Upon returning to work after a few days at home (and oral surgery!), I picked up a load in Denver with instructions to bring the load to the company's main terminal. Dutifully I picked up the load and headed southeast. Two days later I arrived in Fort Worth and pulled up to the yard gate.
Something seemed very wrong. The place was vacant; no trucks, a few trailers and only a couple of people who were working at the far end of the yard and paid no attention to me. I keyed the microphone on my CB radio. "Open the gate please," I said a few times with no response. It was an eerie feeling.
I finally called the office number and told them I was waiting at the gate. The dispatcher said, "Didn't you get the message?"
Message? "What message?" I asked.
The dispatcher told me that for economic reasons (it's the economy, stupid!) all trucks, trailers and staff had been consolidated at our company's parent terminal in Dallas. The message had been sent out over the Qualcomm system, but it was sent while I was at home on shore leave. I never got the message.
I went to the parent yard and everything was fine.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Why I Eat Italian Food on Saint Patrick's Day - a true story.
My dad passed away quite suddenly in the fall of 1964, leaving my mom and four children utterly bewildered and uncertain about the future (I remember when my mother told me my dad had died, that even in the swirling non-reality of it all, I was at a pivotal, life altering moment [maybe not exactly in those words], and nothing would ever be the same again – and it never was).
Through that dizzying, unsettling, empty time, some people offered to help my mom with the task of raising her kids. “Think of me as your father,” I heard more than once (why would I do that?). But there was one man, a childhood friend of my mother’s, whom we all knew as ‘Uncle Chuck’ Sullivan, and he really did show up even after the glamor and romance of being a pinch-hit dad had worn off.
Chuck wasn’t even vaguely like my father and never tried to be. Chuck was ‘Uncle Chuck’, a funny, dry-witted, clever, sly, irascible and twinkling Irishman from the west side of Cleveland, Ohio; an inveterate bachelor who probably needed a family setting and a home cooked meal as much as we needed an adult male perspective in our house.
If Chuck was anything, he was Irish – and proud of it! Although he’d not been born back on ‘The Sod’, he was as Irish an American as anyone could be. One of his rituals (and there were many) was to don his morning coat and top hat and march as a celebrated leader of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in downtown Cleveland every year; a big, long and boisterous parade. In the early spring of 1965, Uncle Chuck promised my brother and me that we would go with him to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It seemed unlikely since my mother would not permit us to skip school for a silly parade (what did she know? She was German).
But clever Chuck managed to sneak us out of school and ensconce us at the Cleveland Athletic Club where we could view the parade from the 12th floor of the building. We watched Uncle Chuck march in the parade (at least we thought it was him, who could tell for sure from 12 stories up) and waited until he retrieved us afterward.
By then it was late afternoon and getting on toward dinnertime, and Chuck had promised us a meal, too. But Uncle Chuck was nobody’s fool, “My God,” he would say, “who in their right mind would go to an Irish pub on Saint Patrick’s Day?” It was what my brother and I hoped for, even lobbied for. “The place will be crowded, the service will be lousy, the food terrible and,” he added, “some drunk will slop green beer all over the placce! BUT,” he added, “Nobody goes to an Italian restaurant on Saint Patrick’s Day!”
He spirited us off to a quiet, almost invisible neighborhood place in a side street on Cleveland’s west side called Palmina’s Bar and Grill. Those who knew the place, those who really knew the place, called it ‘Mrs. D’s.” Uncle Chuck clearly knew Mrs. D’s and they knew him. We were escorted to a booth and the wait staff fawned over Uncle Chuck and his two nephews. The food was superb, the setting so – Italian!
A little while later my mother joined us and did her very best to be furious with Uncle Chuck, my brother and me, but it was no use. I think she knew what Chuck had planned and was 'unofficially' pleased.
Mrs. D’s was quiet that night, save for a few regulars who sat at the piano bar. The piano player, whose name I have long since forgotten, knew every favorite song my mom and Uncle Chuck could think of, and with several rounds of martinis and stingers, the evening passed as the maudlin adults sang their life stories. It was back in the days when certain ‘accommodations’ could be made for older teens, so my brother and I had our fill of 3.2 beer. The night was magic.
The tradition continued like clockwork every Saint Patrick’s Day until I graduated from high school and my family moved to the southwest. Uncle Chuck came to visit us in New Mexico from time to time, but age and altitude finally forbade him from coming to visit anymore.
But in a world of few universal truths, one makes sense: who in their right mind would go to an Irish Pub on Saint Patrick’s Day and suffer every indignity possible, when one could go to a cozy, quiet, convivial Italian restaurant, get fabulous food and great service from people who are truly happy to see you?
Tonight it’s spaghetti and meatballs a la truck stop, and a 'thanks' to my Uncle Chuck, a guy who didn’t need to be my dad.
Through that dizzying, unsettling, empty time, some people offered to help my mom with the task of raising her kids. “Think of me as your father,” I heard more than once (why would I do that?). But there was one man, a childhood friend of my mother’s, whom we all knew as ‘Uncle Chuck’ Sullivan, and he really did show up even after the glamor and romance of being a pinch-hit dad had worn off.
Chuck wasn’t even vaguely like my father and never tried to be. Chuck was ‘Uncle Chuck’, a funny, dry-witted, clever, sly, irascible and twinkling Irishman from the west side of Cleveland, Ohio; an inveterate bachelor who probably needed a family setting and a home cooked meal as much as we needed an adult male perspective in our house.
If Chuck was anything, he was Irish – and proud of it! Although he’d not been born back on ‘The Sod’, he was as Irish an American as anyone could be. One of his rituals (and there were many) was to don his morning coat and top hat and march as a celebrated leader of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in downtown Cleveland every year; a big, long and boisterous parade. In the early spring of 1965, Uncle Chuck promised my brother and me that we would go with him to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It seemed unlikely since my mother would not permit us to skip school for a silly parade (what did she know? She was German).
But clever Chuck managed to sneak us out of school and ensconce us at the Cleveland Athletic Club where we could view the parade from the 12th floor of the building. We watched Uncle Chuck march in the parade (at least we thought it was him, who could tell for sure from 12 stories up) and waited until he retrieved us afterward.
By then it was late afternoon and getting on toward dinnertime, and Chuck had promised us a meal, too. But Uncle Chuck was nobody’s fool, “My God,” he would say, “who in their right mind would go to an Irish pub on Saint Patrick’s Day?” It was what my brother and I hoped for, even lobbied for. “The place will be crowded, the service will be lousy, the food terrible and,” he added, “some drunk will slop green beer all over the placce! BUT,” he added, “Nobody goes to an Italian restaurant on Saint Patrick’s Day!”
He spirited us off to a quiet, almost invisible neighborhood place in a side street on Cleveland’s west side called Palmina’s Bar and Grill. Those who knew the place, those who really knew the place, called it ‘Mrs. D’s.” Uncle Chuck clearly knew Mrs. D’s and they knew him. We were escorted to a booth and the wait staff fawned over Uncle Chuck and his two nephews. The food was superb, the setting so – Italian!
A little while later my mother joined us and did her very best to be furious with Uncle Chuck, my brother and me, but it was no use. I think she knew what Chuck had planned and was 'unofficially' pleased.
Mrs. D’s was quiet that night, save for a few regulars who sat at the piano bar. The piano player, whose name I have long since forgotten, knew every favorite song my mom and Uncle Chuck could think of, and with several rounds of martinis and stingers, the evening passed as the maudlin adults sang their life stories. It was back in the days when certain ‘accommodations’ could be made for older teens, so my brother and I had our fill of 3.2 beer. The night was magic.
The tradition continued like clockwork every Saint Patrick’s Day until I graduated from high school and my family moved to the southwest. Uncle Chuck came to visit us in New Mexico from time to time, but age and altitude finally forbade him from coming to visit anymore.
But in a world of few universal truths, one makes sense: who in their right mind would go to an Irish Pub on Saint Patrick’s Day and suffer every indignity possible, when one could go to a cozy, quiet, convivial Italian restaurant, get fabulous food and great service from people who are truly happy to see you?
Tonight it’s spaghetti and meatballs a la truck stop, and a 'thanks' to my Uncle Chuck, a guy who didn’t need to be my dad.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
A Year
MOAB, UTAH - It’s been a year since I began trucking with this company and I find myself in a reflective mood. Maybe it’s the countryside I’m in right now; red rocks set off by shades of green and gray and a bright, blue sky overhead. The temperature is mild for early March although snow is predicted over night.
Only a few days before my departure to begin my new job as a trucker last March, Blanca and I married at the courthouse near the banks of the Ohio River in Indiana. It felt like a ‘war-time’ wedding right out of a World War II movie; a civil ceremony before I shipped out. Even though we had been together over thirteen years at that point and in our minds, we were already married by virtue of our spiritual commitment to one another, our decision to have a child together (not to mention common law), our wedding was and is a highlight in my year and will remain so in my memory.
I flew to Fort Worth, Texas where I went through the company’s three-day orientation program and training. Within a week I was on the road with my first trainer, James, and weeks later with Clarence. At the end of six weeks I was ready for a truck of my own.
Training is a funny thing, because no amount of training can fully prepare you for life on the road. There are just too many things that come up, from doing your laundry and getting showers at truck stops, to dealing with security guards who don’t particularly like truckers or negotiating
cramped parking lots and narrow parking spaces. In the last year I’ve made every mistake I could make without causing serious damage or endangering lives.I hear the horror stories of people who have watched their fortunes suddenly disappear and I understand their pain and fear. Our nest egg disappeared a couple of years ago. But my accountant says, “If you have a home and a job be happy.” I am happy. I could have been happier without such a reversal of fortune, but that was then and this is now, no sense in living in the past.
Never the less, there were moments, frustrating moments, when I would wonder just how in the hell I got to where I was? ‘Trucker’ was not part of my personal vocabulary, not about me, anyway. It was somebody else. I was supposed to be, well, something else, although I don’t know what that ‘thing’ was anymore. Not a banker (no, never!), maybe a politician (been there, done that), not a lawyer (too late in the game for that). In my lowest and most self-indulgent moments of pity I have resented my station in life, but I’ve never been one to languish in the luxury of feeling sorry for myself, so those moments came and went, and now show up with less frequency, less severity.
What has come out of this experience is what I’ve known about myself since junior high school – I am a writer. In my earlier iterations, I could not afford the time nor mental self-awareness to immerse myself in that gift (and writing is a gift from someplace else, I believe). Still, I’ve always found solace in putting my thoughts down on paper, electronic or otherwise. Trucking has given me that opportunity and it seems the more I write, the more I want to write. Thank God for laptop computers, the Internet and a chance to blog. It is the outlet, the mental and spiritual gateway, that lets me know what I am doing; that this trucking thing has value and that my life still has direction (odd to think one could be a trucker and not have a sense of ‘direction’).
I have said and continue to say that I do not want the word “Trucker” chipped on my headstone when I die. There are other things I would rather be remembered as including husband, father, grandfather. But trucking has presented me with an opportunity to explore myself, and my life more deeply. Maybe no other job could have done that.
I remember as a child watching those big trucks rolling down the highway and wondering where they were going and what it must be like to be at the wheel. Likewise, I have always been a traveler with a curiosity to discover new places and to be a part of the journey. Trucking has afforded me that and writing has allowed me to record the experience. To that end trucking has been exciting and writing has made it rewarding.
Blanca and I considered my coming home and finding a job locally; I even applied for a local job, but found out at the last minute that the hours had been reduced and there were no benefits. Driving a truck is keeping me employed and offering benefits I’d have a hard time duplicating elsewhere. So, while there are moments I wish I could be at home with my family, in this economy truck driving remains my best option. A year later I’m thankful to be on the road and earning a living.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Hey Mr. R. Beagle or R. Deagle - or whatever your name is! It's for you!
I was asleep at about 5:30 in the afternoon. I had to deliver a load the next morning by 0500 hours and was in one of those funny squeeze plays truckers find themselves in where the closer you get to your destination the less likely it is you will arrive on time. So, I was better off to stop for my mandatory 10 hour rest period at 280 miles from my destination than I would have been had I driven another hour and a half. At 200 miles away, arriving on time would have been impossible - trust me, it's true.
So I'm struggling to sleep in the afternoon in order to be ready for an all-night drive beginning at 0100 hours (1:00 a.m.). I would arrive at my destination on time as long as I could get enough rest now.
Adding to that, Blanca and I have just switched cell phone services from AT&T to Verizon; a change I'm beginning to regret for a Variety of reasons. Our change came about when Blanca's cell phone jack-knifed out of her hand and did an 'Esther Williams' into the sudsy kitchen sink. No three-second rule to save her, here. She grabbed the phone out of the water and immediately pushed buttons to see if it was still working - bad idea. It had the affect of throwing her phone into what might be characterized as an electronic stroke! We worked with the palsied phone for a couple of days and determined that while it could still talk, it's condition was deteriorating, a terminal prognosis.
Since we hadn't switched our cell service from Indiana (where you can get AT&T) to southern Colorado (where you cannot get AT&T), we decided on repakaging our plan with Verizon so that Blanca could at least have a local phone number which would prevent friends in our town from having to make long distance phone calls to talk to her even though she might be only a few miles away. It didn't matter to me since I'm on the road anyway and virtually every call I make or receive is long distance.
So, there I was clawing at sleep when my phone rings and I grope to answer it in the semi-darkness (pun intended). The fellow on the other end wants to talk to the above captioned man with the name of Beagle or Deagle (I couldn't quite figure out which), thus bringing me to full wakefulness. I was nonplussed. He apologized and hung up, doubtless fearing a cyber tongue-lashing. I was groggy enough that I hadn't come around to thinking up all the rapier-like remarks I could have made; an opportunity lost, dear me!
Now I was awake and contemplating how I was going to get back to sleep so as to be adequately rested for my night of driving. Just as I was sure I couldn't go back to sleep, my alarm clock woke me to let me know I had to be ready to go in twenty minutes, sleep had prevailed!
I made the drive, delivered my load on time and am having a restful albeit soggy evening in Georgia tonight.
More good news - I have replaced my digital camera (my old one was stolen last March) and can now start publishing a few pictures from the Asphalt Ocean. I hope you enjoy them.
So I'm struggling to sleep in the afternoon in order to be ready for an all-night drive beginning at 0100 hours (1:00 a.m.). I would arrive at my destination on time as long as I could get enough rest now.
Adding to that, Blanca and I have just switched cell phone services from AT&T to Verizon; a change I'm beginning to regret for a Variety of reasons. Our change came about when Blanca's cell phone jack-knifed out of her hand and did an 'Esther Williams' into the sudsy kitchen sink. No three-second rule to save her, here. She grabbed the phone out of the water and immediately pushed buttons to see if it was still working - bad idea. It had the affect of throwing her phone into what might be characterized as an electronic stroke! We worked with the palsied phone for a couple of days and determined that while it could still talk, it's condition was deteriorating, a terminal prognosis.
Since we hadn't switched our cell service from Indiana (where you can get AT&T) to southern Colorado (where you cannot get AT&T), we decided on repakaging our plan with Verizon so that Blanca could at least have a local phone number which would prevent friends in our town from having to make long distance phone calls to talk to her even though she might be only a few miles away. It didn't matter to me since I'm on the road anyway and virtually every call I make or receive is long distance.
So, there I was clawing at sleep when my phone rings and I grope to answer it in the semi-darkness (pun intended). The fellow on the other end wants to talk to the above captioned man with the name of Beagle or Deagle (I couldn't quite figure out which), thus bringing me to full wakefulness. I was nonplussed. He apologized and hung up, doubtless fearing a cyber tongue-lashing. I was groggy enough that I hadn't come around to thinking up all the rapier-like remarks I could have made; an opportunity lost, dear me!
Now I was awake and contemplating how I was going to get back to sleep so as to be adequately rested for my night of driving. Just as I was sure I couldn't go back to sleep, my alarm clock woke me to let me know I had to be ready to go in twenty minutes, sleep had prevailed!
I made the drive, delivered my load on time and am having a restful albeit soggy evening in Georgia tonight.More good news - I have replaced my digital camera (my old one was stolen last March) and can now start publishing a few pictures from the Asphalt Ocean. I hope you enjoy them.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Mid-Winter Meanderings
Thanks for the notes about the magazine article I wrote for Pilot Challenge Magazine. I’m glad so many of you enjoyed it.
Even though I’m currently warm in the south I find I am ready to see this winter move along. Blanca and Boy are even more ready to see it go since the temperatures where we live have been below zero each night and rising only to a balmy 30's +/- during the day.
I am just shy of having trucked for a year (this time around), but even with my past and current experience the lessons keep on coming. Sometimes the most important lessons I get are from what I see on the road; too many bad accidents involving big trucks and often 4-wheelers. I drove past one recently where the front end of the big truck was missing but there was nothing left of the 4-wheeler but a charred shell. I don’t know what happened or how anyone fared, but there was nothing good to come out of that accident.
But not all the experiences are so grim. There are days and nights when it’s nothing short of a joy to roll down the highway and take in the sights. One of my favorites is in southern Colorado just south of Lamar, where a crop of wind turbines spring up out of a gently rolling prairie like some sort of other-worldly patch of daisies. I’ve driven through their shadows many times, the shadow blades swinging across the highway like giant scythes. Sunrise and sunsets are often unforgettable and the lighted outline of skyscrapers in the distance is a picture, too. I know I think of trucking like being at sea in a boat, but sometimes it feels more like flying.
I am going to put ashore for some needed shore leave very soon. I’ve been sailing on the asphalt ocean for longer than usual this time around and I’m getting a case of ‘home-itis’. I put it out of my mind as best I can because I don’t like too many distractions while I’m at the helm of my boat. But this time I’m almost close enough to shore to see that one particular lighthouse and I feel its pull strongly.
Blanca and I agreed I would stay out longer this time around because of economics. When I come home not only does the money dry up, but our expenses go up, too, because of one extra (big) mouth to feed. We want to play, to go to a movie, to eat out – that kind of stuff. By the time I put out to sea again our bank account is on empty. Somehow it’s just not right.
But it’s Boy I think about, too. He’s on the ski team, he has basketball, he’s in Knowledge Bowl and his dad is missing too much of his life. We talk on the phone pretty regularly but we both know it’s not the same as talking eyeball to eyeball.
Trucking continues to be a dichotomy for me; I enjoy the relative freedom of the road but sometimes I miss my family too much. I think about coming home for a while but then I hear the siren song of life on the road again and I wonder where the next load is going. Mostly I miss my wife and son. If I could simply pack them up and take them along everything would be fine.
Even though I’m currently warm in the south I find I am ready to see this winter move along. Blanca and Boy are even more ready to see it go since the temperatures where we live have been below zero each night and rising only to a balmy 30's +/- during the day.
I am just shy of having trucked for a year (this time around), but even with my past and current experience the lessons keep on coming. Sometimes the most important lessons I get are from what I see on the road; too many bad accidents involving big trucks and often 4-wheelers. I drove past one recently where the front end of the big truck was missing but there was nothing left of the 4-wheeler but a charred shell. I don’t know what happened or how anyone fared, but there was nothing good to come out of that accident.
But not all the experiences are so grim. There are days and nights when it’s nothing short of a joy to roll down the highway and take in the sights. One of my favorites is in southern Colorado just south of Lamar, where a crop of wind turbines spring up out of a gently rolling prairie like some sort of other-worldly patch of daisies. I’ve driven through their shadows many times, the shadow blades swinging across the highway like giant scythes. Sunrise and sunsets are often unforgettable and the lighted outline of skyscrapers in the distance is a picture, too. I know I think of trucking like being at sea in a boat, but sometimes it feels more like flying.
I am going to put ashore for some needed shore leave very soon. I’ve been sailing on the asphalt ocean for longer than usual this time around and I’m getting a case of ‘home-itis’. I put it out of my mind as best I can because I don’t like too many distractions while I’m at the helm of my boat. But this time I’m almost close enough to shore to see that one particular lighthouse and I feel its pull strongly.
Blanca and I agreed I would stay out longer this time around because of economics. When I come home not only does the money dry up, but our expenses go up, too, because of one extra (big) mouth to feed. We want to play, to go to a movie, to eat out – that kind of stuff. By the time I put out to sea again our bank account is on empty. Somehow it’s just not right.
But it’s Boy I think about, too. He’s on the ski team, he has basketball, he’s in Knowledge Bowl and his dad is missing too much of his life. We talk on the phone pretty regularly but we both know it’s not the same as talking eyeball to eyeball.
Trucking continues to be a dichotomy for me; I enjoy the relative freedom of the road but sometimes I miss my family too much. I think about coming home for a while but then I hear the siren song of life on the road again and I wonder where the next load is going. Mostly I miss my wife and son. If I could simply pack them up and take them along everything would be fine.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The Blogging Article is out!
A few months back I wrote a magazine article for Pilot Challenge Magazine about truckers who write blogs. The article has just been released in the February issue and can be seen on the Internet at the following address:
ptcchallenge.com
For those of you who helped me put this article together, I thank you. I hope you enjoy seeing your blog mentioned and that this article generates more readers for you. By the way, the article looks much better in the magazine than online. If you can get a copy of the magazine I recommend you do so.
ptcchallenge.com
For those of you who helped me put this article together, I thank you. I hope you enjoy seeing your blog mentioned and that this article generates more readers for you. By the way, the article looks much better in the magazine than online. If you can get a copy of the magazine I recommend you do so.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
My Everest!
The snowfall in the southern Rocky Mountains has been fierce this year, just like last year. During my recent holiday home-time for a late Christmas and New Years combo (a respite from Over-the-Road truck driving), I drove my big rig truck over Wolf Creek Pass on roads that were dry save for the occasional icy patch. Blanca told me for weeks how much snow our mountain town was getting, but by all appearances the snow had melted off.
Then only a few days later the snows returned with the stealth and guile of an army of ninjas. Oh sure, it was snowing, but not snowing ‘really’ hard. The forecast mentioned snow but never blared out any urgent warnings. Never the less, the snow began to pile up and up on our metal-roofed house.
In the mountains in Colorado, buildings are engineered with the snow load in mind. The probability of a heavy snow is expected and roofs are designed with sufficient pitch to cause the snow slide off easily – usually.
This year, this snowfall, the white stuff piled up and up and up on our hundred-year old house, refusing to slip away and mounding so high as to block the sunlight from our windows. Instead of the ground-shaking thud we normally hear as hundreds of pounds of snow fall from the second story roof, we heard only an eerie and disquieting silence.
Our poor house had already suffered structural damage as a result of too much
snow load and it brought about catastrophic results, so, Boy and I planned to scale our way up onto the roof, snow shovels in hand, and clear the snow away. We spent the day shoveling our driveways, walkways, garage door and finally the sloping roof and by the end of that sunshiny day our roof was free of snow.
Boy led expedition like a veteran sherpa guide, having scaled the heights of our home many times before without our knowledge or permission (a subject for another day). Still, his previous adventuring paid off; he had a ready and easy path for us to follow.
But now it was Monday and Boy was back in school. The weather descended on us like a curse and the roof needed shoveling once again, the snow showing no sign of relenting. I did not have my sherpa to guide me and the nature of the snow itself had changed from good, old reliable roof-sticking snow to light, fluffy and wholly unreliable snow ready to slide out from under foot faster than a throw rug on a newly waxed wooden floor.
The pitch of the roof, not sufficient to make this snow exit of its own accord, was nothing less than a thrill ride down a slippery trough with a heart-attack few seconds of free fall and concluding with a bone-jarring (maybe breaking) stop in a banked up pile of former roof snow now turned to granite-like ice stalagmite below. But ‘Ill-Conceived-Adventure’ is not my middle name for nothing, so teetering out on the trembling white stuff seemed a good idea in the same way the red neck’s famous last words are ‘Hey y’all, watch this!’
Following Boy’s route, I planned a north face assault, as the porch roof there was only one story off the ground, easily accessible and leading to the sure path to the second floor roof. The snow on that roof, having collected from the second story roof above, was a mere two and a half feet thick and had thawed and frozen so many times it was as good as mortared in place. My traverse across the north face of our house was easy even though I had to shovel a path in front of me in order to achieve the western slope, the slope to reckon with.
I had to cross a dormer protrusion in order to gain the western slope and as I set foot on the steeper incline the words of my doctor rang in my ears like the dive claxon on a submarine: “at your age bones don’t break, they shatter,” hardly what I’d call flattering, but more importantly he had me mistaken with an ‘old guy’.
Perhaps it was the impact of landing flat on my face with my very first step onto the dormer slope that caused any and all good judgment to abandon ship. I picked myself up and with trusty push broom and grain shovel in hand, propelled myself over the incline and onto the vast, sloping roof before me. Still wiping snow from my glasses and blowing snow out of my nostrils, I observed the roof. It ran twenty-five feet downward before disappearing into some distant yard far below and out of sight.
I traversed the rooftop from north to south testing every step I took with broom and shovel before moving forward. As the precipitous slope ran downhill from east to west, my plan was to start on the south end of the roof shoveling snow down the roof to the west, keeping myself safely on the northerly snow and not on the treacherous metal roof now with the viscosity of a water slide. By escorting the snow down the slope and then regaining the top of the roof, I could back up a pace or two to the north and shovel the snow I had once been standing on down the slope and into the void. If I remained faithful to this methodology I should end up on the north end of the roof and ready to affect my descent over the dormer hump and back to good old porch roof terra firma.
Standing sideways to the snow’s path, I pushed the shovel across me, left to right, up to down. The snow’s own gravity helped propel it toward the precipice. I stepped west down the incline, closer to the edge. I nudged the snow laterally down hill again. The plan seemed to be working – so far. Another step, another push – then another. Within moments the snow hurtled off into space, offering up a satisfying thud on the ground a second or two later. Success! I had only to mount the rooftop again, take one step back to the north and repeat the process. I inched my way uphill with support of my broom and shovel. The ascent was more difficult than I had anticipated, having to side step my way slowly toward the summit of the roof. I slid back one step for every two steps I took. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘if I face uphill and simply walk with the aid of my broom and shovel, perhaps….’
…perhaps if my heel had a name it would be ‘Achilles’. It was my downfall. Both feet went out from under me and I landed with my face in the snow. My glasses were rent asunder and my body, clothed in old blue jeans and a slick nylon jacket, began a coal chute descent toward the edge of the roof! My trusty broom and shovel remained vertical in the snow above but slightly askew as if laughing at me as I slid toward my doom. Metal roofs are smooth, nothing to reach for nothing to grasp, only time for a quick prayer.
Like Wile E. Coyote of Roadrunner fame, I found my mind racing through possible solutions to and probable outcomes of my dilemma. I thought ‘if I’d only brought a rope with me I could have tied a safety line around the chimney’, but abandoned the idea certain that while laying on the ground below the roof after my fall and taking inventory of exactly what bones were broken, I would only be pummeled to death by chimney bricks torn loose during my descent. It’s funny how fast the mind works in a moment of stark, abject terror, huh?
But now I felt a new sensation, I was slowing down. Something was breaking my descent. The snow I was pushing toward the edge of the roof with my body was building up and slowing me down! Slower and slower I went until only a few feet from the edge I came to a complete halt! Hallelujah!
I faced a new situation: I lay prone on the roof only a few feet from the edge and many feet away from safety above. If I so much as moved, I might send the supporting snow over the edge of the roof taking me with it. Still, I couldn’t just lie there and wait for spring. Surely Blanca and Boy would miss me after a while - wouldn’t they?
Climbing the roof to the dormer hump seemed imprudent. I had my cell phone with me. Should I dial 911? Screaming for help just seemed so - I don’t know - so unmanly, so not-Hemmingway! No, I had to face the mountain alone and I was not too proud to crawl on my belly like some lowly reptile whimpering promises to God I knew I could never keep!
Thrashing about was not going to help me. I had to do a snake crawl slowly upward toward the dormer hump now only fifteen feet, now only twelve feet, now only nine feet away. My progress probably took less than five minutes but I imagined myself stranded until nearly nightfall.
Risking all, I reached for my glasses buried in the snow like some priceless sacred idol from an Indiana Jones movie. I recovered my shovel and broom, thrusting them gently before me until I arrived, glasses, equipment and all, at the dormer hump and slid over its crest and down onto the safety of the north porch roof. I lay there for a long moment, snowflakes stinging my face. A voice deep within said, ‘there, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ I had survived and now only needed to mush across the expanse of the north porch roof and jump back to earth and safety.
Blanca greeted me at the door. “How did it go?” she asked.
“Not bad,” I lied.
“That’s great!” she chirped. “ There’s more snow expected tonight. You can clean it off tomorrow if you’re not back out on the road and trucking by then.”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m sure I will be.”
Then only a few days later the snows returned with the stealth and guile of an army of ninjas. Oh sure, it was snowing, but not snowing ‘really’ hard. The forecast mentioned snow but never blared out any urgent warnings. Never the less, the snow began to pile up and up on our metal-roofed house.
In the mountains in Colorado, buildings are engineered with the snow load in mind. The probability of a heavy snow is expected and roofs are designed with sufficient pitch to cause the snow slide off easily – usually.
This year, this snowfall, the white stuff piled up and up and up on our hundred-year old house, refusing to slip away and mounding so high as to block the sunlight from our windows. Instead of the ground-shaking thud we normally hear as hundreds of pounds of snow fall from the second story roof, we heard only an eerie and disquieting silence.
Our poor house had already suffered structural damage as a result of too much
snow load and it brought about catastrophic results, so, Boy and I planned to scale our way up onto the roof, snow shovels in hand, and clear the snow away. We spent the day shoveling our driveways, walkways, garage door and finally the sloping roof and by the end of that sunshiny day our roof was free of snow.
Boy led expedition like a veteran sherpa guide, having scaled the heights of our home many times before without our knowledge or permission (a subject for another day). Still, his previous adventuring paid off; he had a ready and easy path for us to follow.
But now it was Monday and Boy was back in school. The weather descended on us like a curse and the roof needed shoveling once again, the snow showing no sign of relenting. I did not have my sherpa to guide me and the nature of the snow itself had changed from good, old reliable roof-sticking snow to light, fluffy and wholly unreliable snow ready to slide out from under foot faster than a throw rug on a newly waxed wooden floor.
The pitch of the roof, not sufficient to make this snow exit of its own accord, was nothing less than a thrill ride down a slippery trough with a heart-attack few seconds of free fall and concluding with a bone-jarring (maybe breaking) stop in a banked up pile of former roof snow now turned to granite-like ice stalagmite below. But ‘Ill-Conceived-Adventure’ is not my middle name for nothing, so teetering out on the trembling white stuff seemed a good idea in the same way the red neck’s famous last words are ‘Hey y’all, watch this!’
Following Boy’s route, I planned a north face assault, as the porch roof there was only one story off the ground, easily accessible and leading to the sure path to the second floor roof. The snow on that roof, having collected from the second story roof above, was a mere two and a half feet thick and had thawed and frozen so many times it was as good as mortared in place. My traverse across the north face of our house was easy even though I had to shovel a path in front of me in order to achieve the western slope, the slope to reckon with.
I had to cross a dormer protrusion in order to gain the western slope and as I set foot on the steeper incline the words of my doctor rang in my ears like the dive claxon on a submarine: “at your age bones don’t break, they shatter,” hardly what I’d call flattering, but more importantly he had me mistaken with an ‘old guy’.
Perhaps it was the impact of landing flat on my face with my very first step onto the dormer slope that caused any and all good judgment to abandon ship. I picked myself up and with trusty push broom and grain shovel in hand, propelled myself over the incline and onto the vast, sloping roof before me. Still wiping snow from my glasses and blowing snow out of my nostrils, I observed the roof. It ran twenty-five feet downward before disappearing into some distant yard far below and out of sight.
I traversed the rooftop from north to south testing every step I took with broom and shovel before moving forward. As the precipitous slope ran downhill from east to west, my plan was to start on the south end of the roof shoveling snow down the roof to the west, keeping myself safely on the northerly snow and not on the treacherous metal roof now with the viscosity of a water slide. By escorting the snow down the slope and then regaining the top of the roof, I could back up a pace or two to the north and shovel the snow I had once been standing on down the slope and into the void. If I remained faithful to this methodology I should end up on the north end of the roof and ready to affect my descent over the dormer hump and back to good old porch roof terra firma.
Standing sideways to the snow’s path, I pushed the shovel across me, left to right, up to down. The snow’s own gravity helped propel it toward the precipice. I stepped west down the incline, closer to the edge. I nudged the snow laterally down hill again. The plan seemed to be working – so far. Another step, another push – then another. Within moments the snow hurtled off into space, offering up a satisfying thud on the ground a second or two later. Success! I had only to mount the rooftop again, take one step back to the north and repeat the process. I inched my way uphill with support of my broom and shovel. The ascent was more difficult than I had anticipated, having to side step my way slowly toward the summit of the roof. I slid back one step for every two steps I took. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘if I face uphill and simply walk with the aid of my broom and shovel, perhaps….’
…perhaps if my heel had a name it would be ‘Achilles’. It was my downfall. Both feet went out from under me and I landed with my face in the snow. My glasses were rent asunder and my body, clothed in old blue jeans and a slick nylon jacket, began a coal chute descent toward the edge of the roof! My trusty broom and shovel remained vertical in the snow above but slightly askew as if laughing at me as I slid toward my doom. Metal roofs are smooth, nothing to reach for nothing to grasp, only time for a quick prayer.
Like Wile E. Coyote of Roadrunner fame, I found my mind racing through possible solutions to and probable outcomes of my dilemma. I thought ‘if I’d only brought a rope with me I could have tied a safety line around the chimney’, but abandoned the idea certain that while laying on the ground below the roof after my fall and taking inventory of exactly what bones were broken, I would only be pummeled to death by chimney bricks torn loose during my descent. It’s funny how fast the mind works in a moment of stark, abject terror, huh?
But now I felt a new sensation, I was slowing down. Something was breaking my descent. The snow I was pushing toward the edge of the roof with my body was building up and slowing me down! Slower and slower I went until only a few feet from the edge I came to a complete halt! Hallelujah!
I faced a new situation: I lay prone on the roof only a few feet from the edge and many feet away from safety above. If I so much as moved, I might send the supporting snow over the edge of the roof taking me with it. Still, I couldn’t just lie there and wait for spring. Surely Blanca and Boy would miss me after a while - wouldn’t they?
Climbing the roof to the dormer hump seemed imprudent. I had my cell phone with me. Should I dial 911? Screaming for help just seemed so - I don’t know - so unmanly, so not-Hemmingway! No, I had to face the mountain alone and I was not too proud to crawl on my belly like some lowly reptile whimpering promises to God I knew I could never keep!
Thrashing about was not going to help me. I had to do a snake crawl slowly upward toward the dormer hump now only fifteen feet, now only twelve feet, now only nine feet away. My progress probably took less than five minutes but I imagined myself stranded until nearly nightfall.
Risking all, I reached for my glasses buried in the snow like some priceless sacred idol from an Indiana Jones movie. I recovered my shovel and broom, thrusting them gently before me until I arrived, glasses, equipment and all, at the dormer hump and slid over its crest and down onto the safety of the north porch roof. I lay there for a long moment, snowflakes stinging my face. A voice deep within said, ‘there, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ I had survived and now only needed to mush across the expanse of the north porch roof and jump back to earth and safety.
Blanca greeted me at the door. “How did it go?” she asked.
“Not bad,” I lied.
“That’s great!” she chirped. “ There’s more snow expected tonight. You can clean it off tomorrow if you’re not back out on the road and trucking by then.”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m sure I will be.”
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