The Northward Contrail

Reward and risk

So the big adventure has been over for a couple weeks now; slowly the ache is melting, and slowly I'm getting accustomed once more to being where I am.  And it's not a bad place to be, really, even if the heat and humidity here have lately been making our digital weather amusement center go haywire and reset itself every couple of days, and have made me long for being in a place where in July it's in the 60s and occasional 70s and things are bright and pleasant, and if you want cooler you can always climb higher.

Even with all this, and even with the healing that's gone on, and even as the sweet little aches recede into the realities of life, I keep coming back to the question: What part does Alaska play in my life?  More to the point, what part should it play?  My friend told me a week or so ago that he half expects me to inform him before too long that I'm coming up for an extended stay that becomes more than just a research trip.  As much as I chuckled with recognition, I know that's not likely to happen.

Oh, there are reasons, and I've gone over the more practical ones: the good job I have here, the family I have here, the home we've built, adjusting to a different climate (which, as much as I sometimes really hate the climate here, it's at least climate I've lived with most all my life, so I know how to deal with it).  There's the turmoil it would cause.  There's the pain of moving.  There's a spouse I have to think about.  There's my feeling that moving to Alaska just to do the same kind of work I do here would be kind of pointless. There's a list of practical reasons as long as your arm against it.

But there's one very good reason I probably won't make the move, and I haven't shared this with anyone.

One of my favorite movies of all time, one I'd put on the proverbial desert island list, is Mister Roberts.  I love it for way too many reasons to list.  But, in this case, I think of it as a cautionary tale.  Roberts wants nothing more than to be transferred from his sleepy duty aboard a cargo ship; he wants to go where the action is, transferred to a combatant vessel.  The end of the war is coming, and he can't get to the action, and it frustrates him.  Finally, he gets his wish and is posted to a destroyer off Okinawa...where he's killed, drinking coffee in the wardroom, in a kamikaze attack.  

That came to mind the other day when I was thinking about how I'm sitting here some days, thinking about those distant mountains and those bush planes, and it's just like Roberts in the opening titles of the movie, standing on the foc's'le and watching the task force slink by in the distance, imagining himself on the bridge of a carrier or a battlewagon headed for the waters off Japan.  Roberts wanted it, and it cost him his life.  And, as much as it kind of freaks me to say it, I can see the fulfillment of my dream of Alaska costing me mine. 

It's because I see Alaska in much the same way I look at an airplane like an MU-2.  The MU-2 is a marvelous airplane.  But get behind the airplane while you're flying it, and it will kill you just like that.  It has happened many times.  You have to know exactly what you're doing, maintain complete awareness of what the airplane is doing, and you need to be trained and proficient and competent.  It takes time and training and skill and good judgment, because inattentiveness, carelessness or other lapses in an MU-2 will kill you a lot faster than in many other aircraft. 

And I can completely see this happening.  Let's say the stars do align somehow and I move to Alaska and I fulfill this wild dream of owning a little airplane, flying out to these remote areas.  I can easily see me getting just a little bit careless one day and smacking into a mountain.  Or say I go out for a nature hike one day and I fail to see that I'm between mama moose and her baby.  Or, just as easily, that I have an encounter with a bear that doesn't end well.  Or I'm driving to work one day on a snowy road and lose control of my vehicle and plunge off something, or swerve to miss a moose and end up losing an argument with gravity.  Or I go hiking and climb on the edge of something, and the ground beneath my feet turns out not to be quite as firm as I originally gauged, and it's two hundred feet down from there.  The list goes on.

Could I survive there?  Yes, as years pass, I would probably build the skills I needed, become wise to my environment, and do other things to mitigate the risks.  I already play it safe, and I'd build on that.  If I did join the ranks of the airplane owners up there, I'd take all the training I could, fly as much as I could, and generally try to stay wise and proficient (and if I couldn't afford to do all that, I just wouldn't fly).  And, I mean, it's not like I haven't learned how to adapt to strange new environments before (South Florida has its own hazards, and yet I survived there and adapted pretty well), and it's not like the place I live now doesn't have its risks -- there's snakes, deer darting in front of your car, angry bees, bobcats and other wild creatures that can get rabid and tear into you, and that's just the wildlife hazards.  But those, at least, I've become savvy about.  I know this because I've lived most all my life knowing certain things.  I know there are certain times of the year I don't go into our woods without watching my step very carefully and keeping my .38 in my back pocket in case I have a rendezvous with a copperhead.  I know the things to avoid.  I know the ways to protect myself here. 

And, over time, I'd learn how there.  I know I would, and I know I'd build a certain level of competence in being out and about.  But I'd have to approach it with a lot of care, and I'd have to give it time.  I would need to give myself time to build the kind of intelligence I'd need to survive.  I know I could do it.  But I'm also aware of how much I don't know, and it's what I don't know that could really bite me, especially early on.  Or, even, what could bite me after I've had years and years of experience, just like what almost happened to me a few months ago.

No matter where you go or what you do, there are risks.  Heck, I could walk out the door of my office tomorrow, cross the street and get hit by a bread truck (or ambulance, since I like the conceptual versions of such things to have elements of farce to them).  But something about being up there this time, and seeing more of it and being reminded of its power, has reminded me that with great beauty comes potential danger.  It's not fear that I have of this wild, strange, wonderful place called Alaska.  No, it's more like respect, and being reminded of just how much respect you need to have to avoid grief there, and that you need to keep your mind in the game when you're out and about. 

Like that MU-2, Alaska offers great reward.  But, if you're not careful and you let yourself fall behind, it'll bite you.

No one escapes from IAH

When last we'd left off, our intrepid protagonist had just arrived at the big Houston airport and faced her biggest challenge, more terrifying than earthquakes and wild bears, or even being attacked by a wild bear during an earthquake: having to kill four hours at the Houston airport.

My original plan had been to follow last year's model, and that was to find the little joint I had breakfast at.  Sure enough, I found it.  The lights were on, there were people there getting ready.  The "Hostess Will Seat You" sign was up and the menu boards were out front.  So I stood by the entrance, and eventually the waitress saw me waiting.  At 5:56 a.m. local time, this actual conversation took place:

Waitress: "We're closed now, ma'am."
Nerd Girl: "Okay.  What time do you open?"
Waitress: "Six."
Nerd Girl: "Okay, thank you."
(Nerd Girl's internal voice: "Screw that!")

Instead I went to a Starbucks booth for some juice and a muffin, parked it in an empty seat at a vacant gate, and tried to rest for a bit. This, of course, was hard to do.  As the airport started to awaken, it became harder to find a quiet place to sit and wait.  The corridors were already starting to become congested, and if that wasn't enough, you risked getting run down by those electric shuttle carts, which sometimes run two-abreast down the corridors and are driven in a way that would send veteran New York cabbies screaming in fright.

The best prospect for quiet space was down a corridor to some empty gates.  Nothing was open, no planes were in, and it was quiet except for those infernal television monitors tuned to the morning news drip.  I tried to block them out as best I could.  To the east, I could see the sun start to peek out over the clouds; it was a beautiful sunrise, with the Texas sky all orange and everything.  A 767-200 got towed over to the nearest gate, and workers started fussing over it.

After a while I shifted to the other side of the concourse, where there was less glare and a little more room to spread out.  I finished up some paperwork and did some crossword puzzles.  While I was sitting there alone, a white-haired gentleman in a uniform shirt and slacks came over to me.  For a second I thought he was going to ask me to leave.  But he greeted me, told me his name, and said very kindly, "I want to thank you for flying Continental.  I hope you're having a pleasant trip."  I wasn't prepared for this, and for a second I was speechless.  But I thanked him and told him I had really enjoyed it.  In all the years I've been traveling, I've never had anyone go out of their way to thank me like that, not even when I was a loyal and frequent customer of a certain airline whose once-renowned hospitality was excised during a series of corporate moves over the last decade.

A little while later, this area of the concourse started to get a little too noisy.  A Newark flight came in, and there was the usual arrival commotion.  Then a couple of flight attendants got into a very lively conversation nearby.  I couldn't work or relax.  I figured it was time to cut my losses and do the inevitable, and catch the train to the dreaded B Concourse.

Concourse B is the part of the airport that handles the bulk of regional airliner traffic at Houston.  The good news is, it's scheduled to be seriously renovated before too much longer.  But future plans can't help the present-day traveler, who must contend with the fact that B is much too small for all the flights.  Not only have there been gates added to gates (more on that in a moment), but the facility is just too small. To get to the gates, you travel these long corridors; they seem like a quarter-mile or more.  At the end are cramped little waiting areas that serve seven or eight gates.  It's not a place for the claustrophobic or agoraphobic.

At least Concourse B has the Shipley Do-Nuts stand, and the Liz Lemon in me had been waiting for this the whole trip.  So I treated myself to one plain glazed and one white cream, all of $1.60. Then I had to find a place to sit and enjoy them.  This was easier said than done.  My search led me down one of those long corridors, to a vacant row of seats.  There's no windows, and you're right up against the flow of traffic, but it's by yourself, at least.

Unfortunately, a string of events started to unfold.  The first was that as I traveled the corridor, I happened to be right behind someone with serious, serious personal hygiene issues.  I'll spare you the details, but the effect of this wake turbulence on my olfactory nerves would have been enough in itself to ruin the experience.

Then, right as I took my first couple bites of the creme-filled doughnut, the bag on my lap started to shift.  It fell to the floor. The other of my prized doughnuts lay face-down on filthy carpet.

In sorrow and disgust, I put both doughnuts back in the bag, crumpled it up, deposited the bag in a trash can...and went right back for another two doughnuts.  (A real financial tragedy at another $1.60.)  And I found someplace else to sit.  Not much better, but at least it wasn't in that lousy corridor.

Things didn't seem much more promising, and I still had time to kill and hadn't had a decent breakfast.  I wasn't going to get to have a proper lunch, either, so it was probably a good idea to get something.  I remembered there was a little Chili's in the middle of the terminal. Since I'm not (yet) under the Pam Halpert lifetime ban from Chili's, I figured it would be a good place to chill for a bit, so I went there and had the breakfast tacos.  Unfortunately, this wasn't much of an improvement.  The man sitting behind me was having a loud conversation on his cell phone.  And the television monitor was showing the Today Show's cooking segment, in which a poor, innocent, probably very tasty piece of salmon was being massacred in the name of haute cuisine.  Considering what I'd enjoyed a couple nights before, it seemed like a crime.

And then I looked up at the monitor again.  It had suddenly been flipped to Headline News.  That's when I learned Steinbrenner had passed away.

I settled up and still had about an hour and a half to go before my flight boarded.  I went on down to where my gate was, hoping I could find a place to sit for a while.  Unfortunately, my flight was leaving from Gate 84.  Only if you've traveled out of Gate 84 can you appreciate what kind of practical joke that is.  For, you see, Gate 84 is actually made up of about 15 or so additional gates, designated with letters. For all intents and purposes, Gate 84 is a bus terminal.  There must have been 200 or 300 people milling around waiting inside this big box of a room, with nothing to do and nowhere to sit where you're not dealing with humanity.  You look down the steps at what you're getting into, and it's like that hospital scene in Gone With The Wind, of the endless, endless rows of the wounded and dying.

I finally gave up and parked it in a reasonably calm corner, trying to finish up a crossword puzzle.  But, sure enough, someone sitting a row over proceeded to have a series of VERY LOUD cell phone conversations. I gave up, hauled out my Bose headset and my iPod, and listened to some things, trying the best I could to shut everything out.

The glorious call finally came for my flight home, and as boarding progressed, my spirits rose.  I was two people away from having my boarding pass scanned when the call came to the gate agent over the walkie-talkie: "Don't board this flight."  She informed them, "I've already sent them."  Apparently, a prior crew had done some NA$CAR-style victory burnouts after a particularly good flight, and our assigned aircraft had a flat tire.  (I don't know if it was just flat-spotted or if it really was flat; I couldn't see from the bus terminal, so all I know is what the gate agent said.)  So we were ordered to take a seat and the other passengers were ordered back into the waiting area.

About 30 minutes later, the glorious call came and we could bound aboard.  This is when I learned just how elaborate the practical joke of Gate 84 is: you walk down this long, long pre-fab sheetmetal structure, hang a left, and walk down more structure until you reach your assigned doorway to walk across the ramp to the aircraft.  By the time you get there, you feel like you've walked halfway to your destination.

There weren't a lot of people on this flight, and one or two passengers decided to take other seats, which was fine by our flight attendant (though, for obvious weight and balance and paperwork issues, all this had to be settled before we left the gate).  And when we finally pushed, it was not a moment too soon.  Getting sprung from B Concourse always makes me feel like I'm out of prison.

The flight home from Houston was uneventful and pleasant.  I had time to do some thinking about some things, and it all went well.  Before much longer, the landscapes below turned familiar, and soon we were over the familiar downtown I know so well from all my years living around here. A few more miles of flying, and we were back home.  Even before I got off the plane, I braced myself for the brutal heat and cloying humidity that awaited.  Yep, there it was, and not even the high-speed air conditioning blowers in the jetway could shut it out.  If nothing else made me want to be back in Alaska, that did.

I had no baggage to claim, and nothing else to do, so I pre-paid my parking (thankfully, without the same troubles we faced in Anchorage), went out to the parking lot and reclaimed Baby, and I was off for home.  I stopped at the supermarket on the way home to get something special for dinner and then drove on back to the house.

It was over.  But just for now.

A little too close

I'd been advised to be up bright and early Sunday morning.  There was an expedition planned.  My friend's wife was to meet us at April Bowl near Summit Lake, and she'd have one of her friends with her.  My friend and I were starting out early because we were going to take a very interesting back road there, through the wilderness.  It was a neat journey.

Now, all this would have worked if nature didn't have such a sense of humor.  For one, it was gray that morning, with a lot of low-lying cloud.  There were times we were about on instruments.  But, we overcame that much.

We got to the designated point about half an hour ahead of schedule, and we got out and started to hike up to April Bowl.  It was steep and a little treacherous at points, and there was very little visibility, but nothing I couldn't handle.  And some of the views were still nice. Besides, it was Alaska.  How was I going to pass this up?

My friend and I had hoofed it up most of the way and had paused for a little bit.  I was admiring the scenery and the clouds, taking it all in.

My friend then asked if I saw that black spot over by a white area about a couple hundred yards away.

I told him I did.

"Does it look like it's moving?" he asked.

I replied in the affirmative.   It also appeared to have a second smaller dark spot next to it.

"That's it.  We're done."

Yep, it was the Ursine Menace.  Perhaps we could have pressed on with no ill effect, but we were unarmed and alone, and no match for a sow defending her cub.  Best to get the hell out.  So we did.  (If you don't understand why, read the "Ted" chapter of Peter Jenkins' Looking for Alaska.  I'll leave it at that.)

So our little meet-up didn't happen there.  Instead, when the other half of our party arrived, we had a quick discussion and went back to Summit Lake.  That's where we had a wonderful breakfast, using a big flat boulder as a picnic table.  Homemade muffins, fresh fruit, little Babybel cheeses...it was a blissful way to start a morning.

Then it was off for more adventure, as we came back down and parked at the Gold Mint Trailhead.  We piled out and started to hike.  My friend's wife and her friend took on off, which meant my friend and I were left behind.  But we made the most of it, walking along the trail at our own pace, talking about life, and taking pictures with hearty abandon.  I was glad I'd bought the additional SD card.

 

A couple hours later, while my friend and I were back at the truck, we saw the other half of our foursome emerge from the wild.  They brought with them a craving for pancakes.  So we drove back into Palmer for a late lunch at a favorite little cafe, and sat around the table for a couple hours telling stories.  It was all fun.

You'll recall we'd picked some salmon up at the store on Wednesday. Well, I was to leave the next day, and the fish needed to be cooked or frozen.  So that night, my friend hauled out the salmon, gave it a good seasoning, and broiled it up.  A wonderful spicy orzo dish accompanied it.  And, yes, fresh Alaska salmon was everything I hoped it would be.

That night, I went to bed very happy.  The only bad spot?  Tomorrow, it would be time to come home.

Executive summary

I'm back from my big adventure.  A more detailed trip report is to come, but there's a lot of memories to parse and a lot of pictures to sort (and I mean a lot, too.  I bought an extra 4 gig SD card while I was up there).  In the meantime, I offer some brief observations from the last week's activities:

-- It's funny how you can absolutely dread having to start a trip like this, but once it's in motion, you lament that it has to end.  (Especially when it involves a location you love so much.)

-- Along with that, right when you get the hang of things and stop acting like a stumblebum is just before the trip ends.

-- Waiting three years between trips to Alaska is a terrible thing to do to yourself, especially if you could have prevented that lapse from happening. 

-- Next time I do this, I'm scheduling at least a night's layover in Seattle on the way home.  Maybe two.  It's good to help one decompress, especially after the kind of adventurous, fun week I ended up having.

-- But if all you have is a brief layover, there are things you can do to catch your breath.  For me, it's making a few moments to have an Alaskan Amber at the KSEA Seattle Tap Room.

-- Houston's B Concourse is an excellent example of a five-pound bag being asked to haul sixty times the material.  Aside from Shipley Do-Nuts and the fact that it's how I get to the plane that takes me to or from home, I don't have much use for it in its current incarnation.  I hope it's replaced very, very soon.

-- On the other hand, Continental's got a pretty good airline going; I've even managed to put certain things about its past behind me, and I've made it my own airline of choice for now.  I sure hope the forthcoming merger doesn't ruin things.

-- Not enough can be said about the importance of a very, very good noise-canceling headset and an MP3 player full of recordings you love.  As far as I'm concerned, the developers of the Bose Quiet Comfort 15 deserve the Nobel Prize plus infinity.  Their device helped me stay sane.

-- Most of all, this trip helped remind me that, no, travel isn't quite the ordeal I'd imagined it was once I fell out of practice.  There are pains to it, yes, but for the most part, it was just fun.  And maybe, I'm saying to myself, I should just go on ahead and take a couple more journeys soon.  Perhaps I will.  I don't know.  Some calculations must be done, but it may be possible on some small scale.

-- And, oddly enough, this year's visit didn't end with teary goodbyes.  It ended with me telling my host, "Make sure this place don't go nowhere.  I'll be right back."

Anyhow, stay tuned.  The whole trip was unbelievable, and the pictures can't even begin to approach the magic. 

Back away

The other day I got drawn into something, and I started to get an idea.  Wouldn't this idea I had make a great book?

Few thoughts are more exciting, or more terrifying, to me.

I've had several book ideas.  At first, they're great.  There's an idea I've carried around for a book about a two-year stretch in auto racing history that carried with it a lot of tragedy and change.  Then there's this other idea, sort of an inside look at why people get involved in historic preservation.  Of course, first and foremost, and closest to being done, is adapting my dissertation into a book.  (That one's actually been shopped to a university press, and though the response was receptive, the outside readers made quite a few demands, and I need to get a history expert and a literature expert to help me out.  In the crush of things that need doing, that one's been shelved for the moment, although once I can convince/bribe/commandeer some people to help me, it may go back on the front burner.)

There's an excitement you feel when you get the idea for a project like this.  You think about all the possibilities, the places you could go to do research, and all that.  But once that initial buzz wears off, you realize what kind of commitment it is.  A ready, but imperfect, analogy is that it may be fun to think about having kids, and at first there's excitement and daydreams.  But then you think about morning sickness, 2 a.m. feedings, diapers...all the things that symbolize that it's yours, to keep and nurture, for good or ill, and there's no going back, so instead you decide to just stick with having a cat.  (Which, yes, there's 2 a.m. feedings there sometimes, and barfed hairballs and litter boxes to clean up, but it's more manageable, at least for me.  And you don't have to think about how to pay for a cat's college tuition, either.)

I'll think about this project, and perhaps it'll go somewhere.  It is a neat idea, and I think there's a lot that could be explored that's never been looked at, certainly from this perspective.  But I'll have to assess if it's possible, given my means.  And, more importantly, could I sustain the enthusiasm to see it through?  Or, as happens with too many of my projects or ideas, would I go strong out of the gate, only to have to put it aside?

I don't know.

Surprise!

About a week ago we had a lot of service calls done at the house.  One day I had to get Baby's windshield replaced.  The following day, I was up early to meet the water treatment system guy for the annual service call.  There had also been a visit to take the cat (oh, I'm sorry, the Mighty Tiger) to the vet for his annual check-up.  So it had been a fairly busy few days.

After the water treatment guy left, I thought it was all done.  I went out, did my morning run (ha ha!), and then came back to get a quick shower before heading to town for errands.  I'd just started to take off my exercise clothes when the doorbell rang.  To say it caught me by surprise is an understatement. 

Now, this is one of those moments when I'm reminded that, no matter how I may aspire to be elegant and cool and classy, I never will be.  For good or ill, my response to being caught unaware like that is to vocalize it.  Not loudly, mind you, but still aloud, and not something you'd want to say in polite company.  That's right; despite everything my mother tried to teach me, under certain conditions I say certain words I shouldn't.  (Thankfully, it hasn't happened in a socially inappropriate situation.  Yet.)

I quickly got dressed and walked over to the door.  It was the exterminator, standing on the front porch.  I could tell by the smile in his eyes that he'd probably heard me when I said it.  And we had a good laugh about it.  I didn't say anything directly about it, but I made some circular allusions to it as we talked about our pest situation. 

And all this, folks, is why the title "Her Serene Highness" will never apply to yours truly.

Whoops

I love finding clips of when things go wrong in broadcasting.  (Maybe because I've been there/done that too.)  It's always interesting to find out how the voices and faces handle it when things go wrong.

One of the funniest, and creepiest, "whoops!" moments I've found is this, from a night in 1978 when part of a miniseries was shown out of sequence.  (I say "creepy" because it always scared me as a kid when a program was interrupted like that.)  Notice how Howard Reig handles the explanation, too.  This particular "oops" is a minor legend.

Then there's beloved Uncle Bob Schieffer having an "oops" moment, and hilarity ensues.  Notice, too, how Bill Gilliand does the time check with a bit of a smile in his voice.  (By the way, have you noticed that since the demise of the staff announcer, the world just isn't quite right any more?)

Of course, hands-down, this is my all-time favorite, as I've said on here before.  I would only hope that if something similar ever happened to me, I'd handle it with that kind of cool wit.

Enjoy.

Obscurity quest!

It seems I'm not happy unless I'm hunting down some trifle that 99% of the rest of the world would never give a second thought to.  But fleeting ephemera?  That's my forte.  Be it a commercial no one else remembers, or a funny sound effect, or a piece of incidental music that's stuck in my brain, or the name of some bit player or announcer whose face or voice keeps popping up, I'm not happy unless I'm trying to get that information or find out more.

A recent episode is a case in point, and perhaps says more about me than I'd like to admit.  Ever since I found this clip several months ago, I've been haunted by that music.  I remember it.  I remember when CBS used to close special sports broadcasts with it, that sort of vaguely melancholy coda.  The hunt was on.  I downloaded the video, listened to it over and over, all that sort of thing.  A few months later, I found out it was something by Dave Grusin called "Rising Star," a theme from the film The Electric Horseman.  For many years it was a somewhat popular piece of background music for various purposes on television and radio.  I'd never seen the movie, so I didn't know that's where it came from, but at least the riddle was solved.

So now all I needed to do was get a copy of The Electric Horseman soundtrack.  Easy enough, right?  Not quite.  Seems the CD is long out of print and commands a fortune when it does turn up.  No way I was paying that for one song.  On the other hand, the LP is plentiful and inexpensive.  One visit to a website and a couple of clicks later, and the LP was on its way.

The ablum arrived last week, and I took it to our turntable and gave it a listen.  Something sounded strange, though.  It sounded more stately than I recalled.  I was going to digitize it, anyway, so I fired up Audacity and made a digital recording from the turntable. 

Then the wheels turned in my head.  In Audacity, I sped the recording up about 8% or 10% and listened.  Yep, that was it.  So now I have two versions of "Rising Star" in my iTunes collection: the "as issued" version, and the "1983 Talladega 500 closing credits" version.  

Sometimes I get the feeling that my life is some social scientist's case study grant proposal waiting to happen.  (And Heaven help me if I ever find out there's a good, in-the-clear recording out there of the theme music from the CBS Apollo 11 coverage.)

Trucks

My great-grandparents' home was like a museum, one of those places where time seemed to have stopped in the early 1960s.  The home was aging and sagging, there were cracks in the walls, the outside was cracked and chipping.  And there was stuff all around the house.  Oh, was there stuff.  They were up in years, and at some point things just got abandoned in place.  There was a back room full of old books, old television sets, boxes full of forgotten stuff that it would take days just to give a cursory glimpse to.

Under the house, there was an old riding mower that hadn't worked in forever.  The engine and blade had been removed, so it was basically a buggy.  I used to love to wheel it out and play on it. There was a tool chest that had interesting old junk in it, too.  It was a perfect place for an aspiring gearhead.

But two of my favorite things there were my great-grandfather's abandoned trucks.  Long ago, he'd been in the timber business.  He had two heavy-duty trucks he'd haul the wood on.  One was a 1950 or so Chevy 6400, roughly like this one (though it's in much better shape than my great-grandfather's).  The other was a 1948 or so Chevy Loadmaster cabover about like this one, though by this time his was basically a hulk.  (The "Loadmaster" badge on the side of the hood was still there, though, and I still remember my great-grandfather telling the story about the minister who thought it said "Lordmaster."  And he'd laugh.  Oh, he had such a sweet, gentle laugh.)

There's no telling the risks to my personal safety that were involved -- for one, who knows what kinds of insects and vermin were nesting in them, and let's not get into exposed rusty seat springs and all else -- but, man, I loved playing in those trucks.  The old pug-nose Loadmaster was too decrepit to get into (I think I only braved it once, and that was enough), but the 6400, I spent many a Sunday playing in.  The gearshift still worked, and I could work the steering wheel, and that was a lot of fun.  I could also raise the hoods on them both, though the 6400 had a definite advantage: the hood springs worked fine, and you could see a lot.  The cabover didn't offer much to see, what with most of the engine being covered up by the cab.

One summer I got the idea I was going to get the 6400 running again and fix it up.  I was 11 or so.  So on the first day of my summer break, I went out there with my little socket wrench set and started trying to take out the spark plugs and removing the valve cover.  I had no real idea of what I needed to do, but I was making a start of it.  Maybe my old man would pitch in, right?  Yeah, right.  My grandfather told me I could do what I wanted as long as I put the parts back on the truck at the end of the day.  I think after the first afternoon, it hit me that no one was going to take me seriously enough to offer help, so I just plain gave up.  No sense trying to fight the tide.

My great-grandfather died, and a lot of things went away within the next year or so.  He died without a will, and there was a very nasty family squabble over the estate; in some ways, the scars still haven't healed.  At any rate, one day those two old trucks were hauled off to the junkyard.  I wasn't there when it happened, and it's probably just as well.  I have no idea what became of them, and perhaps I don't want to know.  The Loadmaster's fate was inevitable, as the only thing holding it together was rust and force of habit.  But the 6400 might have been a good restoration candidate, in the right hands.

Or, maybe, they've gone off to their fate, and somewhere in the great beyond my great-grandfather has his sawmill up and running, and he's got his two old trucks with him.  And maybe my great-grandmother is in the kitchen making supper...just maybe she's made some banana pudding.  (To this day, my father goes on at considerable length about no one can make banana pudding the way my mother's grandmother did.)  It's what I hope, anyway.  Maybe someday I'll get to join them, and I'll finally get to hear those old trucks run the way they were meant to. 

Why my trust gets fractured

Any time you get in a motor vehicle, you have to have some degree of trust and faith in the other folks on the road.  You would assume, at least, that they don't want to be in a wreck any more than you do, and that they'd act accordingly.  That would be the ideal, at least.  But the reality is, more often, they want to be the one in the right, or with the right to move first, or whatever.

I've been fortunate in the 20 or so years I've been driving.  The lessons I learned in my first few years really stuck with me, and I've also developed a sense of caution.  I've heard and seen enough, and experienced enough, to know you need to look out for the other guy.  Most of the time, I assume the other guy will try to pull some boneheaded move, and that's when I know to hold my position, check up or get out of the way as fast as I can. 

This has saved my bacon a few times.  A few years back, I was about to drive home, and the route home requires me to cross a very busy main road in town.  I was at an intersection.  The light had just turned green.  I hadn't yet moved.  Out the corner of my eye, I saw a Buick tearing along that main road at too high a rate of speed.  I had the right of way, but I knew what was about to happen, and so I waited.  Sure enough, that Buick shot through the red light at 40 or so.  Had I moved, I'd probably have been right in his line of fire, and probably have been killed.  That's part of why I don't trust the other guy on the road.  That's why when a light turns green, I pause for just a second and make doubly sure the cross traffic has stopped.  Because I remember that Buick, and what could have happened.

I was reminded anew one night last week.  Hubby had called and invited me to meet him for dinner in town.  So I did, and we met up and had a nice time, and then started out for home.  I was at the intersection of a somewhat busy road and the on-ramp for the Interstate, and had to make a left turn to get on the on-ramp.  The turn lane signal had just gone out when I got to the line, so I held up and waited for an opening in the oncoming lane so I could make my turn.  This took a little bit.  Finally, it looked like I could go.

Of course, what had happened in the time I'd started my move was that a large Dodge pickup had pulled into that oncoming lane.  The light was turning yellow.  I'd committed to my turn by this point, so I had to get going.  The driver of the pickup, meanwhile, moves to the outside lane.  I can't discern his intentions.  Is he about to go for the on-ramp, or go straight?  Either way, as the yellow comes up, he does what some folks do when they see a yellow: stand on the gas to try to beat the red light.  This meant that as I turned, out the passenger's side window I see a pair of bright headlights and a big chrome grille bearing down on me at a high rate of speed. 

It's funny what goes through your mind at moments like that.  I've never had an accident in all the years I've driven.  Is this how 23 years of safe driving ends?  More to the point...is this going to be it?  Is this how it is I die?  (It's also funny what comes out of your mouth, too.  At the top of your lungs.  Words you take such great pains not to say in ordinary life, because you know how they make the angels weep.)

What happened next, I can only attribute to the grace of God, and to whatever latent race-car driving abilities may be encoded in my DNA from whatever kin I have who fled the revenuers back in the day.  My mouth panics, but my body reacts. It was pretty amazing. So as my mouth is saying the nasty words, my reflexes tell me to firewall it.  So I throw on the power, half-expecting to feel the hard smack and hear the sickening crunch of steel and Endura any second.  Fortunately, my little car responds to my entreaties.  Her little bobbed tail clears the lane with probably no more than a foot to spare.  There's no sickening thud, none of that fury I expected.  Only the reassuring tickety-tick of my little car's engine, the whine of the transmission running through the gears as normal. 

Out the left window, I look to make sure we're clear.  I see the hot dog in the Dodge throw on his binders, and something in me hopes it scared him too. 

About three miles down the road, I realize my left hand still has a death grip on the steering wheel, and I relax it.  I spend the rest of the night praying a lot -- for thanksgiving, for forgiveness for what I've said, and so on.  The temptation was there to say some pretty harsh things about the truck's driver, for what he did was a fairly boneheaded, dangerous move.  But I also can't escape wishing I'd just waited through another light sequence for the green arrow.  I also know that it was nighttime, and I hate night driving anyway.  And I also know I was really tired, and that "get-there-itis" was setting in.

The experience was a nasty reminder for me to wait next time -- and, I hope, a reminder to the truck's driver that gunning it through a yellow light is a stupid idea.  (And I speak from experience, having once been ticketed for going through a yellow...the cop who pulled me over said they'd had several wrecks at that intersection caused by people doing just that.)

Oh, and to add to the icing on the cake: on the drive home, I spend several miles with a Honda stuck behind me. With its bright lights on.  (And an unnecessary set of equally-bright driving lights.)

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a reminder why I don't like trusting other drivers.  And why, sometimes, I'm wary even of myself.

For more installments of "I Learned About Flying From That," click here.