Hiding My Sin in Paducah
I am running illegal.
Splashed all over the door on the rental truck I'm using to move to College Place, WA, is GVW: Under 26,000. The USDOT truck number is just below that. I am 27,520 pounds.
I have heard horror stories that if I pull into one of those side-of-the-highway weigh stations, I could be fined and/or have to unload the excess weight on the spot. Then I hear stories that I should just whistle on by, only the big boys with a commercial driver license and with actual bills of lading and log books and air brakes and stuff like that need to stop. And if I'm caught, just play stupid, dumb and ignorant! 'Cept I can't lie. That is a skill I never acquired.
So I choose to hide my sin by taking the scenic route to get around them. Tough to do in parts of the western USA.
This morning, after making reference to my trucker's edition of the road atlas that indicates where scales are located, I make a left turn off of US 287 to hit a little road that will put me on some local county roads that I can use to skirt the weigh station.
Except the county roads turn out to be single lane dirt pathways, hardly graded, and soaked with a three day drenching rain. I can't think of a faster way to submerge myself to the axles in grief than to try a short cut like that!
So I keep going. At least this Texas FM road is paved. (a "FM" road is a "farm to market" secondary road). Finally I find a place to safely pull off to see where I am at and what kind of mess I have gotten myself into. GPS's really do help!! Most of the time!!
The paved road continues on for 25 miles to Paducah, TX. There I can turn west, get to Matador, turn north and get back on US 287, and bypass the weigh scale.
Paducah!
I had no idea there was a Paducah in Texas. Of course I had heard about the one in Kentucky, and the jokes that go with it about being from Paducah of all places. Like it is the pejorative for hicksville or something.
So I am headed for Paducah! This is a scenic adventure. I am excited!
As I bounce along, to my right, I notice the grading for an old, long-ago abandoned rail line. The ties are randomly scattered on each side. They are bleached white, of all things, so old, so rotten, so weathered by years of a blistering Texas sun. I wonder why it was so important to run a rail line along here, and then to just rip it up.
And the abandoned railroad right-of-way goes to Paducah.
This part of Texas is under the flyways for many flights to and from the west coast that use the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. Several weeks ago I was on one of those flights. It was at night. I could look down at the little sprinkling of lights that were scattered over the dark earth like sequins on a discarded rhinestone cowboy's black jacket. I remember thinking at the time if one in ten of those little flickering lights represented a gay or lesbian individual. And so alone. So lonely. So isolated in the fly-over part of the country.
And now I was entering one of those little clusters of light.
Boom! Classical Pops on the XM Satellite radio lets rip with a tune I don't know the name of but the words take me back to summer camps of yore.
The ants go marching one by one.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants go marching one by one.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants go marching one by one;
The little one stops to suck his thumb,
And they all go marching down into the ground to get outof the rain.
Boom, boom, boom!
Somebody has provided an alternate set of words.
We ants go marching two by two,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll all be dead before we're through,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
But oh!
The decay. The destruction. The dereliction.
Ants or no ants, this town is the living macabre!
A crumpling house on the right side. Old cars and beat up junk all around. A teenage boy in a red pull-over sweater, standing on his front porch, drinking from a supersize fountain cup. Equally dilapidated houses on the other side of the road. A skinny dog tethered on a chain.
The farm businesses with their abandoned inventory of rusted stuff. The little stand-alone service businesses, all closed up. Multi-story hotel, can hardly read the weathered glyph on the brick.
Nothing had a new nail driven in since Hoover was president.
I arrived at the main intersection. Main street went to my left and right. Mostly to my right. The street was double wide so the parking was in the middle. A lot of pickup trucks doing 69.
My eye caught the hand painted blue and white sign for a restaurant on store-front window. A red and white sign in the door: Closed.
At least three signs for "First" church of this or that. Good planning. Take care of the contingency now before the "Second" church shows up.
The dearth was depressing. A town of the living dead.
And then I came by the school. Had to be the last thing of civic pride for the community. Small athletic field. Bleachers with about 6 rows of seats. A big trailer with "Dragons" painted on the side, something to throw the football gear into, and hook onto the back of the school bus when the team headed over to the next county to sting the hinnies of whatever it was that was over there.
And my eye caught that dead railroad right-of-way, leaving the far side of town. Ghoulishly railroad ties strewn as abandoned litter.
The Classical Pops marching ant song had come to an end. Mercifully.
This town knows nothing of the economic crisis of current events. It has been in an economic crisis for decades.
Wikipedia paints an even more dismal picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paducah,_Texas
And about that one dilapidated house in ten that might be the dwelling, the abode, the home, the castle of a gay man or lesbian woman? Yes, what about it?
Would the demographics even hold for this part of Texas, this part of the USA?
Why would a gay or lesbian stay in a place like this?
Does any one of those "First" churches offer any respite what-so-ever to the soul-need of an isolated gay? A lonely lesbian? A denizen of a horribly dilapidated closet.
The curious in me asks.
And then there is my sin. Of skirting the law with an overloaded truck of stuff. Through Paducah . . . Paducah of all places.
A sequin of light visible to a night-time passing jet overhead.
But one can never tell for sure, just by lookin'.
The Refectory Manager
Splashed all over the door on the rental truck I'm using to move to College Place, WA, is GVW: Under 26,000. The USDOT truck number is just below that. I am 27,520 pounds.
I have heard horror stories that if I pull into one of those side-of-the-highway weigh stations, I could be fined and/or have to unload the excess weight on the spot. Then I hear stories that I should just whistle on by, only the big boys with a commercial driver license and with actual bills of lading and log books and air brakes and stuff like that need to stop. And if I'm caught, just play stupid, dumb and ignorant! 'Cept I can't lie. That is a skill I never acquired.
So I choose to hide my sin by taking the scenic route to get around them. Tough to do in parts of the western USA.
This morning, after making reference to my trucker's edition of the road atlas that indicates where scales are located, I make a left turn off of US 287 to hit a little road that will put me on some local county roads that I can use to skirt the weigh station.
Except the county roads turn out to be single lane dirt pathways, hardly graded, and soaked with a three day drenching rain. I can't think of a faster way to submerge myself to the axles in grief than to try a short cut like that!
So I keep going. At least this Texas FM road is paved. (a "FM" road is a "farm to market" secondary road). Finally I find a place to safely pull off to see where I am at and what kind of mess I have gotten myself into. GPS's really do help!! Most of the time!!
The paved road continues on for 25 miles to Paducah, TX. There I can turn west, get to Matador, turn north and get back on US 287, and bypass the weigh scale.
Paducah!
I had no idea there was a Paducah in Texas. Of course I had heard about the one in Kentucky, and the jokes that go with it about being from Paducah of all places. Like it is the pejorative for hicksville or something.
So I am headed for Paducah! This is a scenic adventure. I am excited!
As I bounce along, to my right, I notice the grading for an old, long-ago abandoned rail line. The ties are randomly scattered on each side. They are bleached white, of all things, so old, so rotten, so weathered by years of a blistering Texas sun. I wonder why it was so important to run a rail line along here, and then to just rip it up.
And the abandoned railroad right-of-way goes to Paducah.
This part of Texas is under the flyways for many flights to and from the west coast that use the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. Several weeks ago I was on one of those flights. It was at night. I could look down at the little sprinkling of lights that were scattered over the dark earth like sequins on a discarded rhinestone cowboy's black jacket. I remember thinking at the time if one in ten of those little flickering lights represented a gay or lesbian individual. And so alone. So lonely. So isolated in the fly-over part of the country.
And now I was entering one of those little clusters of light.
Boom! Classical Pops on the XM Satellite radio lets rip with a tune I don't know the name of but the words take me back to summer camps of yore.
The ants go marching one by one.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants go marching one by one.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants go marching one by one;
The little one stops to suck his thumb,
And they all go marching down into the ground to get outof the rain.
Boom, boom, boom!
Somebody has provided an alternate set of words.
We ants go marching two by two,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll all be dead before we're through,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
But oh!
The decay. The destruction. The dereliction.
Ants or no ants, this town is the living macabre!
A crumpling house on the right side. Old cars and beat up junk all around. A teenage boy in a red pull-over sweater, standing on his front porch, drinking from a supersize fountain cup. Equally dilapidated houses on the other side of the road. A skinny dog tethered on a chain.
The farm businesses with their abandoned inventory of rusted stuff. The little stand-alone service businesses, all closed up. Multi-story hotel, can hardly read the weathered glyph on the brick.
Nothing had a new nail driven in since Hoover was president.
I arrived at the main intersection. Main street went to my left and right. Mostly to my right. The street was double wide so the parking was in the middle. A lot of pickup trucks doing 69.
My eye caught the hand painted blue and white sign for a restaurant on store-front window. A red and white sign in the door: Closed.
At least three signs for "First" church of this or that. Good planning. Take care of the contingency now before the "Second" church shows up.
The dearth was depressing. A town of the living dead.
And then I came by the school. Had to be the last thing of civic pride for the community. Small athletic field. Bleachers with about 6 rows of seats. A big trailer with "Dragons" painted on the side, something to throw the football gear into, and hook onto the back of the school bus when the team headed over to the next county to sting the hinnies of whatever it was that was over there.
And my eye caught that dead railroad right-of-way, leaving the far side of town. Ghoulishly railroad ties strewn as abandoned litter.
The Classical Pops marching ant song had come to an end. Mercifully.
This town knows nothing of the economic crisis of current events. It has been in an economic crisis for decades.
Wikipedia paints an even more dismal picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paducah,_Texas
And about that one dilapidated house in ten that might be the dwelling, the abode, the home, the castle of a gay man or lesbian woman? Yes, what about it?
Would the demographics even hold for this part of Texas, this part of the USA?
Why would a gay or lesbian stay in a place like this?
Does any one of those "First" churches offer any respite what-so-ever to the soul-need of an isolated gay? A lonely lesbian? A denizen of a horribly dilapidated closet.
The curious in me asks.
And then there is my sin. Of skirting the law with an overloaded truck of stuff. Through Paducah . . . Paducah of all places.
A sequin of light visible to a night-time passing jet overhead.
But one can never tell for sure, just by lookin'.
The Refectory Manager
posted by The Refectory Manager | 11:37 PM
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