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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.
