Hi Dan. On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Dan Glover <[email protected]> wrote:
> Lisa > > I found myself disappointed that the more I learned about writing the > less I was able to write. > A while back I found myself on the main street of Bozeman, Montana - looking at bricks. Have you ever had the opportunity to visit Bozeman? If not, you should go visit it sometime. A beautiful town. It brings to my mind a cross between my hometown of Grass Valley and Santa Cruz, California. Grass Valley for the mountains nearby and Santa Cruz because that's a university town too. But its bricks are amazing! Simply amazing. I was dumbfounded at their profusion, beauty and neatness exhibited in stacks and stacks forming building after building - the buildings themselves recapturing their brick essences in their blockiness and repetition. Conformity to formity, yet with subtle differences which bespoke creativity and real caring. As a lifelong builder, I appreciate caring in the outward facade of a building. Bozeman for me was a real revelation. I'd gotten there after being stranded on the continental divide due to some carelessness on my part, parking at a rest stop with my lights on. I'd stopped at the rest stop because I was so cold and because ... well, it was the continental divide. I mean, if I wasn't the kind of guy to stop and ponder at moments like this, crossing the spine of the country, and taking time to contemplate the meaning of such things, then I wouldn't have any business writing anything, eh? I was cold because the cab heater in my RV didn't work and the other battery - the one that drove my water system and RV heater system and such, wasn't working at all. I'd had my lights on because it was snowing. I stayed at the rest stop for about an hour or so, heating up some soup and my body and my soul and contemplating the path ahead of me and wondering what Bozeman would be like, and when I was ready to go back down the other side of this great divide, I got that click and nothing that you get when you try and start an engine with a dead battery. Dang. There were a few big rigs there at the rest stop, but I didn't bother asking them for a jump. Having recently completed truck driving school myself, I knew how complicated it would be to get a jump from a big rig and besides, their batteries were on the wrong side which would entail them turning around in a tight space in order to rescue me from my own stupidity. I didn't even bother asking. Unfortunately, since it was snowing - a fact which astonished and shocked me, since here we were in May, MAY for goddsakes, and facing a snowstorm, most people were just hurrying down the other side, trying to get down to the flats beyond before getting trapped up on the mountain with the snow and all. I tell you, I longed for California in that moment. I wondered what the heck I was even doing. I mean, in the first place, I wasn't even supposed to be doing this long drive to North Dakota. I was supposed to have had my rig attached to the back of a tanker, being towed to the golden land of employment by my dad's old friend Marvin. But Marvin had scared me a bit by his fast and loose habits, he'd taken a corner too fast in his flat bad dodge with a welding outfit not even chained up or attached in any way, and lost it, breaking a fitting off the oxy-acetylene mixing valves and I realized that he might be older and more experienced than me, but he was also possibly crazy. And hooking up my 10,000 lb RV to the back of his empty water tanker in a bastard triple and towing it across the divide and all of Montana might very well be the most disastrous mistake I'd ever made, so I was driving myself. Back when gasoline was at its highest and my RV was getting about 10 mpg and I was just about at the end of my rope, in search of "economic opportunity". I was finally rescued by a guy and his wife in a brand new dodge cummins turbo diesel pick up truck from Georgia who'd stopped at the summit to ... are you ready for this? ... take pictures of the snow. I guess they hadn't seen much snow before, being from Georgia and all. I was on my way, down the eastern side of the continental spine and didn't stop the engine till I got to the Walmart parking lot in Bozeman. Where I stayed for a week, buying two new batteries with funds supplied from home and exploring the town, the university there, my own thoughts. And studying bricks. Yours, John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
