Week 9: Trucking, Fort Rucker and Einstein: Part 2

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."


-Albert Einstein



Eventually, the old guy reassembled the broken pieces of his megalomania and climbed up to my window.


"Well, you got some experience today!" he shouted.

"Yeah", I said. 'And not just in truck driving', I thought to myself. After that, I didn't see the skinny little SOB again.

It took over 4 hours to be unloaded because the steel had been fashioned in such a helter-skelter manner; it had to be taken off one piece at a time. One of the workers broke three of his fingers during the ordeal. I called my driver manager to let him know of the delay and told him that I might have to quit if I were ever sent back to Fort Rucker. He laughed as if I were joking—I'm not sure that I was.

After the debacle at Fort Rucker, I was glad to be leaving to go anywhere but here. We would be going back to Cottonton, Alabama to pick up more lumber. I would be out of hours by the time I got there, but I knew that there was ample parking space there to shut down for the night.

After we arrived, I took a brief jaunt into the woods and, as I returned, I observed my truck silhouetted against a beautiful sunset. I stopped to enjoy this poetic moment and, for an instant, I was perfectly at peace with my new job and with the decisions that I had made. For the first time since I'd been doing this, I felt a wave of serenity wash over me as if God were telling me, "It'll be okay".

Today had offered my first look at the range of wild emotions offered by life on the road: from blood pressure-raising stress and aggravation to, literally, feeling at one with the universe. If one has the stomach to endure the ride, it is often difficult not to jump in line for a second turn.