Got word a couple of days ago that Jo Adair Trussell died after a battle with cancer that was, all things considered, mercifully short. Jo was my secretary at First Methodist of Fordyce when I was down in the piney woods of south Arkansas trying to help build the kingdom back in the day. She was also a loyal friend, a 'work spouse,' a surrogate mother, a comrade, and a confidant. Physically she was strikingly attractive and elegant in a delightful, willowy way, but even had she been plain, those in her sphere would have been drawn to her because of the unparalleled loveliness within.
Sadly the word 'pious' has taken on a host of negative, pejorative connotations. When we hear it we think of the thin-lipped, grim pharisees among us who shamelessly exhibit a personal relationship with the Diety like the tabloids reveal the latest on Angelina and Brad. This is unfortunate. I wish we could rehabilitate the term and use it in the sense John Wesley did when he talked of 'vital piety,' a life rooted in and built upon the spiritual verities and mysteries that run in the deep waters of human existence and experience.
Jo was a model of piety - never arrogant, always open, forever humble about her limits and limits of her understanding, devoted, peaceful - but pious, nonetheless. I sense the world shrank a bit when she passed out of it. I certainly did.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Milepost 3
"The unseen exists and has properties." - Richard Ford in The Lay of the Land
(Note: the following is fictional - mostly.)
If pressed, I would call myself an agnostic when it comes to matters paranormal - UFOs and extraterrestrial life, telepathy and clairvoyance, conspiracy theory, non-corporeal intelligence, and the like. I don't reject the existence of these phenomena outright, but the evidence is inconclusive and my experience with them is limited to say the least. When I was seven years old I saw what I believe now was a dirigible shaped craft over my grandparents' house in Cotter, AR, but I was too young and too scared at the time to recall much about it. And I was too much a liar for anyone to believe me.
So when the hazy presence of Kyoung materialized in the passenger seat of my rig, I was more amazed than frightened, oddly calm and curious. Besides this wasn't the first time I had seen him - just the first time inside the truck.
The first sighting took place nearly a year to the date after I had been the first to arrive to the one car accident that killed his wife and three daughters and led to his suicide a few months later. When the new SUV, just hours off the showroom floor in Ogden, crossed the median while rolling over, I don't know, six or seven times, I thought the objects flying off of it were tires and luggage, only to discover after I brought my rig to a slippery stop, the airborne objects were human beings.
The cars behind me contained a couple of nurses and some Marines with paramedic training. Mr. Kyoung's injuries were serious but not life-threatening so I wrapped him in blankets from my rig while the others tended, unsuccessfully, to Mrs. Kyoung and the kids. Over and over in his broken English he asked me if his family was alright, and over and over again I lied and told him they were fine as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
That was is December, two weeks before Christmas. My first post-mortem sighting of him was in the following March. He, or what was left of him, stood on the shoulder of the road looking out over the icy desolate landscape wearing the same clothes he was in the day of the accident. By the time I got the truck stopped and ran back to milepost 3 Kyoung was gone. The next time I saw him was 3 weeks later and he was wearing a hospital gown, still looking out over the wasteland. Then in late May I saw him at dusk keeping vigilance in a black suit. When he claimed my passenger seat the next December he was back in his accident-clothes, weeping softly into the translucent hands that covered his face. He was there only moments. We exchanged no words and I couldn't tell if he was aware of my presence.
That was four years ago now. Our freight lanes changed and we rarely run that stretch of interstate anymore. I have told no one about Kyoung and only a few about the fatal crash that took everything from him. But if we start running the northwest again I fully expect to see him still mournfully scanning the landscape for his precious children and their mother.
I am at a loss to understand these things. I could have manufactured these materializations, and they could have been waking dreams and visions. But I do know that we walk daily through a world rich in leftover pieces of time, people, history and pain, and that some of these become attached to us through combinations of circumstance and chance. Ask folks who live close to places like Gettysburg, PA and Andersonville, SC and dying towns in the desert and the south. I know that some cannot or will not move out into whatever that next place is and their mourning becomes a final destination rather than portage. Those who mourn like this are not blessed, as The Sermon says, but stuck.
I mourn for those stuck at Milepost 3.
(Note: the following is fictional - mostly.)
If pressed, I would call myself an agnostic when it comes to matters paranormal - UFOs and extraterrestrial life, telepathy and clairvoyance, conspiracy theory, non-corporeal intelligence, and the like. I don't reject the existence of these phenomena outright, but the evidence is inconclusive and my experience with them is limited to say the least. When I was seven years old I saw what I believe now was a dirigible shaped craft over my grandparents' house in Cotter, AR, but I was too young and too scared at the time to recall much about it. And I was too much a liar for anyone to believe me.
So when the hazy presence of Kyoung materialized in the passenger seat of my rig, I was more amazed than frightened, oddly calm and curious. Besides this wasn't the first time I had seen him - just the first time inside the truck.
The first sighting took place nearly a year to the date after I had been the first to arrive to the one car accident that killed his wife and three daughters and led to his suicide a few months later. When the new SUV, just hours off the showroom floor in Ogden, crossed the median while rolling over, I don't know, six or seven times, I thought the objects flying off of it were tires and luggage, only to discover after I brought my rig to a slippery stop, the airborne objects were human beings.
The cars behind me contained a couple of nurses and some Marines with paramedic training. Mr. Kyoung's injuries were serious but not life-threatening so I wrapped him in blankets from my rig while the others tended, unsuccessfully, to Mrs. Kyoung and the kids. Over and over in his broken English he asked me if his family was alright, and over and over again I lied and told him they were fine as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
That was is December, two weeks before Christmas. My first post-mortem sighting of him was in the following March. He, or what was left of him, stood on the shoulder of the road looking out over the icy desolate landscape wearing the same clothes he was in the day of the accident. By the time I got the truck stopped and ran back to milepost 3 Kyoung was gone. The next time I saw him was 3 weeks later and he was wearing a hospital gown, still looking out over the wasteland. Then in late May I saw him at dusk keeping vigilance in a black suit. When he claimed my passenger seat the next December he was back in his accident-clothes, weeping softly into the translucent hands that covered his face. He was there only moments. We exchanged no words and I couldn't tell if he was aware of my presence.
That was four years ago now. Our freight lanes changed and we rarely run that stretch of interstate anymore. I have told no one about Kyoung and only a few about the fatal crash that took everything from him. But if we start running the northwest again I fully expect to see him still mournfully scanning the landscape for his precious children and their mother.
I am at a loss to understand these things. I could have manufactured these materializations, and they could have been waking dreams and visions. But I do know that we walk daily through a world rich in leftover pieces of time, people, history and pain, and that some of these become attached to us through combinations of circumstance and chance. Ask folks who live close to places like Gettysburg, PA and Andersonville, SC and dying towns in the desert and the south. I know that some cannot or will not move out into whatever that next place is and their mourning becomes a final destination rather than portage. Those who mourn like this are not blessed, as The Sermon says, but stuck.
I mourn for those stuck at Milepost 3.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Superlatives ... (Part One)
The Best Non-Franchise Truck Stop Cafe Johnson's Corner Truckstop, Loveland, CO - if you go have a cinnamon roll
The Best C.B. Handle for a Lot Lizard "Burning Bush", Wells, NV
The Best Toll Road The Pennsylvania Turnpike (I76/I70) - also the PTPK is the nation's oldest
The Best Place to Get Killed in the Winter I80 across Wyoming
The Best Audiobook Narrators [even great books have difficulty surviving poor narration]Will Patton (reading James Lee Burke), the late Frank Muller (reading Larry McMurtry), Joe Barrett (reading Richard Ford), Simon Vance (reading Richard K. Morgan) , Stan Freed (reading Richard Russo)
The Best Late Night Radio weekend editions of Coast to Coast with hosts Ian Punnett and Richard Knapp (midnight to 4am, CDT) with replays of classic Art Bell shows on Saturday night before the live broadcast (8pm to midnight)
The Worst Late Night Radio the remaining editions of Coast to Coast with George Noory - nice guy who really blows
The Best Drives Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah; Columbia River Gorge, I84 in Oregon; California Highway 152 between Santa Nella and Gilroy; Shenandoah Valley (in the fall), I81 in Virginia
The Best Place to Slaughter Wildlife while Driving at Night anywhere in West Virginia
The Best Reasons to Never Ever Patronize Fox News or Fox Sports Radio Andrew Breitbart, Glen Beck, and Stephen A. Smith
The Best C.B. Handle for a Lot Lizard "Burning Bush", Wells, NV
The Best Toll Road The Pennsylvania Turnpike (I76/I70) - also the PTPK is the nation's oldest
The Best Place to Get Killed in the Winter I80 across Wyoming
The Best Audiobook Narrators [even great books have difficulty surviving poor narration]Will Patton (reading James Lee Burke), the late Frank Muller (reading Larry McMurtry), Joe Barrett (reading Richard Ford), Simon Vance (reading Richard K. Morgan) , Stan Freed (reading Richard Russo)
The Best Late Night Radio weekend editions of Coast to Coast with hosts Ian Punnett and Richard Knapp (midnight to 4am, CDT) with replays of classic Art Bell shows on Saturday night before the live broadcast (8pm to midnight)
The Worst Late Night Radio the remaining editions of Coast to Coast with George Noory - nice guy who really blows
The Best Drives Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah; Columbia River Gorge, I84 in Oregon; California Highway 152 between Santa Nella and Gilroy; Shenandoah Valley (in the fall), I81 in Virginia
The Best Place to Slaughter Wildlife while Driving at Night anywhere in West Virginia
The Best Reasons to Never Ever Patronize Fox News or Fox Sports Radio Andrew Breitbart, Glen Beck, and Stephen A. Smith
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