer. That is very nice to hear…but it also makes me question their judgment of talent in the literary sphere. I feel pretty confident that I am a better leader of people and construction executive than I ever would be a writer, but maybe those things shift and change over a person’s life.

But maybe writing has less to do with deciding you are a writer. Maybe it is just being willing to notice something, being willing to wonder about it (ponder?) for a minute, and then bothering to write it down.

I’ve noticed these little things all my life – I’ve just never made the time to write them down.

Like an armchair sitting upright on I-285 on a sunny August afternoon waiting on somebody to bring the bourbon.