Falling Stars

I saw the most beautiful meteor fall this morning on my way to work. It's Friday the 13th, which I've always said was my lucky day, and it was pure luck that I happened to look out the driver's side window just as it was falling. It was a big one, with a long tail and it lasted a long time coming deep into the atmosphere before fizzling out; I think maybe it was quite close. Although it appeared as a white streak across the black sky the meteor itself cycled through the spectrum several times as it fell; just momentary flashes of color. It was dazzling. It made my day, which was a good thing to have happen early because I had a hard one ahead of me.

I think the coolest meteor that I ever saw was when my daughter Shoshana and I stopped to look at the stars at a small lake up in Morgan Monroe State Forest, on our way home from Indianapolis once (on the Forest Road that I take home from work), when she was about nine years old. Suddenly, centered in the sky before us like it was staged, there fell a huge, bright meteor. It then broke into three pieces plus quickly consumed fragments and continued to fall for a little before blinking out. We were both looking right at it.

I remember another time on a camping trip when Shoshana was about the same age. We were looking at the stars and she said, “Wouldn't it be cool if we were out there.” The obvious answer to that was, “We are.”

The Leonid Meteor Shower is coming up and is supposed to be a good one. I'll be out the door on my way to work during one of the peak viewing times: 4:00 AM, 11/17. It'll be the dark of the moon too. If there isn't any cloud cover then I'm there; I'll budget extra time. I always try to look up when I leave the house anyway, to see the Milky Way. On really clear nights, without a moon I can begin to see how that haze is made up of millions of individual stars, like I could when I was up in the mountains; even though the neighbor across the street has installed a new security light (which at least helps me find the steps). Sometimes I get in a hurry and forget to look up. Then I'll catch a glimpse of the sky someplace, like over the big cornfield beside the Beanblossom when I turn left onto Sample Road. I have to slow down and look, wishing that I'd taken the time before I left, when I'd have been able to enjoy it more. Such Beauty.

* * *

Things haven't let up at work at all. I pulled another 14 hour day today, with five stops! I've never had five stops before. It was the heaviest load that I've ever pulled for Electrolux too, over 20,000 lbs. and except for one stop that has a dock and a clamp truck (a specialized kind of lift truck) I had to tailgate the whole thing. Most of the places usually have helpers, but they were all shorthanded today. Ah well, Friday the 13th, more exercise for me. I'm beat though. It's amazing that I'm still up and running. I usually power drive home but I just couldn't. Everybody passed me by and I was just as happy to let them. It was still a relief to pull onto the Forest Road. There was nobody left to pass me by, just the bare trees lining the way. The woods are beautiful naked too.

 

Moonlight Sonata

The moonlight is beautiful, tracing the branches of the late autumn woods in shadow across the leaf littered ground and revealing the road beyond my headlights like a luminous ribbon. Getting up as early as I do I enjoy the moon more than most, as her phases sink into dawn.

Yes, the trees are mostly bare now. I'd thought of writing, the leaves are thinning like a man's hair, but that was a week or more ago. There's only a few tufts left now, around the ears, as it were. Secrets hidden by the leaves are now revealed, some beautiful, some best kept under wraps. I particularly like the tapering end of Dolan Ridge, upon which I live. From the top of the ridge I can look out, for a brief spell, across the Beanblossom Valley to the hills beyond, and if I'm coming home from work and it's dark, or getting dark I can see the headlights of cars as they climb or descend the hill. That's useful information as the stop sign there at the junction sits in a tuft of grass in the middle of the road, a left over from times past, and to turn left up the hill requires caution.

The darkness accumulates. As early as I start in the morning you might think it strange that it would be dark already on my way home from work, but after a 14 hour day that's possible, and we're more than a month away from the solstice.

Christ, they're running me ragged at work! I'm not sure what the deal is. It had become quite easy, with mostly only one or two stop loads that got me back to the yard early. I wasn't making much money, but I liked it. Holly, the morning gate guard at Electrolux, said that it was the beginning of the slow season, which for appliances starts before the rest of retail. I'm wondering, though, if it doesn't have more to do with the new dispatcher I had, who was just recently fired. I didn't think that my dispatcher had much to say about the loads themselves; that he just distributed what he was given from Electrolux as he best saw fit, but now that my old dispatcher is back it's been hell. I wonder if we're playing catch up, or did I piss him off before he left and now it's payback?

I mean, every load now is three or four stops, and they're long, mile wise. I know that I'm still the low man on the totem pole, with the sleeper cab, but come on. By all rights I should have slept on the truck three times last week. Give me a break. Then, the one day that I did make it back at a reasonable hour my first delivery for the following morning was so early that I had to pick up that evening; I wouldn't be able to make it on time if I'd waited for the yard to open in the morning. But that load wasn't ready yet so I had to wait. There's nothing that I like to do more after my work is done for the day than wait around for the next day's work. There is absolutely no compensation for that time spent, it's just my contribution for the privilege of having a job, I guess.

They said that the load wouldn't be ready for an hour or two. I parked my tractor and got out my book, I'm reading Proust, then decided, what the hell, I haven't had a chance to visit Morris at all this week, and bobtailed to TLC for my car. Trucks do drive 10th street but it's awfully narrow and those miles would be unauthorized, plus, if there wasn't a lot of parking available then I'd have nowhere to tether my horse.

So I got to the hospital and signed in as usual, then made my way through the sterile hallways to the Special Care Unit, went through the doors and saw that Morris' bed was empty. No, his space was empty, there wasn't even a bed there. I heard the nurse, who was talking on the phone, say, “Just a minute,” and then she turned her full attention to me, bless her heart. Morris had been moved just the day before to a facility outside of Spencer. Going home that way might add more miles than 10th street, but it's sure as hell a prettier drive.

So he's about the same, really. I've seen improvement though, corroborated by the nurses this time rather than hope dashed by their qualifications, and the staff at Kindred Hospital in Indy sent him off with high expectations, rather than saying “There's no way to tell.” With his own room and the expectation that he is healing and can actually hear me I've begun reading the book I bought for him so long ago: Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson. What pleasure to read aloud such well crafted, old fashioned language. It gives my tongue a workout.

Returning to the day I was talking about I'd figured that by the time that I got back to the yard my load would be ready. No such luck. We truck drivers are allowed a 14 hour day, after which we must shut down, regardless of what the circumstances are. They took it to the very limit before I was out of there. I drew my lines on the graph honestly but without wriggling room. These days the log book, once called a “comic book,” is taken seriously.

By all rights I should have slept on the truck that night, although I would have had to do it there on the TLC yard, which we're not allowed to do anymore. No matter. I have a deep aversion to sleeping on the truck. Once it was my home, when I was on the road, and although a single night at my real home proved to be rejuvenating I was, perhaps, more comfortable sleeping on the truck. But that was when I had no choice, and it was a different truck, with a different mattress. Now I don't care if I get home after my bedtime, I'll not sleep on the truck again unless I absolutely have to.