To God be the GLORY, Great things he has done (I'm alive)

It's pointed into the sunset.

This is or was "my" truck. It's always hard for me as an ex Finance/Lease manager to term anything that I leased as being "mine." I leased this truck from my "employer" and was called an "owner/operator" or "independent contractor." Both of these are misnomers. I owned nothing. I was not independent. All of my dispatches came from the same people who leased me the truck and as I said, leasing is not owning.

 Tuesday at 7:30 AM CDT I was awakened by an unusual jolt and instantly began to receive a constant stream of verbal updates (with some mild obscenities interlaced) from my co driver. We'd left I-70 and were air-born. This is not a good thing in an 18 wheeler. The increasingly distressed nature of my co driver's updates as he rapidly ticked off our progress (sideways) down an embankment combined with the never before felt vibrations and jolts (extremely hard) didn't do much to improve the outlook. I was dead I thought. Now. In the dark, in a sleeper of a truck. Violently. Probably in very gruesome and painful fashion. 

I re-upped with Christ on our status, claiming him as LORD and savior in what I thought were my last moments. I'm sure he hadn't forgotten that I'd done that before. I certainly hadn't forgotten, but nonetheless I acknowledged him and claimed him and braced for the end. There was another violent shock and the bunk came up and slammed my back hard, and I felt something give and announced to my co driver that my back was now broken. Shortly after that we came to a rest in the way you see above.

That's the picture side, the other shows a bit more damage.

 Looking at it quickly, my truck might seem able to drive after a tow, but it is hopelessly broken in many ways. The steer axle is bent. The two drive axles are knocked out of place and skewed. Approaching the truck from the rear you can see the components of the drive line scattered across the Kansas cornfield. Once the trailer was detached from the truck and towed, you could see that the frame was bent below the fifth wheel plate. It is likely that it is bent in several other places.

As it turned out later, I was in error about my injuries. There was indeed a broken bone, and yes it was near my back, but it was a rib. I walked out of the ER in Oakley Kansas a few hours later, a hurtin' but upright unit.

Oakley is a great place to have a disaster. Someone called right away with extremely detailed location information as our truck left the roadway.

As soon as we stopped moving, I asked my co driver to assess the damage, he got out and did a walk around and saw what I described above. He wasn't gone long. By the time he announced to me the condition of the truck he was also accompanied by one of Oakley's finest. The officer in question had met him as he checked the truck (a process taking two or three minutes) and had asked my co driver if he had called 911. He said "No, you're here already."

The ambulance wasn't far behind. The EMT's were great. They got me on a back board and braced my neck. There was a discussion about "using the saw" to get me out to which I responded "please don't."

In the end they stomped merrily and efficiently around in the truck settling on removing the passenger seat and we went out that way. I think I will remember the eagerness of the responder wanting to use the saw to my dying day. I chuckle every time. Even if it is very painful.

Oakley was great. The Hospital, the Police, the EMT's, everyone.

I had a chance to survey the accident from several angles afterward. The truck left the highway and tilted at what had to be more than 45 degrees as it went down slope, yet it ended "shiny side up" which is a strong commentary on the grace of God and the skill of my co driver. Not a soul viewing the site could understand how the truck didn't roll.

I have mulled over several names for my truck for several reasons. I think I need to give it one for a ship that was lost, but all of whose passengers survived.

I'll probably end up back at a name I liked best but could never quite finalize. "The Millennium Cornbinder." She was the fastest hunka junk in the fleet. We were well below the speed limit though that day, not that we ever spent much time on the wrong side of the limit, wherever or whatever that limit might be.

I've also thought of the name "The Student Prince," which refers to a Leo Kottke song in which the instrument makes the player sound good. I've never thought I was that great a driver, but the ship I sailed in made me look like I was. In the end, the "Student Prince guitar" of the protagonist in the Leo Kottke song, is lost to someone sitting on it and it's never the same.

"Tilt Billings saw a guitar in a pawn shop window.
Not much to look at but he knew that he'd found
The old Student Prince that they made years ago
So easy to play!
What unbeatable sound!
Paid twenty bucks and grabbed his guitar
Still be a steal at ten times the dough
It was amazing how a mere beginner
Could play just a few notes and sound like a pro
He'd play his heart out when he was at parties
Guys would get jealous
(but girls were impressed)."
(Leo Kottke/Ron Nagle - Round Wound Sounds)

That kind fits as well.

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Tulsa Time

Appologies to Danny Flowers.

Danny wrote Tulsa Time, which is most popular in our memories as a song either by Don Williams or Eric Clapton. Danny was born in Henderson North Carolina. I was born in North Carolina. I was just in Henderson a few weeks ago. But I digress. I intend to digress more than one time in this post.

This is going to be one of those catch-all/catch-up messages, intended to let you know what's going on in life with me, and more or less why I haven't been blogging. Trucking, (I am now a Over the Road trucker) has not lived up to it's promise as far as free time to write and blog goes. Probably an experienced trucker would have told me this had I asked. I asked (it appears), the wrong experienced trucker.

First of all, on my absence of comment on the FLDS and Warren. Warren signed the 120. I thought he was winning. Maybe all Warren is trying to do is stay out of the General Population in a Texas Prison as long as he can. Warren Jeffs has been made into the moral equivalent of a Jeffrey Dahmer. Warren, the media narrative goes, consumes the virgin flesh of young girls to satisfy his sick sexual appetites. Jeffrey ate people.

Jeffrey Dahmer was a trophy kill in prison. I sadly think Warren may be lined up for the same fate. I think Texas knows this. Given that Warren may not survive in prison, it may not matter how long he spends there. He won't be freed on appeal and the railroad style trial that Judge Walther would give him puts him in the crosshairs long enough to die. Perhaps this is Warren's thinking. Maybe his defense team knows something we don't that is a game changer. I don't think so.

The FLDS no longer talk to me and what is in the media is all I know. I've peaked behind the curtain on two ends. Rozita Swinton and "TxBluesMan." It doesn't seem to interest them. I'd be vitally interested in the FBI communications network that seemed to exist before Rozita was "discovered." So far the FLDS have only paid lip service to interest in that topic.

TxBluesMan had extraordinary access, sometimes posting court documents before the Judge seemed to see them or approve them. I seem to know who TxBluesMan is. That's interesting. The FLDS again give lip service to being interested in the topic. That's all though. Proving any conspiracy leading up to the invasion of YFZ may well let all the FLDS men go overnight. They don't seem to care. I don't know why. Maybe they have looked. Maybe I had good couple of leads that didn't pan out. I don't know.

On to what's happening with me.

I continue to pursue several paths that seem at least theoretically open to me.

In short, I propose a business/religion empire based on family and a spine of trucking.

How romantic.

I've "proposed" that anyone interested could contact me and the starting position of the business would be staffing one truck with two wives/drivers and me. That would mean you would get ten days off in a row, away from the cranky old Pharisee, and ten days with him. If I'm too much to take, maybe I wouldn't be in tiny doses.

Those of you who think the current Mrs. Pharisee doesn't know of this proposal are wrong.

A number of things would have to work out for the above to be the path.

The end result would be part ownership in a diversified business that had trucking as part of the enterprise. Driving the rest of your life is not part of the idea. Driving part of your life away, would be.

Follow the above link for more details.

Another path is the formation of a denomination, which continues to be my interest. This continues to progress. It is agonizingly slow. People are in addition, just too stubborn to admit that the best way to do things is simply to agree with me.

Odd, isn't it?

Then there is the sort of Methodist/Presbyterian circuit riding polygynist preacher. I need people to pony up for that one. It's quite simple. Support the effort monetarily and I will use my far ranging truck driving profession to show up on occasion, preach, take your money and deliver the sacraments, which for a reformed venue is pretty much baptism and communion.

The last is the least complex. I can make free time as a solo trucker. I do range about the country from one end to another. If I derived an income as a preacher the truck is just my wandering taxicab. It also would serve the denominational goal but from a slightly different angle.

I haven't mentioned the other path.

That's giving up, closing up shop, declaring bankruptcy, and shouting "Bah, Humbug" into some anonymous box canyon and retiring from public view. That would be after beating my head against the wall now for more than 20 years and coming to the conclusion, as I rapidly am beginning to seriously entertain, that no one at all, cares.

So what about Tulsa Time?

It appears that Tulsa does have it's own time standards. It is laid back. No one works in this industrial park on weekends, well one merchant does. Several of the commercial buildings are empty. They remind me mysteriously of the abandoned ABM site east of Conrad Montana. Melting snow drips. It's accumulated in places you would expect people to clear out. The ABM site was like that.

I hoofed it for about a mile round about my delivery site which won't take my cargo until tomorrow morning. There were no laundromats. There were no bars. There were no churches. There was a church TV station. There was a 24 hour a day pawn shop that redeemed gold and silver. It was busy.

Eventually I went back to the "receiver" of my freight and looked again for an outlet to plug into for my laptop. There were none. I continued to be nervous about the fact that there was what appeared to be an abandoned "tractor" (the term for the "truck" portion of an eighteen wheeler, it had expired plates and hadn't moved for a while and was backed up to the "dock"). The whole dock area showed only marginal signs of use. The snow was cleared away from the dock which was comforting, but I saw no signs of life at all. No security (it is Tulsa though) and no noises. Finally I did get an angle on the roof cooling unit and could hear it running. I felt better.

I have been sent to wrong locations before. It now appears this was not one of them. It's just sleepy. Tulsa time you know.

So I'm sitting on a loading dock of an adjoining business that does have plugs, and lighting, and listening to the snow melt dripping. It was 70 when I got here, it's in the 50's now. The snow is melting quickly but there was a lot of it to melt in Tulsa. It's still melting. Water is running everywhere.

This brings me to the digression (in part) of another reason I haven't been blogging.

There is the issue of no one giving a rat's hiney. It's hard to keep banging on the door when no one is home. It bruises your hands.

There is the issue of depression.

This is a depressing job when you're not moving or sleeping. I don't like hanging out in a truck. It is turning out to be very hard for me to compose a thought, and then follow through with putting it into print when the overwhelming thought is "oh, never mind," because when the truck stops moving, and you're not making the dough, and you're not sleeping, it's really really REALLY depressing.

I got into this business to be with a friend and to set about the activity of forming a new denomination.

I am now alone.

I never go home.

I miss my wife.

I'm not making enough money to justify doing this as a solo driver. I keep putting the pencil to it and can't make it work.

I do have one or two ways to make "soloing" work better that I've been trying. We'll see.

I try to be honest about who I am and what my faults are. I try to set things in front of you all so that you know me as well as you can know anyone you haven't met, or may have only met briefly.

There are drawbacks. It's the issue of "Pearls before Swine."

"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."

They do rend.

Most of what I encounter to my posts on both of my blogs now, is that rending.

Alone, I must tell you, it is extremely painful.

There are those that trample. They lie. They rend. They twist everything you say and yes, it hurts a great deal.

I don't mind saying so as I continue to try to be honest about who I am and what I am. Just saying the above will let me in for another round of jeering and ridicule. The only vague interest I have in that trampling and rending is what bizarre twist will my words be subjected to when I hear them read back to me, modified.

So I'm here in Tulsa. I may be here until Tuesday. Clock-wise, as a trucker, I have about four hours left to spend before Tuesday. I cannot go too many places in four hours. I certainly can't go on from that place to another. I may visit the local service center for my "tractor" and see if they can diagnose some odd things that are occurring with old blue. We'll see.

I think if I want to write, and to blog, I need to get out of the truck. It helps a lot.

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Tallulah Today, Clarksville and Fort Smith Saturday and Sunday

I'm bunking in Tallulah Louisiana tonight and will be there most of Saturday Morning.

Saturday night, and all of Sunday I'll be in the Clarksville/Fort Smith area of Arkansas. Any like minded folks out there?

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Where in the world am I? Monday November 8th, 2010 (UPDATED)

UPDATE- Legal Genius Renaldo Stowers found this photograph THREATENING to Sgt. Prickett.  NO LIE!  (How does a picture of Eldorado's Main Drag threaten Sgt. Prickett?)   If no one gets it (Toes, you know so you don't count), I'll post another more obvious hint tomorrow, God willing.

Of course, the story is now out, and this is Eldorado Texas.

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