Part I: Lost in the Everglades

I don't know it at the time, but I'm about to embark upon a terrifying journey. I'm headed to the Florida Everglades, a region dominated by alligators, insects, swamps, hurricanes, and poisonous vegetation. That's the "piece of cake" part. The bad part turns out to be the drive there, on what I now consider the scariest road in America.

I'm leaving from Boca Raton, a middle-class community about two hours north.

It's desolate here and except for the alligators lurking in the nearby swamp, lifeless. Traffic is very light. If the Coen Brothers made a movie set in Florida, this would be the road the killers take to dump bodies no one will ever find. Worse, this is the kind of road that in-bred locals looking for kicks would cruise down, searching for unsuspecting tourists who run out of gas, to terrorize.

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I consider pulling over and using one of the phone boxes that dot the landscape every mile, but in all my years traveling up and down highways I have never seen anyone actually use one of these things. I calculate that if I pull over to make a call, one of three things will occur:

1) The phone will either not work, I will be told to call back with my emergency during "normal business hours," or a machine will ask me to hold and that's the last I will hear from anyone on the other end ever again.

2) One of those Coen Brother central casting misfits will pull up and ask if I need "help," only his definition of help won't be the same as my definition of help, and in fact will be closer to "harm."

3) An operator will pick up immediately, earnestly ask where I am, and say, "We'll have someone there immediately."

I know which one of these is least likely. I keep driving.

I've now driven over 40 miles from the last exit and I'm hallucinating road signs left and right. And then I see one " Everglades City 2 miles! " And "Ted's Small Store 2 miles! " Saved! I take the exit and that's when I got on the scariest road in America!

Part II: Now This is Scary

Twenty six miles! Everglades City and Ted's Small Store are twenty-six miles! On a road that, by initial indications, makes I-75 look like a superhighway.

At least I-75 had those useless call boxes and a place you could pull off if you ran out of gas, which I'm about to do any second, and was a divided road so you didn't have to worry that whatever little traffic there was would swerve directly into you. This road has none of those things. If I-75 came out of a Coen Brothers movie, then this is the road they'll use if they ever make the automotive sequel to "Deliverance."

If you want to see how it all turns out, e-mail Stan.