Fielder

The devil lives in Grapevine, Texas. Either that, or Grape­vine is a perverted joke played by a psychotic road engineer.

Maybe there is not even a real Grapevine. Maybe it’s just a mass of jumbled-up highways with fake signs pointing to nonexistent areas of a fantasy town. Sort of like Oz, only with 18-wheelers instead of Munchkins on the yellow brick road that doesn’t lead to the Emerald City at all, but doubles back on itself and changes names.

I have never driven to Grape­vine and not gotten lost. Really lost. Cussing and crying and pounding the steering wheel lost. I have stopped going there unless I have no choice, and sometimes, I don’t have a choice.

Many people live in Grapevine, with more folks showing up every day. If you can drive there, my hat’s off to you. You either have a magnificent sense of direction or a really boss navigation system in your car.

I have neither.

I admit that I often am lost in Denton. I’ll be sailing along and look up and wonder just where in the heck I am and how I got there. It’s like I was born with no capacity for maps in my head. My car knows how to get to work by itself, and the mall, and to any Sonic in the county. If I have to do the navigating, me and Moira (that’s what I named the Infiniti) could wind up anywhere.

A few years ago I had to see a medical specialist in Grapevine. I’d Google the office address, print a map and head southwest. Texas 121 was OK. But merging onto Texas 114 was horrifying. By the time I’d dealt with that William D. Tate, Ira Woods, Highway 26 concrete enigma, I was in South­lake.

I have toured the back 40 of D/FW International Airport looking for Grapevine. I’ve accidentally wound up on that awful lake bridge, white-knuckling it across with my eyes shut tight.

Once I mistakenly went to Col­ley­ville. I turned around, merged into traffic, and realized I was in the middle of a long funeral procession. It would have been disrespectful of me to pull out and pass the hearse. So I stayed where I was.

I never did learn the name of the deceased, but the music was nice and the flowers were lovely.

I do wish interment hadn’t been in Irving.

Last week I got a call at work. My daughter had been carted to a hospital emergency room. Where? I asked, grabbing my purse.

Baylor Grapevine was the response. Uh oh.

The lost-gods smiled on me, and I bumbled my way right up to the hospital, having spotted a couple of those big blue “H’s” along the way. Getting Christi home was going to be OK, I thought. After all, she works in Grapevine.

She was a little addled from the ambulance ride but declared OK by the docs. “Which way?” I asked when we pulled out of the parking lot.

“It has to be that way,” she said, pointing with a hesitant finger. By the time we reached Arlington, she changed her mind. “Turn here,” she said, and we both gasped as I flew up an exit ramp. I pulled over with a squad car in pursuit.

“Officer, can you tell me the way to Grapevine?” I asked when I rolled my window down.

He looked at me in exasperation as he whipped out his ticket book.

“No one gets in to see the wizard,” he said. “Not nobody. Not no how.”