Friday, May 27, 2011

Exercising My Thumbs


Ah, Springtime! Truth be known I was sorry to see the lineal play of boles and branches obscured; sorry too to lose the vista across the Beanblosom from the top of Dolan ridge. Don’t get me wrong, I'm happy to see the forest clothed in green again. I just find beauty in the starkness of winter too. It's always something and [I'd much rather clean bugs off of my windshield than ice and snow.

Three dimensional clouds. Grey cloud-wrack scudding quickly beneath more sedentary bulbous shapes; the horizon dominated by the dome of a massive thunderstorm, its edges lost in purple obscurity, its crown splayed out across the prevailing winds of the upper atmosphere. It's been a rough spring in the Midwest and across the South, what with all the storms and all. Why, we had a tornado here the other night. It took out some mobile homes on the southwest side of town and I've heard it wrecked havoc with some trees on campus too. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness.]

Crap, what happened? The text incased in brackets above was simply gone after I posted. I gave myself carpel tunnel syndrome and more than half of what I'd pecked out was gone!? Then auto correct wouldn't let me write the word "crap," but kept replacing it with "deal." I may have to go ahead and get that new laptop before I go off on vacation!

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

test post


This is a test post created on my new android smart phone. Since I came in off the road I'm making a lot less money and won't be able to afford a new laptop. I'm trying to see if I could get by just with the phone. It's obvious that it won't be that easy, but then I'll get better at typing with my thumbs too.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Testimony

 


I interjected my commanding voice into the conversation at a booth in Max's Place. I wanted to testify about how close I'd been to the Mississippi River in Southern Looziana. We've all heard about the mighty Mississippi lately, and the spillway that they might open; the houses and farmland that would then be flooded. I said that I'd seen some of those “structures” and that they looked old and rusted. “I hope they'll still work if they need them.”

I searched through the archive of The Reluctant Trucker and finally found the relevant post, which follows. The map was pirated from DeLorme Maps. I'd gladly pay their licensing fee but the hassle still doesn't seem worth it. I hope they don't put me in jail, or bankrupt me. Hey, I'm advertising their brand, right?



1/05/07

It’s nice of Spring to come so early this year.  I love the bright green of young grass.  But then I was in the Deep South, I doubt many of you have seen the grass growing just yet, despite the unusually warm start to winter this year.  Don’t worry, it’s probably going to hit with a vengeance soon, trying to make up for lost time.

I had an interesting drive across Louisiana 15 today, following the Mississippi River.  They call US 61 the “Great River Road,” but I’ve always been disappointed following it.  Other than some interesting architecture in the towns it's just another highway and you never really get close to the river.  I was close to the river today, and I mean close.  For much of the way the road ran along the top of the levee, marshy woods on one side, and marshy woods on the other, except that the eastern side often opened up into wide expanses of water and there were no buildings, with one exception.  There was quite a bit of water on the western side too, but most of that was due to the heavy rains the night before.  I didn’t actually see the river itself except in a couple of places, but there was no mistaking that it was the shaper of the landscape.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been busy out there.  Every creek and river that pierced the levee had elaborate spillways.  They were all of different design.  Some had huge concrete superstructures that towered over the road; others rose little higher than the water, but they were all built in segments, I presume so that some segments can be opened wider than others, and all of them looked old.  There were locks too.  I got a close up view of a lock looking right down into it from the bridge I was crossing.  It was huge and could have easily accommodated at least two of those big barges, one in front of the other, though it was empty at the time.

And I saw poverty like I’ve never seen it before.  There were literal tar paper shacks, with tin roofs perched drunkenly on blocks of concrete; the yards full of junked cars, old washing machines and piles of other stuff.  Grandma sat on the porch while a group of men leaned over the open hood of a beat up pick-up truck.  There were other dwellings as well, they weren’t all dirt poor, though most of them were modest.  Still, many of the other houses may have had tin roofs too, but they were level and their lines straight.  And there was one large white two story with huge columns along the front of it.  It didn’t look old enough to actually have been a plantation house, but it was sure modeled after one.

All of the buildings were on blocks, because of the swampy ground, and the couple of graveyards I saw had those above ground tombs that you see in New Orleans.  At one place there was a row of modern ranch houses built in a flooded field.  The only ground that was showing was that immediately surrounding the houses and the driveways.  That flooding was due to the rain, I’m sure.  They expected it too, or they wouldn’t have built on raised ground and made a causeway out of the drives.  Still, I’m not sure that I’d want to live anyplace where the front yard was dominated by a levee more than twice the height of your home.

I passed signs for two ferries.  The first I didn’t think much about but the sign for the Angola Ferry caught my eye since it was as crooked as those shacks had been.  As I passed I looked down the drive.  It was one lane gravel and wandered shakily into the woods.  It makes me wonder what shape the boat is in.  I’ll bet it smells like fish down there.

There wasn’t much that was truly old; perhaps the moisture rots things before they can become antique.  But there were a few indications that people had lived there for a long time and that things have changed.  One was a high wrought iron fence with a double gate decorated with scroll work.  It was tilted, rusty and surrounded nothing more special than a plowed field.  Another was the sign for a store, eatery or maybe a filling station that rose right up out of the ditch that ran along the bottom of the levee; behind it nothing but scraggly woods.  The name of the establishment was missing, only the Coca-Cola logo remained.  It was probably from a day before the levee was built, or when it was smaller.  And then of course there were the graveyards with those eerie crypts.

It was an interesting and pleasant drive.  The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky (here’s an observation: even brown muddy water can reflect a clear blue sky without sullying the color in the least).  I needed something like that since this load had been hell up to that point.  The shipper was in a little town along the river and there was no direct way to get there from where I was coming from.  I’d tried to follow their directions but got lost in the dark and the rain out in the country.  I was on narrow little roads with no shoulder, my lane barely wide enough for the truck and the fields on either side were flooded.  Shortly after I got found again I had to wait for over a half an hour while they cleared a fallen tree off of LA 1.  Then, when I finally got to the shipper I found out that the load wasn’t going to be ready until the next day, so I parked along the fence for the night.  They’d said that the shipping office opened at 8:00 so I stayed up late playing my computer game, setting the alarm for 7:00, but at 5:30 in the morning they came banging on my door.  I was due for something nice, don’t you agree?



* * *


I know that I promised I wouldn't use the “N” word again, but I came across this related entry as well:

1/07/07

I feel blessed somehow, in a painful way.  Stuck here in Memphis (with the mobile blues again) I opted not to go into town and spend money.  Instead I spent just a little on some cut rate movies from the local Walmart.  One of them was The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, a 1973 film about an 110 year old black woman and her story from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement in east central Louisiana, on the Mississippi River.  Hey, I was just there!  The history that I had assumed has taken form and weight.

I feel compelled to say a few more words about that shanty town.  I didn’t think that I needed to mention that the residents there were black.  I figured you could guess that, especially with the reference to the large manor style home.  Forgive me if I made it seem like just so much more scenery.  I was appalled by it; fascinated, but appalled.  That's the third world people, right here in America!  What do I think about all the unsightly junk in the yards there?  Resources.  That’s where those unemployed young men will get the parts to make that beat up old pickup truck run.  One could make a derogatory slur to describe a machine made to run with inadequate materials, but I think it takes ingenuity and resourcefulness.  And what about Grandma on the porch?  I bet she could tell you a thing or two.  I recognize that I am just a passing spectator, and don’t know the local circumstances, but I can tell you this: it isn’t just one or two lazy souls who choose to live that way, there is a whole community there, right now, as we speak.


* * *


I wonder where those lazy souls are now. If they open the spillway on its rusty hinges there ain’t much chance of them saving those fancy homes.

 

Lemmings

 


It's too much. I'm not bitching now, just reinforcing earlier observations. My last delivery today was in Owensboro, KY. There are many ways home from there. None of them are good, winding across the hills of Southern Indiana, and most funnel through Bloomington and up the path of my daily commute. I chose the windy way through the Hoosier National, to see the Green Glory, but that's not this Story.

On 67 past Martinsville (it was nice to see the River from the higher seat of a truck; I see where the sand came from) we all fell into relation in the long stretch of open highway.

There were three of us. A small straight truck was in dire competition with a four wheeler several hundred feet in front of me. The four wheeler won, the straight truck accepted his position behind it and we all moved along together at the same speed for a long time. I kept my distance.

We finally came upon the first traffic signal on that stretch. I do this daily and know how the lights react so when it turned green again I was able to sail past those two lovers thinking they were both in my past.

Not so: they pursued me aggressively, both of them obviously breaking the speed limit, demanding to be in front.

“Hey, I'm not in competition; just trying to get down the road. Have it your own way.”

I don't know what happened to the four wheeler but I had multiple chances to pass that straight truck again but didn't; we were in the thick of traffic. I hope we all got where we were going.

 

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Life as a Traffic Barrel

 


Actually I've got plenty of positive things to say, I just feel like bitching. Shut up Mom, I'll say something nasty if I want to!

The weather's actually quite nice at the moment so first off I'll bitch about my job. What's that hexagram, Exhaustion, with the lake drained dry? That's why I don't give you the benefit of my daily observations. Oh well, I'm lucky to have a job, right, and one that pays over minimum wage, which I figure would be about 30,000 a year.

What I really want to gripe about is related to my job, but not confined to it. It's this misplaced spirit of competition on the roadways governed by the principle, Thou Shalt Not Be Before Me!

Why just yesterday, on my way home from work, I was running 9 miles per hour over the speed limit in the left lane, having just passed a line of slower cars. Looking in my mirror I saw another car a few hundred feet back slowly gaining on me. I flipped on the blinkers and moved over into the granny lane, like a good boy. We continued like that for maybe a mile or two and then the guy floored it. He roared past me, put me in his blind spot, then slowed to exactly my speed. Hey, at least he wasn't right beside me, like some of them do. I still felt that I needed to slow down, to be comfortable. “Yes, you win!” Later, in Martinsville, I had to come to a stop to wait for him to make a left turn.

Now about the job: I travel a lot of highways, non-interstates with traffic lights interspersed amid long sections of open roadway. I try to time the lights so that I don't have to roar to life from a dead stop, but even rolling slow it's going to take me a while to gain speed. The cars all go zooming past. Inevitably there are a couple of cars along side me as I approach my running speed. As I speed up, they speed up. It's obvious they are pissed off, in competition with me. OK, I've learned to just give them the road but were I to follow it through to the logical conclusion of this scenario they would get past me, pull over right in front of me endangering both our lives, then slow down to the speed they really wanted to travel in the first place. Wait a second, these are people that I'd already passed out there on the open stretches!

This is not the exception, it's the rule. Ugh, I have to let you all go by so that I can then grab the left lane and pass you back? I'm at work here, in a heavily time constrained industry!

What really gets me is when I'm in “competition” with a recreational vehicle with a bunch of bicycles strapped to the front, towing an SUV with a canoe on top. “Chill out dude, you're on vacation!” (The professional RV movers are cool; they're professional, we get along.)

In a construction zone they usually give plenty of notice as to which lane is closed. Everyone chooses that lane, of course, because it actually moves faster as the through lane is forced to slow down to let them in. When I first started this job a Big Truck Driver wouldn't dare to be caught taking advantage of that phenomena; at the risk of being heckled over the CB radio and shut out at the end of the line. “Shame on you!” No more, unfortunately. It's every man or woman for themselves.

So I still suffer through the long wait. At the end of the line I make an opening for a few cars. We could all just keep rolling but it seems that a four wheeler who is alongside a big truck feels that he or she has the right to pass that big truck. As the four wheelers that I've let in pass the ones who fill the gap feel that they have the right to pass too; and so it goes until either someone relents or I assert myself, risking a collision. What do I look like, a Traffic Barrel? It's no wonder the through lane is so slow!

The worst is during evening rush hour, with a lot of people eager to get home. Big Trucks keep a wide space in front of themselves for a purpose. Four wheelers seem to think that purpose is to suit them. Approaching a popular exit on the interstate they'll just keep coming around me, forcing me to slow down to keep a semblance of following distance, for their safety and mine, in case someone has a flat tire or there's a fender bender or something. I can't take the left lane because there's already cars there waiting to get in front of me. I've been down to 25 mph, on the interstate, mind you, before I had a chance to grab the left lane and pass them all back!

I'm not above laying on the air horn in a situation like that, once I'm traveling free. I understand why people don't want to be behind a big truck, besides sometimes being slow you can't see anything ahead. But if you're just going to be getting off the freeway...

I was heckled over the CB radio once (well, more than once but...). I was in a serious traffic backup on The Beltway, 495 approaching the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which was under construction at the time. Knowing that the right lane ended ahead I was creeping in the next lane over. Moving along with the rest of traffic I kept a space open in front of me into which a steady stream of four wheelers flowed like water. I was told that I should tighten up, stop that gap, make those four wheelers wait like everyone else. “Why,” I asked, “So they can gum things up even more?”

Can't we all just get along?

 

Thursday, May 5, 2011

River Mist

 


An early riser in Martinsville this morning would have looked outside and said, “Oh, it's foggy outside,” and they would have been right; for Martinsville. If they tried to extrapolate from that to the rest of the state then they would have been mistaken, however. Although the fog was thick in places it was solely associated with bodies of water.

I first encountered it in the Beanblossom valley, then in Martinsville and on up IN 67 for as long as the highway followed the River. I went up US 31 and don't recall any more fog until I got to the Wabash, which was shrouded in mist though not nearly so thick as that in the predawn darkness along the White. Then it was up and over the hill to the Eel River which was misty too. By the time that I'd gotten to the Tippecanoe it wasn't so much misty as hazy, except for the wisps still rising off the river's surface.

Speaking of rivers I don't have to tell you the water's high. Surely you've heard about the Army Corp of Engineers blowing up the levee in Missouri? I was just down in Evansville, on the Ohio not far upstream from its confluence with the Mississippi and the town of Cairo, IL, the town they were trying to save. The river was higher than I'd ever seen it before. Parts of Evansville were actually flooded. I mean there were houses and vehicles sticking out of a new lake. They had a huge pump going in the area where I delivered and water was bubbling up out of one storm drain then running back down another, which I can't quite figure out. On the approach to the bridge to KY the water was so deep that the current of the Ohio was tugging at the sag in a power line.

The Beanblossom is high too, of course. Her waters have spread into the fields along Old 37, higher than I ever remember seeing them. I haven't forgotten my little adventure; neither the terror nor the beauty.

I had to take IN 10 from I 65 over to US 41 while it was still raining. “Oh shit,” I thought, “what if it's flooded? Surely they'd have a warning at the interstate if it was, wouldn't they?” I was nervous until I saw another truck coming the other way, and was still nervous. IN 10 wasn't flooded but it looked like the Kankakee had claimed a few houses along US 41.

And I hear the sirens' call of that moonlit night. I want to go back. It's a little like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and wanting to jump.

 

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Power Line Serenade

 


I woke up at KC's. He was up but Rachael was still in bed so I folded the blankets and took my cup of coffee outside so that she could rouse herself in her own space (it's very nice, but very small). I scared up a bird that flew immediately onto the power line to the house; a wren perhaps, I could only see it in silhouette.

Amidst the morning cacophony I could distinguish this bird's contribution because he put his body into the act of singing. I counted ten elements to his song. It started with two sharp notes that never varied, but what followed was never the same except that there was always one element with a tremolo.

Although I could distinguish the same pattern coming from round about it seemed that my bird never received an answer. The poor guy was trying different combinations to unlock a mate, and failing. Or so I projected onto the scene.

I have to laugh at myself. “Go away!” I keep singing, as I try to say, “Come hither.”

Say Levine. I'm good with it.