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.

 

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?

 

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.

 

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.

 

Give Me a Sign

 

Here's one of those billboards I was telling you about:

 

Washing the Undercarriage

 

OMG

Some things should not be shared.

But then what is this crazy mixed up blogosphere good for?

It's not that I might once again prove myself an idiot. I will, always. It's that I might give my power away unnecessarily. Pearls before Swine.

I was out of gas at the same time that the well was dry. I could have used credit but knew that I had enough to get home, while payday was tomorrow. There was a gallon of new gas in the shed, shy one mower's tank. That would get me back to Martinsville, where the prices are cheaper.

But I had forgotten that the homeless kid staying here had already poured that into his tank.

No fear; no need to go begging at the neighbors'. I still had enough to make it to the station on the hill; out of my way and more expensive, but hey...

I'm a stubborn man. I hate back tracking. I figured I'd go through the bottoms and come up the hill to get there.

Some back story: It's been raining; the water is high. A couple days before, on my way home from work I'd seen a minivan come to a stop in the bottom as I was passing. “Don't cross when flooded,” I repeated by rote.

But then I saw an SUV coming the other way, barreling through the water like nothing.

Then, just last evening, on my way home, with the empty tank, I saw a small pickup run straight into the water, kicking up a wake with complete confidence.

I thought, “It's passable; that's the way I'm going in the morning; shortcut to gasoline.”

That turned out to be a bad idea. I mean: I don't have an SUV, nor a pickup truck; just a little Hyundai Accent.

It started out OK, then got deeper. “Where's the road?!” I got into some gravel on the shoulder and floored it to get back onto the pavement. It got deeper yet. “Oh shit, no turning back now!” Seriously, I thought about backing out but if I was having trouble following the roadway forward how was that going to work out? Besides, I was afraid to stop. My headlights were lost in the wave I kicked up before me. If it weren't for that waning gibbous moon high above I'd have been lost (five AM EDT).

Lest you think I'm a complete idiot let it be known that I wasn't afraid of a current. Wylie Road traverses a floodplain backwater surrounded by hills, away from the stream proper. Otherwise I would have tried Mel Currie Road, which actually crosses the Beanblossom. Though looking at Google Earth I see that I was closer to the main channel than I thought!

I climbed out of the water and thought I'd made it, but it was not to be, there was more water ahead. This was the true test of my intelligence. I was afraid that I might not make it back the way I'd come, so I continued on; April Fool that I am.

My hopes were soon dashed as it quickly became as deep as before. I was in the same position again: no turning back! Then it got deeper. My headlights were literally underwater. Then they went out. The dash lights were still on but other than that it was just me, the river, and the moon.

It was probably agricultural detritus but in my heightened state I saw them as floating mats of watercress. I imagined tiny flowers, stand-ins for lotus blossoms. I didn't miss the beauty of my position. I looked out the drivers side window and saw the moon reflected on the water, gut high to me. I slowed quickly once for some reason and the compression wave took off at the same speed I'd been traveling like a mini-tsunami. I only wish I'd looked behind to see what my wake looked like in the moonlight, but I had to navigate. My knuckles must have been white on the steering wheel.

I was resigned to my fate. I seriously didn't think that I would make it. It was 36° Fahrenheit outside and water was seeping in around the doors. I was looking forward to some uncomfortable hours ahead, not to mention what a fool I would feel having done what we all know not to do.

I could see the end ahead, the road rising in the moonlight onto the hill. The water got deeper still.

I've only told this story to two worthy people, with one other listening in. All three of them wanted to know, “Did you Float?”

“No,” I told them. I never felt like I was floating; but come to think of it, near the end I had it floored but was going nowhere fast, nor was the tach anywhere near the red. I just thought it was my engine ready to die.

Nor did I feel my brand new drive tires grab the road at any point, as I emerged from the Red Sea, but there was plenty of power when I asked for it, and the headlights came back on, steam rising from the hood. “Christ,” I thought, “now I just need to make it up the hill to the station before I run out of gas!”

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you Water of the Beanblossom for letting me pass; Thank you Luna for your light; Thank you my Lucky Stars (Goddess)!

I'm overdue for having my transmission flushed, I think I'll do that today.