Reader question:
Please explain “forks in the road”, as in this sentence: We all come to forks in the road at some point or other.
My comments:
Here forks are not the knives and forks folks in the West use for picking up and eating their food. In other words, we are not talking about running into knives and forks, or chopsticks if you like, on the street because other people have inadvertently dropped them.
That is to say, a fork in the road is not to be read literally. Rather, a fork in the road stands for a division. As an eating fork has two or three arms, the road may divide into two or more parts. A river folks, too, as it divides into two waterways.
I once heard a Redd Foxx joke about a redneck farmer in Atlanta whose “family tree doesn’t fork.” That means his family tree does not branch out, or simply has not branches.
In other words, marriages are strictly a family affair.
Or to put it still more plainly and bluntly, members of the clan marry each other.
And consequently, guys of the same clan, says Foxx, are often caught going to weddings to find dates, both old and new.
That’s rednecks being rednecks (down to earth farmers who work the field so much in the sun that their necks become reddened and dark).
“We all come to forks in the road at some point or other” thus means we all come to crossroads as we travel along. This may still be accused of taking it too literally. So, figuratively speaking, “forks in the road” means as we go on in life, we face different decisions to make. For example, at eighteen, most young people in the city have to make the choice between college or work. At 28, they wonder whether they’ve established themselves in society and are ready to settle down, marry and raise a family, or keep wandering about while retaining their bachelorhood.
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