THE ROAD IS LIFE

GMC, Summerfield, NC

Farmall, Summerfield, NC

I find a lot of inspiration for writing while driving out into the countryside with no particular place to go.  I try to be alert to my surroundings and to the thoughts that wander in and out of my mind as I experience stimulus in the world.  I was detoured by county sheriff cars this afternoon on my way home from a golf practice green as crews were laying a new pipe line next to the two-lane highway I was crusin’.  The smaller country road led me past a rustic weathered barn somewhat sheltering a rusting GMC truck and a fading red Farmall tractor whose patina nicely blended with the rust.  Our human legacy remains dust to dust while machinery’s condemnation is rust to rust.  Elvis was ironically streaming on my sound system, singing of “memories pressed between the pages of my mind, sweetened through the ages just like wine”.

The sight of large hay bales in the barn triggered summer memories of my high school and early college days and those sunny days in the hay fields trading honest sweat for minimum wages.  Yet, that was enough to fund those glorious warm evenings with my friends dragging the gut in our small central Kansas town.  And the 1973 coming-of-age film American Graffiti perfectly nailed the essence of those beautiful nights before finally capitulating to a responsible adult lifetime of married commitment, family, mortgages, credit cards, business travel and endless meetings.  That was all good for the most part and the pay was certainly better, as were the adventures out into the world.

It was also during that time when it was apparent that hormones were kicking in attracting teens to the opposite sex and developing a somewhat rebellious attitude that facilitated the time-honored impetus needed to jump the nest and stretch out wings.  We were reading books like Knock on any Door where the motto was “live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse”.  Of course, everyone at that age is immortal, so that was merely a rallying cry to summon up the courage to make the leap of faith.

I didn’t immediately act on any serious attractions to girls, because I reasoned that an early bond would probably derail my future plans to follow my bliss in the footsteps of the 1949 Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and the 1957 travels On the Road alongside Jack Kerouac; " I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future…Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”

I had experienced enough by my senior year of college to understand that the adult world awaited me and it was time.  I was open to meeting the love of my life that year and she was introduced by the future wife of a friend.  We were instantly bound as soulmates and engaged within a year.  Her parents’ only caveat was that we hold off marriage until she also graduated and that time flew by and into forty more years until breast cancer claimed her life.  One day we were carefree students and the next we were separated, but I have the knowledge of another meeting that will be even sweeter than Cana wine.  And I have sweet memories.