If Atlanta inside the beltway were a clock, zero hour for Robert A. Mains would have started at the 6 o'clock position: south of downtown on Interstate 285.
The Covington man entered I-285 at Moreland Drive in an area where luck runs bad and windows have black grates.
Then he headed west and north through the early-morning darkness, sweeping around the city in the way of hands around a ticking clock.
It was just before 4 a.m. in central Georgia. Nearby, Hartsfield International Airport was gearing up for a busy Sunday. Up the road, the stadium where an Olympic torch burned last year squatted dark and silent.
But the trucker with the load of Keebler crackers had an unsettling perspective on these familiar Atlanta landmarks: He was headed the wrong way on the interstate.
Crash felt in Radcliff
Mr. Mains' clockwise loop through Atlanta turned back time for Janey Fair and many others living hundreds of miles away in Radcliff, Ky.
Their lives were changed irrevocably by another man who drove the wrong way on an interstate.
Fueled by beer and vodka, Larry Mahoney collided with a bus nine years ago on Interstate 71 in Carrollton, killing Mrs. Fair's teen-age daughter and 26 other Radcliff residents returning from a church outing at Kings Island.
Mr. Mains' trip early Sunday ended in tragedy, too - and a charge of drunken driving. Just before he would have passed the backward signs about the zoo and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthplace, his tractor-trailer collided with an Isuzu Trooper driven by Terry Hall, police say.
Police also charged Mr. Mains, 50, with reckless driving and vehicular homicide. The impact killed Mr. Hall, a veteran news engineer for Atlanta's WSB-TV.
The Georgia wreck also rattled the sprawling military town of Radcliff, near Fort Knox, in its similarity to the Carrollton crash.
Larry Mahoney drove 12 miles the wrong direction. Mr. Mains drove at least 20, police say - all on the busy highways of Atlanta.
''It's amazing he made it that far without hitting anybody,'' said Sgt. R.W. Bailey of the Atlanta police department.
Painful issues
Janey Fair felt sick when she read the news. ''It was a very emotional reaction,'' she said.
Mrs. Fair and her husband, Terry, had to bury their daughter, Shannon, after the Carrollton crash.
Now, Janey is national vice president of victim issues for Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
''You just get sick to your stomach,'' she said of the Georgia crash. ''It makes you feel that what you've done is all in vain.''
Another crash. Another Kentucky man. Whether the charges stick is beside the point.
What happened down in Georgia has resurrected painful issues in Kentucky, right here at the dawn of a year in which Mr. Mahoney comes up for parole for the first time.
Another midnight hour
Will the outrage created by the Georgia crash hinder Mr. Mahoney's quest for freedom? Will the ghost of Terry Hall come back to haunt Mr. Mahoney, as do those of his own victims sometimes?
Will this lend more urgency to the efforts of victims' families in Radcliff when they meet with the parole board in October - armed with tears and photos of smiling faces long gone?
''To be honest with you,'' Mrs. Fair said, ''I think everyone is so filled with emotion about what Mr. Mahoney did they would fight his parole tooth and nail anyway.
''But, as a mother, when a similar crash happens, you have an emotional reaction to it.''
So passes another midnight hour on the interstate. Could anyone have seen it coming? Perhaps not. The only blemish on Mr. Mains' Kentucky driving record the last three years occurred in September.
But the location - in Georgia - and the violation, written for all to see in black and white, is haunting:
Improper lane usage.
Rob Kaiser is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. His column appears on Sundays and Thursdays. He can be reached at 578-5584.