Touch Base

 

I don't claim to have a blog anymore. Every time that I've told someone about this recently I never heard from them again. So then I go back and review what I'd written "lately" and I realize it's all crap. I just can't win friends and influence people this way anymore, as I once did.

Let it be a testimony to my demise.

So let's review, let's look at that last post, Epic Nightmare. It was a nightmare. I talked to John. He didn't refuse it. They had him do the first run because he'd done the gig before, he knew the ropes. It was intended for me all along. That's cool, so let's get to the nightmare part.

Did I mention it was a landfill? I can't recall ever having had an olfactory dream until after playing around on the top of Vigo county, and it was very specific. But that's just troubled sleep.

What is a landfill? Trash (with garbage) and dirt, fresh dirt. John's parting words of advice were, "Pray it doesn't rain."

It was a sloppy mess in dry conditions. Three days in there was precipitation. It was a constant drizzle on the way over to Terre Haute, punctuated by intense but brief downpours. The loader at Certainteed said that he'd dodged one of those to get my load strapped down. I told him how it was and said that if it came a downpour I was going to sit it out in the truck. We agreed that would be the best idea.

The next time that I saw him he was telling me how he'd been caught in a squall. I had to admit I'd been caught with my pants down too. I mean, there I was trying to unstrap the load when the storm hit, with the lift driver waiting, temps near freezing and the wind screaming like you're on Hoosier Hill or something. Yeah, it was hell, and come to find out that I'd left the door to my cab open, now my seat was wet.

Then there are the niceties of the predicament like trying ever so hard to throw the straps so that they'd land on top of the load, but having the wind carry them straight into the mud. And what about when temperatures went below freezing, which they surely did, and you had do deal with those mud laden frozen straps with your fingers screaming to be cut off?

It's all in a day's work.

There's no way I could convey all the ways in which that job sucked, but now we come to the reason for this post: I have a couple of friends who have mid level management positions over at Cook. They've been trying to recruit me. Sure I'd start out impoverished but I'd have insurance and get a raise every six months. Why, I'd be simply poor in no time at all and eventually I'd be middle class.

It sounds great, once I got through the introductory period. We don't need to hire Mexicans to do this stuff, we got Hoosiers. But I could make do, I know how. Only I couldn't imagine myself going to the same building every day to go to work, even if my tasks got progressively harder.

When again would I get to see the curve of the Earth in Indiana without travelling to the big lake, or be able to observe the scavenger habits of sea gulls and crows and their less than admirable interactions, or the joy of revving my engine into life and watching them all scatter hither yon by appointed principle?

Yeah, it was hell to go through, but novelty is worthwhile as well as the satisfaction in doing a job well done, and in the respect one gets from doing so.

I wanted to win the lottery and asked the I Ching why I didn't. In clear, unambiguous language it said that there was much more to be gleaned from life than could be gained from the luxury that wealth could offer.

I'm still going to buy a ticket someday, I'm sure.