Over the Panhandle, Rolling on a Bubble Enjoy this free story, but for rare stories you won’t find online, grab my book here. It’s probably nothing. A small seam of rubber parting with the wheel. I found it in the late morning in Kansas after coffee with a friend. After goodbyes. I’m a little behind schedule, so I decide not to think about it. The gas pump clicks. I return it to its hook. Top off the windshield wiper fluid. Let’s put the audiobook on and roll out. Now I need to connect my iPod to my speaker. The car’s radio is broken, so I stuck a portable speaker in the cab. Where is it? Where’s the speaker? I take the two boxes and two bags out of the cab. Dig to the bottom of every pile of supplies. Stolen. I was robbed last night. These old truck doors can’t lock. I took out most of the important items last night. But now I’m left with a broken radio & no speaker for my iPod. No Grateful Dead, no Joe Rogan. Eighteen hours of silence? Tough on the brain. I pull around the corner & stop in an auto store. Buy a similar replacement speaker. Then it’s westward once more. Down through Oklahoma. Across the Texas panhandle. You never saw a land so barren. There are no structures, no trees. It’s even difficult to identify plow-tracks of farmland. Yeah, this isn’t even farmable. The distance shimmers in the heat. I think about that seam, that little bubble in the tire. In fact, I think about it for hours. Pull the handle for windshield wiper fluid. I get nothing. The glass stays dusty. I guess fluid level wasn’t the problem. The line is broken somewhere. Say, with no spare tire and one can of Fix-a-Flat, and nobody around, what would happen if I broke down on the panhandle? Search the GPS for nearby gas stations. None. Search for nearby restaurants. None. An hour later, I check again. None. Hold, tire bubble. Get me over the panhandle. Into the lush- hahaha- no, it’s not lush- but- Get me to New Mexico. It would be like breaking down on the moon if that bubble burst now. Here on the empty roads of the barren panhandle. Always empty, yet more so, now for the pandemic. Burst, tire, if you must, but not yet. Driving to New Mexico on a bubble. To be continued
Departure Day | Trucking Past Midnight *** Grab my book here, if interested. None of these free stories appear in the book. *** Good morning from the ice-block ground under this tent, here in the backyard next to the truck. The new sleeping setup works great, thank you for asking. Glad I tested it in the backyard before hitting the road. Departure day is here. If I don’t leave today, I won’t be able to meet my friend to work on the land. He’s only got one week free. And we have a large to-do list. The truck, well, she’s mostly ready. New mid-body fuel tank in place. New shocks. New alternator. Oil change and fluid topped-off as needed. Good crash course in auto maintenance and repair. No spare tire. I called three auto shops in driving distance. Described the make, model, year, and tire size. Nada. Improbable for a truck this popular. But that’s what they tell me. Maybe I can collect a spare at my first stop. The town of Warren, Pennsylvania. It’s an eight hour drive to get there from here. I should arrive well after midnight. It’s just forty hours for the full trip. I have to leave after 5, when the workday is over. Grabbing last-minute supplies on lunchbreak. Departure time arrives. I throw the last bags and my guitar in the bed. Fire up the truck. Listen to that deep mechanical hum. The engine sends jitters through the cab. Rhodie, you weren’t meant to rust in a dirt parking lot with ‘FOR SALE’ white-soaped on your windshield. Let’s see this big country, you & I. I pull off the backyard with its wet green grass matted over by fallen leaves. The tires leave two fine grooves. It’s getting dark fast. I’ve got a temporary license plate taped to the inside of the back window. The permanent was scheduled to arrive before departure day, but it didn’t. The DMV is struggling for the same reason everything else is struggling. The pandemic. I’ll add the permanent plate when it arrives, but I can’t wait for it. Anyway, that’s the reason for choosing quieter roads, even if they take longer. An audiobook about the moon landings is playing. The GPS lost service. Who cares? This early in the journey, all I need to do is keep going west. No cruise control, just a forty-hour ankle workout. Soon, I’m trucking between the reddish-grey granite walls on either side of the Vermont highway. Thick foliage grows in the dark over rolling land. Dark shapes of tree canopies, shiny from rain, run past the windows. It’s getting foggy. Deer with glinting eyes peep from the shadows next to the road. One can of Fix-a-Flat but no spare tire. Long way to Warren. To be continued
Guess I Asked for This Check out my book, Odd Jobs & After Hours here. Guess I asked for this, to be crammed under the undercarriage of this truck, cranking a wrench on a bolt while a fine mist of metal rust showers down endlessly. Still cursing though, even though I got what I wanted. Job one on the new truck is getting a new mid-body fuel tank in place. We got it home without a fireball despite a drip, drip, drip of gasoline out of said tank in the final leg of the journey. The bolts holding the old tank in there are rusty and crusty. Soaked ’em down with PB Blaster overnight, but I still had to fight for every centimeter of thread on the bolt. Back on a blue tarp, and the old gas tank dripping gasoline on me for about an hour. I’m completely soaked. Highly flammable, that’s what I am on this crystal clear fall day in New Hampshire. It’s a matter of life and death to avoid my chain-smoking housemate in this moment. Shing – out slides the bolt. At last. One metal strap drops down from the undercarriage. Bonks me in the face. The tank creaks and droops down. Wires and the second metal strap hold the fuel tank in place. The rest of the bolts might need another night in PB Blaster. What is the truck for? Teamed up with a friend to buy land out west. This is going to be the work truck on the land. I’m working on a pressing deadline. My friend has one free vacation week in which he can meet me on the land. I’ve got to get the truck ready to trek well before then. I need it ready to drive across country one week before my friend is free. Right now, soaked in gasoline, covered in rust dust and fingers sliced to ribbons on metal bits, that seems unlikely. I mean, this truck needs so much work. The to do list is extensive. The sun goes down. I decide to slide back under and attack the bolts again. To be continued