Random Thoughts from the Road
Dave Carter ·
Jan 16, 2011 at 8:56pm
With your kind permission, or maybe without it, I'd like to offer some smiles and observations from a few years ago. Before I came to know Peter Robinson and the rest of the good people here on Ricochet, I was writing essays from the road for family and friends to read and enjoy. Today, while downloading some items to the new computer, I came across some of those old writings. They go back some 6 years, when I was still very new to trucking. I had been all over the world, but was discovering anew my own country, and the freshness of that experience comes across. So before the weekend completely escapes, I offer a few snippets of observations about life on the road, and various parts of the country:
- From a drive through New Mexico in 2006: Saturday I got an early start and headed for Arizona. Drove all the way through New Mexico and couldn’t help but remember the years I lived there. My daughter was born in New Mexico,…Alamogordo (an ancient Indian term which loosely translates into what one would yell if one’s pants had caught fire). Driving through Albuquerque, I noted that the homes along the highway were painted colors that blended in with the surroundings, i.e. dirt. Some were the color of sand,…others clay, still others mud, and then just plain ol’ dirt. Might as well paint them like that, since the wind is always kicking the stuff up and covering everything in sight. The New Mexico desert is easy to describe. Take the moon,…add tumbleweeds, and there ya go!
- From California: My drive into California, by contrast, was wonderful. There was desert. There were mountains. There were green areas. There was some landscape that looked positively prehistoric. Gigantic boulders somehow stacked on top of each other. Mountains dotted with boulders, or a large open field with a pile of boulders right smack in the middle. How did they get there? How long have they been there? Some mountains were smooth as glass, probably made so by a torrent of water in ages past. …. I must say, having driven through San Jose yesterday, and Sacramento today, California’s landscape is one of startling contrasts. The Mojave Desert is a lot like New Mexico. The mountains on highway 152 from I-5 to US 101, are positively gorgeous. These are mountains that have that tan desert color, but which sprout some really gorgeous evergreens. How do they do that? Sacramento, by the way, is a very pretty city. As much lush greenery as I see back home in Louisiana, and situated next to a desert. It’s as if the Almighty simply suspended the rules when He made California. We think of the eastern part of the US as green, the western part as brown. But both co-exist perfectly together in California.
- New Orleans after Katrina: Leaving Reserve, LA, and taking I-10 east, much of which is over water, I noticed many of the old moss draped cypress trees were knocked over. The ones that were standing had little if any moss on them. That looked oddly out of place. Then there were the house boats and little shacks on stilts at the water’s edge, many of which had been blown to bits by the storm with only piles of debris remaining as silent testimony that humans had once been there. …Then there came the houses. There were red letters and numbers on them, apparently denoting the date they were checked and the agency that had checked them. Some had large red “X”s on them, which I take to mean that human remains had been found in them. It was heart breaking, but the heart break turned to pure misery as this sight wasn’t confined simply to one or two overpasses, or a short stretch of highway. No, this went on for neighborhood after neighborhood, for many, many miles. If you've been through my hometown of Lake Charles on I-10, imagine a neighborhood the size of Lake Charles just mangled beyond belief, and abandoned. …Another striking feature was the number of homes and buildings, especially apartment buildings that had caught fire. How many of these occurred because of the storm and how many were the result of hoodlums running crazy in the aftermath I don’t know. But the charred remains of these places are a pitiful sight by any measure. Driving through this stretch of road in years past, I could always look off into these neighborhoods and see cars moving, people walking, kids playing, etc. There’s none of that now. The stillness and emptiness of these neighborhoods is ghastly.
- Winter in Wisconsin: It was 1 degree when I parked last night. The parking lot was a sheet of ice, which made getting situated really interesting. Just me, some snow drifts, and assorted light poles. Tried to parallel-park between some drifts to stay out of the way in the parking lot. That required backing on the ice. Now that was a treat. Engage the inter-axel differential and you have what is essentially four wheel drive on the rear eight wheels of the tractor. That helps some. .... There was a Chilli's behind me, so I decided to stroll over there for dinner. Getting out of the truck and feeling the first blast of truly cold air, I decided I'd rather run than stroll. Then again, I was on ice. One good slip and I'd slide right by the bloody restaurant. So I walked gingerly (remember her from Gilligan's Island? Try walking that way - boom chika boom like that) to the restaurant. Halfway there, I remembered what it is like when exposed skin is so cold it starts to burn. What a strange feeling.
- Giving voice to a pet peeve: Do you remember when phones had cords on them and could not therefore stray too far from the house or the office? Remember a world without electronic leashes? I miss that world. There is no escaping the phone now. Just today I heard a gentleman wooing his beloved from his very own stall in the men’s room. Such sweet things he said to her. I was so moved myself that I had to flush several times just to keep the ambiance flowing.
- Enjoying time with my son, Benjamin, on the road: We were traveling through Kentucky, which is only slightly rougher than driving through a ditch. The bumps, craters, potholes, waves, debris, uneven pavement, rocks, freshly paved lumps, thumps, contusions, bulges, bounces, knobs, and humps were rearranging everything in the truck. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Ben's little stuffed bear was on the edge of the top bunk about to take the plunge onto the floor. I told Ben, "Your little friend is about to go over the edge," to which Ben looks back and immediately yells, "DON'T DO IT!!!" While Ben patiently tried to talk the stuffed animal out of an apparent act of suicide, it was all I could to keep the truck on the road through my own laughter. To no avail, the little turd jumped.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
Dave,
You haven't driven up the lone Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, have you? If not, would you?
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
Michael, I haven't driven in Alaska...yet. Can't say that I know enough about the road in question to answer yes or no as to whether I would drive it. It's not one of those ice things, is it?
May '10
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
Gravel and ice. It appeared in Ice Road Truckers on the History Channel. Truckers use it to resupply the oil venture in Prudhoe Bay. Its supposed to be particularly dangerous.
Jul '10
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
"It's dangerous, you should totally do it."
Geez, Michael, are you trying to create an opening for a Ricochet diarist?!? :D
May '10
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
Dave, this is a pure fan note. You bring utterly unique stuff to this site--you help make the whole place unique--just keep on keeping up the good work. Besides the enjoyment of your acutely drawn snapshots of the country you're riding through, the big picture is never out of your grasp.
And sure, I admit, there's also a strong element of the armchair traveler involved. This might be especially true of a certain class of male reader, in a sedentary job, on the coasts...
(You have to double clutch every time? You're telling us it's an unsynchronized gear box? Damn...)
It's claimed/rumored that Steven Spielberg personally sketched the poster image of his 1977 "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"--for fellow Ricochet'ers of a certain age, it showed a tantalizing, beckoning glow just down the American highway, just over the next hill. As an east coast kid, it was a perfectly evocative image of that vast country out there beyond the George Washington Bridge. That tantalizing, beckoning glow is what you've been giving us here.
Jun '10
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
I've got to stick up for my adopted state of New Mexico even though Dave's description is tongue in cheek. I've been around the world, too, and seen a lot of strange things, but New Mexico is unique. It's as if Mother Nature stripped the place, leaving the bare essentials open for closer inspection. This is as true for culture as it is for the landscapes.
Not many people know that the region was the first place north of the Rio Grande colonized by Europeans, but the last to be civilized. The Spanish empire finally petered out in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos where western civilization was forced to amalgamate with the Stone Age culture of the indigenous people. And then the hybrid culture got stuck in a time warp for the better part of 200 years. The mud huts along I-40 have a long pedigree. It takes a newcomer at least a decade to penetrate the surface to find the treasures beneath. History reveals itself grudgingly, not unlike the clay that barely supported crops for the indigenous people. It still fascinates me in its own Spartan way.
Aug '10
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
Dave I truly enjoy your writing and tales from the road. I have always enjoyed driving and have often thought the best way to see the country, maybe all of North America, would be to drive, stopping wherever I felt like stopping and driving when I felt like it.
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
Gary beat me to it.
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
The tantalizing, beckoning glow, Gary, is nothing more than the lights of a distant rest area calling to me after a large gulp of high octane coffee. Or, if you're looking over the GWB, it's a likely fire in Jersey.
Seriously though, thank you for the kind comments, Sir. I'm gratified that you enjoy the observations.
Re: Random Thoughts from the Road
Thanks Brad! I'd like to try that too sometime. The company I drive for has other priorities, however, so I sneak in the sight seeing when I can.