Fear Part 1
It’s March and Charlie and I are enjoying sunny Southern CA at my sister Nancy’s and her husband Rick’s home as I write this. Naturally our first two days here were colder, windier, and rainier than Iowa where the weather was quite warm at that time. So far, our visit with Rick and Nancy has be filled with great food, fun games and laughter. Unfortunately, some of the best laughter was directed toward me. I’ll get to that later but first I want to talk about fear.
Passing an accident scene of total devastation is a good way to inspire thoughts of fear. In our case it was a small car on the left shoulder with the driver side completely caved in – somehow t-boned horribly. The driver had already been taken somewhere thank God. A semi rested on the right shoulder with the only visible damage to the rear wheels and corner of its trailer. Our mental reconstruction of what most likely happened brought a chill. Probably the car was driving the speed limit in the right lane with the speeding semi passing on the left. The semi likely hit the jagged shoulder on the left and blew a tire, fishtailing the trailer back to the right, plowing it right into the driver side of the car. The driver was condemned for driving carefully in the right lane. We were reminded of the scene with every shredded truck tire or dead deer we passed, and there were plenty of both.
It led us to use extra caution as we spied a pickup truck in the right lane with a large but light capacity trailer very overloaded with heavy gravel. The right wheel smoked furiously every time the trailer swayed a little too much. It didn’t keep the driver from traveling at 65 mph though. Charlie laid back a safe distance, both of us remembering the horror we saw earlier. After a while, the road got little smoother, and the trailer’s wheel didn’t seem to be smoking as much. I suggested that it might be a good time to pass. When we got within 200 yards a chunk of gravel bounced off Charlie’s car. He dropped back even further, and we stayed alert. Fortunately, the truck turned off after a few more miles.
That was in the Texas panhandle on the highway 54 cut-off from I-35 to I-40. We were soon on I-40 where Charlie drove for another 100 miles hemmed in by every kind of semi jockeying for position to pass slower vehicles. When he turned over the wheel to me, he was exhausted. I enjoyed much lighter traffic until we turned in for the night. My problems were of a much different variety, generally of my own making and humiliating.
Humiliation Part 1
The Texas panhandle is ripe for humiliation if you’re an Iowa boy who must interact with the locals, especially if your need to interact is due to your overactive personal plumbing. So, we landed at an old-fashion gas station and garage in Dalhart TX. I put on my fedora and sauntered up to the outside restrooms – locked. There was some stuff for sale in the station but nothing I could want to buy, and our gas tank was still pretty full, so we couldn’t even buy some gas for a dollar a gallon more than on the highway. I had a bad feeling about asking to use a restroom in the southwest without buying anything, but my full bladder felt worse. I went into the garage and asked a fellow who was looking under an old pickup truck’s hood if I could use the restroom. He pointed to an adjacent room with two wizened little old guys. The closest guy pointed to the other guy when I asked again. The other guy pointed to where the restrooms were outside – a hopeful sign, until I said, “Um it’s locked. Can I get the key?” They all looked up at me for the first time with something akin to scorn and the owner asked, “Are you travelin?” “Yeah” “Well you travelers need to learn that you got to buy somethin if you’re gonna use restrooms around here.” The other fellow chimed in with, “You out-of-towners could run us all broke using our water for free.” “Okay I’ll just leave then.” “Nah” the owner said, “Here’s the key. You just need to know that in the future.” Did I mumble thanks as I hurried to the restroom? I traveled through those parts enough times to know he was being better to me than most. Charlie was waiting as I came out of the restroom. “You better be quick. I’ve already pushed our luck.” “Huh” I slinked in the building laying the key on the counter. The old guys were in that room now admiring an old cartridge belt filled with large caliber rounds. “Thank you!” the friend said with a special Texas sarcasm as I started to slink back out. “Thank you,” I then replied but too late to appreciate their kindness and good advice. So why did I feel humiliated and resentful when I should have only felt thankful and relieved?
I pondered my inappropriate response and feelings for a hundred and thirty more miles. My only conclusion was that I had too much coffee, because I too soon had Charlie stop in Quervo NM, a near ghost town on Old Rt. 66 with an abandoned business district, a couple occupied houses and a gas station with a sign that said Restroom free to customers only.Others pay $2.00. “That’s okay,” Charlie said. I can get a little gas now. So, after turning on the pump for Charlie, a friendly sounding old fellow told me we would need to go out behind the building to relieve ourselves because he was getting a new well put in and his water was shut off all day. When Charlie joined me out back after buying about three gallons of gas at $.80 more a gallon than most truck stops, he asked, “Now why did I buy that expensive gas if this is what we have to do anyway?” Five more miles down the road we passed a large truck stop/trading post that advertised free restrooms. The next time nature urgently called we just pulled off on an obscure exit and watered the desert.
Humiliation Part 2
I pride myself on being a pretty sharp fellow – on the ball so to speak. So it makes sense that the good Lord reminded me three times of the real truth. They say bad luck comes in 3s. I’ll agree, especially when it comes with a good dose of stupidity.
Dose one was light enough. I kept a crumpled up tube of toothpaste in my overnight kit and added a crumpled up tube of athlete’s foot medicine just in case – Well I made sure I didn’t get foot in mouth disease nor tooth fungus, and can give an informed opinion on the taste of athletes foot medicine.
Dose two was quick and nearly disastrous. Rick and Nancy use a French press for coffee. When I set their water pot on the gas stove to heat, black smoke quickly rolled up before I could even leave the room – fortunately. They were very gracious about it. The kitchen was fine after airing out and the new electric coffee pot I bought them was even nicer than the one I destroyed.
Dose three came when I found some small Agaricus mushrooms nestled in with pretty yellow desert flowers at a park. So I got on my knees and took off my glasses to get a good close-up pic for my iNaturalist observation. I shuffled around on my knees for different photo angles then felt a sickening smashing underfoot as I stood up. Fortunately I’m not too blind to drive a short ways without glasses and a local jeweler was able to weld them back together that very day. They were just as good as the bent up condition they were in before that stupidity.
Fear Part 2
I-40 East of Albuquerque is one of those roads you wish you never have to drive on but you inevitably do if you want to get anywhere in the southwest. Truck traffic is miserable – even on a good day, and it’s constantly under repair because of all the trucks. Add to that an unexpected Ice and snow storm dumping ice 3 inches thick over a 24 hour period and you have the modern definition of Hell. It’s fascinating how seemingly minor decisions can determine such major outcomes in life.
We decided to leave CA on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Because of that decision, we drove on the safest stretch of the whole trip (at an average speed of 5 MPH) instead of plowing into certain disaster like hundreds (maybe thousands) of motorists the day before. Only a few wrecked vehicles remained as we crept through. However the constant stream of tire tracks and small debris in the mud and snow on both sides of the highway showed the scope of the horror story. We both understood how God’s grace is often the only thing that determines our fate. Fear and humiliation are useful tools for toughening us up. However they pale in value to the humility that comes after we made our plans and God changes them.
We were reminded of what happens to plans when we stayed our last night in a new motel in the new town Greensburg Kansas. The motel had a large photo collage of the devastation caused by a 2007 twister that took out the entire business district and most of the homes killing 11 people. Fortunately the town’s biggest tourist attraction the Big Well Museum is doing better than ever now displaying the world’s largest hand dug well, world’s largest Pallasite meteor and more recently weird debris from the big tornado. We chose our routes and we made it home safely, but this journey never was nor will it ever be in our own hands.
