All Work and No Play

Whew, I'm beat; another 14 hour day. They sent me all the way down to Monticello, Kentucky today, below Lake Cumberland and spitting distance from Tennessee. Not particularly far for an Over the Road driver, but let's remember that I'm a day tripper. This also came at the end of a very long, intense week. In fact the whole adventure started the evening before, with elements that were ramifications from the day before that; but I'll spare you the sordid details. Let's just say that I was back to work 10 hours from when I'd parked the truck, as soon as the law allowed. Granted, I didn't think that the one pm cut-off for delivery was firm, but I still have my pride.

The trip plan I was given was as if delivering straight from the mill, through Indianapolis, but I was starting from Bloomington. Fortunately there was a driver at the terminal in the morning who was familiar with the area and gave me an excellent route. His advise was golden, and the trip plan might have been OK too, if I'd actually been delivering in Monticello. That's what screwed me up. You see, Monticello is on the eastern side of Wayne County, and Wayne Lumber, my destination, the western side. Of course I waited to call for specific directions until I'd already struggled through Somerset and Burnside. My bad. I'd have done much better to have left the Cumberland Parkway on US 127 instead of going all the way to US 27.

Oh, and just so this story is spinning correctly let me mention that it rained off and on all day, making driving more difficult. But I made it before one pm! Just barely; by a matter of minutes.

There was a guy standing out front of the office eyeing me skeptically as I pulled up. He nodded when I greeted him then said, "We stop receiving at one, you'll have to wait till Monday." I must have looked really dejected because he guffawed and actually put his arm around my shoulder, giving me a manly shake. He was just kidding.

Looking at the map I figured I'd added an hour and a half to my trip what with all the stop lights in Somerset, which were definitely NOT timed. In truth it turned out that it was probably only more like an hour, or forty five minutes, even. You see, US 127 turned out to be the "scenic route." Back at the terminal when we were figuring out how I should go the experienced driver got all the way to Lake Cumberland then said, "Now you need a boat to cross; take the ferry."

127 is a good road, but it's windy, through the mountains. The speed limit may be 55 but practically you can do no better than 45 or so, average, if that. I actually caught myself bitching about it. I knew my weekend wasn't going to start until late but wait a second; "You're in the Mountains, Steve; take a deep breath and enjoy this."

I'm so glad that I relaxed before I got to...the dam. US 127 crosses the dam that holds back Cumberland Lake. I had several cars behind me approaching the 90 degree turn onto the dam. I had to stop until traffic cleared to make the turn. All the oncoming cars kept going onto the shoulder as if afraid of me. I wondered if I was over the yellow line, but wasn't. Perhaps the first one was afraid and the others followed? But no, there was a break, too small for me to go but large enough to stop a lemming. Yet they gave berth too. Perhaps they were trying to be kind, to give me enough room? More likely, but not sufficient. I needed the WHOLE road to make that turn.

I was stressed because I thought I was holding people up, but once I'd finally turned I found that the tailgaters had all come to the dam for the view and parked. I was free to cross at leisure.

And what a view it was. The lake to my right, narrower than some, but bounded by higher hills, and to the left a fucking Gorge. I've always wondered if that's not the etymology of "gorgeous." I guess we could look that up. But the view was of the Cumberland River curving off with a snake of mist above its surface mimicking what? Its future course, or the course of the river that was lost? No matter or energy is ever lost. "Gee, I hope this dam doesn't give way!"

So that was cool but there was another factor that frustrated me on the way back. This too you can look up online: The Worlds Longest Yardsale. Yup, US 127 in Southern Kentucky. Social scientists will be busy for years cataloguing this simian behaviour. It was early enough that it wouldn't have been an issue on the way in, but coming out..."I just wanna go home!" Then I passed KY 55, the highway I'd taken down to the Parkway before I realized it would have been my escape route. So if, which I doubt, I ever have to do this trip again I'll know the way to go, and a couple of ways NOT to go.

It's always easier in the morning, afternoon traffic sucks, everywhere. Imagine what it was like when I got to Louisville at five PM on a Friday, with every major road in that city under construction. "I just wanna go home!" But I made it, in one piece, glad of the overtime and with a story to tell. Yet that's not what I wanted to share with you, that was just blowing off steam:

I was on a back road in Davies County; Amish country. There were some sheep in an overgrown pasture. That was picturesque enough but the puppy bounding toward the sheep, its head rising out of the grass and disappearing again was priceless. Then I saw the two young boys in coveralls coming through a gate into the field to run after the dog and thought, "I must be in a Winslow Homer painting!"

Isolation Nightmare

It's over a month until the anniversary of 9-11 yet the event has come up repeatedly in the past few weeks. The company that I work for, Stone Belt Freight Lines, is bringing limestone from the facade of the Pentagon damaged in 9-11 back from DC (it was Indiana Limestone to begin with) for a memorial they are erecting in Indianapolis. Twice recently I've heard people at The Club that I frequent on the weekends, my "third place," talk about feeling at loose ends and unsure how to cope on that fateful day, then finding solace and community at the bar. Then, just tonight, at that same bar I kept hearing 9-11, 9-11. I turns out that one of the regulars has just bought a Porsche 911. Not quite the same thing but serendipity will have its way.

I truly appreciate the community that The Club affords, but my experience of 9-11 was quite different. I was Over the Road. I was in Virginia Beach, a locality that, with its naval station was set on high alert. Thank goodness I was sent west from there, across the Dismal Swamp, rather than north toward DC, where no traffic was moving.

The first I heard of events was local radio telling mothers to keep their children home from school. I remember talking to a young man in the trailer yard where I picked up my westbound load who was sure it was the beginning of the end of the world. Being jaded I figured it's always the beginning of the end of the world but was deeply affected nonetheless. There was a massive disruption in the Force that day. I too was at a loose end, unsure how to cope.

I reached out through email. I hadn't started The Reluctant Trucker yet but I had been doing email, which eventually led to the blog. I wrote a piece and sent it out to everyone on my contact list. I would edit it now, but here is what I wrote:

   I delivered a load to Bayonne New Jersey once, an industrial town on the southern tip of an island in the Hudson River just below Manhattan. There were several hours to kill while they unloaded us so I wandered around the surreal industrial landscape. I could see two twins high rise towers in the distance above the acres of million gallon oil tanks and the miles and miles of pipeline. I thought to myself, "There's a city over there, I wonder what city it is. It can't be very large, it only has two big buildings." Yet there was something incongruous about the size of those towers and how far away they seemed.
   You see, this was way back when I first started driving. I knew that we were in Jersey but I didn't know where. For some reason I thought that we were in the southern part of the state, having arrived during my co-driver's shift while I was asleep in the back. It never occurred to me that I was seeing the tops of the World Trade Center in NYC. Little city indeed.
   That's how impossibly huge those towers were, I could see them as if complete, but none of the other buildings of New York. Seemingly twice the height of the tallest of the buildings that clustered at their feet they were out of all proportion to the rest of Manhattan. Seen from the East off the Brooklyn Queens Expressway lower Manhattan was nicely framed in the truck window, but the tops of the WTC were lost behind the roof of the cab. From the North they still dominated even though most of the city lay between. I've heard that they were measurably farther apart at the top than at the base because of the curvature of the Earth. Mighty impressive structures, and beautiful, I suppose, in a minimalist sort of way, though far less interesting than the jumble of architecture they lorded over. And now they're gone.
   I speak of architecture because it’s something that I can grasp. Buildings can be rebuilt, the lives lost are irreplaceable. Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sisters, brothers, friends, enemies, lovers, fiancées, innocent victims all. I'm staggered. I can't grasp it, but I'm affected by it. The closest thing in history was probably Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though this, of course, is closer to home.
   I want to share with you how close it came, and how lucky I, and some of you, are. My ex-brother-in-law, Uncle Asolm, worked as the day manager at the Windows on the World Restaurant formerly located in the World Trade Center, NYC. I don't know the details but for some reason he didn't go to work that day, thank the Goddess. Apparently his brother was there but he got out in time. I heard a story on NPR, though, about a woman looking for her sister who was a waitress there and is now missing. We just don't know what might have been had he gone to work, I'm just thankful that he didn't.

Just to clarify one point: Essom worked at a restaurant in the concourse, in the lower floors, which is why his brother, who also worked there was able to escape. We still don't know what would have happened if he had gone to work that day.

Conspiracy theory: Being a devout Muslim who prays five times a day Essom must have known about the attack and his brother, whose name I forget just now and who I have only seen once through closed lids as he stepped past me on his way to work as a cab driver, while I slept on the living room floor of Jean and Essom's house north of the city, was surely there to set off the CIA explosives that brought down the third building.

I don't know what the truth is except not that.

But back to my email; I longed for an answer and got one. Only one, from someone that I wasn't very close to. I wrote in my journal,  "I feel more isolated than ever."

Later, in a phone call to someone else I'd sent the email to I probed the subject. The reply: "Do you know how insulting it is to get an email addressed to a whole list of people, as if I don't count?" I was crushed and didn't even ask if he'd read it. I doubt now that he did and realize too that it's not a writing culture, that a reply might have been too much to hope for. After that rebuff I let the issue lie.

It's more than a month away from the anniversary of 9-11, and more than a decade since the event, but I am still affected by it. All those Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sisters, brothers, friends, enemies, lovers, fiancées gone. Exes too, but who cares about them?

Aesthetic Statement

I delivered a trailer full of carpet scraps to a recycling facility on the north side of Indy, directly across the road from where I used to park my car so that I could get back in the truck I'd previously parked there and vice versa, on and on for eight years or so, back when I was an over the road driver. I felt a visceral emotion.

Nostalgia?

No. I felt again that gnawing anxiety that was permanently lodged in my gut for the decade I spent driving long haul. Talk about a nightmare.

I'm a good traveller, I did it well. I had a home, I just chose to be gone, for money. My heart goes out to every refugee everywhere, whether chosen, and especially if not.

So I'm glad that I'm writing again, even if it is in these condensed little posts, sporadically. I was talking with another blogger recently and realized that one reason I don't write more often, or in longer posts is not that I was then, (in The Reluctant Trucker years) assuaging that gut knot; the pain, but that I spent uncounted hours on the boring interstates and used that time to compose. More often than not I now drive in the quickly changing environment of small highways, byways, or even lanes through the woods, on occasion. I don't have the luxury of composing blog posts in my mind anymore.

Pain is not necessary for art, but time is, unless you're driven. I was merely driving.

So, friends, I was driving across IN 157 north of Bloomfield again today. I don't know what combination of atmospheric properties and light caused the effect, but the farthest ridges were not blue with distance, but positively purple. I also reflected on the fact that it might have been a bad idea to recommend the route as yielding vistas on both sides of the road, even with the trees in full leaf. I realized that as a truck driver I sit a lot higher than most. I'm not sure what you'd see from a car window, or a bicycle.

Take everything I say with a grain of your preference.

Landfill Picnic

And it was a picnic compared to that "Epic Nightmare" of 12/23/2012. (The nightmare before Christmas? For more specifics of the nightmare please see the next post "Catching Up" of 1/19/2013 as well. ) I went back to the top of Vigo County to smell the fresh air. Only it was warm, and dry this time. Piece of cake. The view is spectacular which my cell phone camera cannot, of course adequately convey:

Landfill, that's all you need to know. All in a day's work.

So I've considered changing the name of this blog. I mean, where's the nightmare? Commuting to Indianapolis every day was a nightmare, truly, but all in all I'm happy with what I'm doing now. Still, "They're slinging missiles in the Mid East, they're slinging mud here in the States...(Chris Little)." Like Johnny Cash, I'll continue to wear black. We're Big Boat Buddhists.

Process note: The upper photo was not staged. I'd idly thought about getting a snapshot of the basket earlier but was working and didn't get the chance. I figured it would be gone when I got back, ploughed under by the heavy equipment that regularly shakes the compacted mass, but it was still there, only now filled with dirt and a soda bottle next to it. "Look Boo Boo, a Pikanik Basket!"

Jumped the Gun

Who knew that July would be so mild? I usually wait until I've spent a few restless nights before I install the air conditioner each year. I did it pro forma this year, expecting the worst. Once done it's not easily reversed. I can now no longer open my window to the night.

Yesterday morning I shuffled out of my bedroom to find the rest of the house cooler and sweeter than my climate controlled sleeping chamber. Last night I just left the thing off. I slept OK but the air was stuffy when I awoke. I could hear the birds though, which is a plus.

There's no point to this inanity, just to say that the weather is beautiful, I guess. Happy Independence Day!

Morning Muse

Dawn: Jewel in the crown of the day. Both of the transition periods are gorgeous but dusk is so frenetic, its promise relief. Dawn is peaceful, the start of something new.

I've said before that one of the unexpected bonuses of being a truck driver is that you get to see many a sunrise. That still holds true as a local driver, even at midsummer. I've had to start early every day this week and have seen as many dawns. Thursday's was my muse:

The temps were in the seventies, the humidity low yet a mist rose from every field, dale and hollow; sometimes homogenous, sometimes stratified in undulating layers. Before the sun actually rose its red orange light reflected off a bank of cloud setting the eastern sky ablaze. As the light grew its reflection reached the blue grey mist in the fields setting a zone of oh, so subtle color alight atop it. I realized that Monet wan't up to this task. With all of Van Gogh's candles on his hat it would still be hopeless. Maybe Turner could have captured its essence?

The light grew until the whole eastern sky was on fire and nothing was subtle any more: complimentary colors were hovering above the fields before my eyes! You probably wouldn't believe it if you saw it in a painting.

Then the sun rose behind that reflecting bank of cloud and the glory deflated. Regardless, the mist was no longer blue grey and orange, now pure silver. The beauty never stops.

The beauty never stops still those moments of rapturous glory are rare. I traversed the selfsame territory at nearly the same time yesterday but everything was different. The humidity more intense with no atmospheric reflectors to enliven things; the world was just gray. I still got a visual treat worth mentioning though:

It was later in the morning, the sun already up. Travelling east on I-64 in Louisville, along the bank of the Ohio both the river and the sky were the same color, one vast expanse bisected by the lines of bridges. The water was luminous, seemingly giving off more light than the sky. I don't remember the sun, just a general haze, yet it must have been shining because a barge and a couple of small boats in the distance set the water around them sparkling.

Keep your eyes open my friends, the beauty never stops.

Auditory Ques

Gorgeous weather; what I'm talkin' 'bout.

I was working in the garden yesterday morning when I heard something approach. I knew it was an animal, a four footed rhythm. Expecting a dog I saw a spotted faun.

My first thought was that it was coming to graze, but no, the poor thing seemed unaware of both the garden and me. It stopped just ten feet from where I sat and with its tail wrapped tight between it's legs sniffed the air, the grass, the woodpile. It wandered over and examined the opened shed where the lawnmower resides. For a moment it sensed me, looked right at me sniffing with its ears all akimbo, then moved on to the back yard.

I fear for it. It spent about twenty minutes within my gaze and not once did I hear the husky bark of its mother or see another deer at all. It will find its way home, whether that's within the fold or the belly of a coyote I don't know, but I was graced by its presence.

Later I had the chain saw out getting ready for next winter when I heard a motorcycle. Between cuts I turned to watch the road and didn't see anything so went back to work.

But wait, I could still hear it and looked again. Still the road was empty. I revved the engine then let it idle trying to determine if the sound was coming from me. Nothing; so I went back to work.

Soon back pipes were firing and a whole gaggle of motor bikes were passing me by, I could feel the vibration in my chest; I thought I'd heard something.

Summertime.