Half True Confessions From The Road

A while back in a time that might have been and in a place that never was a stranger asked me to tell him a little bit about myself.

I don’t know if he saw the way my eyes lit up or recognized the smile with the curvy lip means I am about to make up a story on the spot nor do I think it matters.

We were just two people stuck on a never ending plane ride that should have left the tarmac long before our conversation started.

It is possible I showed him the picture above and talked about what life on the island was like and described in detail the work involved in carving statues out of stone and how to move them from place to place.

Someone might have heard a story about a place in the woods that contained a bridge people said lead to a magic spring that was similar to the fountain of youth.

Can’t say if he believed the yarn I was spinning but I am certain he had no clue when I quoted Toby Keith’s Beer For My Horses.

He didn’t flinch, blanch, interrupt or question my tale.

I suspect somewhere in between the Toby Keith quote and references to Tennyson’s Charge Of the Light Brigade might have made him wonder.

Most people don’t pepper their conversations with anything like:

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

Can’t tell you if five minutes or five hundred passed before we took off and I put on my headphones and went to sleep.

What I know is for a moment in time I maintained a straight face and shared my story.

Is it silly?

Maybe.

Was it necessary?

Absolutely.

Not that you asked but at any given moment there are a dozen stories floating through my head and a dozen more waiting for their turn at bat.

There is a creative side of me that never hibernates and rarely slumbers and I do my best to feed it when I can.

Got way too many moments where I need to be focused and serious so when I get the excuse to loose the beast from his cage I open the door and let him run free.

Half True Confessions From The Road

Got a about 25 minutes or so until I am due to check out of the hotel in Phoenix.

Nature chose not to let me sleep in today so I mulled over hitting the road at 6:30 AM but decided there wasn’t any reason to.

It is just me, the car and the road and check in at the joint in El Paso isn’t until 4 PM so I am just taking the day as it comes.

Most of the ride is through desert and though I enjoy the desert it does get old after a while.

Eventually the same scenery begins to grind upon me a bit so I’ll probably spend some of the time thinking about some of those stories.

I’ll play around with ways to tell them and think about what characters should be included.

Afterwards I’ll look out at the miles of emptiness and be reminded about how much land remains undeveloped and compare it to how crowded and busy some cities can be.

The one constant besides driving will be the people watching I do. It is something I have always enjoyed but I find the folks on the road to be especially interesting.

Driving the interstates is one of the ways you realize what sort of bubble you live in most of the time.

That is because you are out among the people and you really never know who you might see or run into.

Every color, creed and background seems to be out here.

I see men driving fancy sports cars, families in SUVs or minivans and truckers.

Sometimes you stop to fill up with gas and there is a guy with a gun rack on his car filling up next to some kid who looks like he/she is going back to college.

Everyone has a story to tell and you never know if the average looking person has a better one than the guy who painted flames on his Ford Pinto.