Playing Fair and Being Kind

A NOTE TO MYSELF

I wrote the note in the wee hours alongside a highway during my final trip from Santa Fe to Boothbay. The note indicates that I am driving toward Columbus, Ohio and within 42 miles of the place. The note is six months old. This is all I know. The intention of the note is to give myself a lead into writing a poem, a poem that would include word pictures of very early morning road travel, imagined tragedies, terror, mind numbing boredom. All of the things I experience while traveling.

Here are the contents of the note written on a receipt from Tinker Air Force Base Inn where I had stayed three nights previous. After a few minutes of retracing and map-gazing I see that I had left Scott Air Force Base two nights ago in Illinois across the Mississippi from St. Louis. I wrote the note after staying at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton. Now, the note contents:

1. Poem – Est is dark
   filled w/ shadows –
   Angry drivers in the
   early morn. gloom –
   Hard energy on I 70 to
   Columbus –
   Volvo
   Freightliner
   Freightliner

Columbus     42
Cleveland    280
Helluva Game!

2. Elise has vision of
   slipping and falling –
   Terror –
   Truck grill and headlights
   coming directly toward
   her – scared, frightened.
   Deer killed

That’s it.

I’ve had a few hours with the note and my memories are filling in the gaps that have dominated the process earlier. I wanted to remember the scene and write a poem. “Est” is probably meant to be “East” because I was on the road early driving into the bright sky to the East. The road would appear dark and I was aware of others heading to work with vengeance and resentment for having to work for peanuts. (It’s the economy, stupid!) So far so good.
While I drive I make up ways to stay alert to my surroundings. One is to determine that the green signs that indicate distances to cities and towns are in reality baseball scores. Ergo, the Cleveland team beat the Columbus team by a score of 280 to 42. A helluva game! And the mention of the various truck tractors; i.e., Freightliner and Volvo indicates the passage of time as I drive. I’ve learned to recognize the different models of trucks from a distance by the grill design and the odd types of side vents on the engine compartments.

The second item, item 2. is darker. First off I don’t know who Elise is. Sometimes I come up with a character name after a story is begun and this may be that. In this case I recall that I was imagining being run down by one of the semi’s or maybe I was imagining being a deer on the highway. There are many deer lying along the side of the road in some states. (Deer populations increase to proportions similar to rodents and they are just as destructive to farms and gardens. We need more wolves to stay alive to thin out the herds.)

I imagined Elise being lost and confused out on a highway as part of a dream concept. She experiences the terror of being hit by a speeding semi but just as the truck hits her she awakens in a safe, familiar place. Soon after she witnesses the body of a doe nest to the road. She was the doe or the doe was her; I’m not sure yet. That’s about as far as I got so I wrote the note to myself.

I hope your day went well. Mine did. A pretty day with lots of sunshine. I talked to my old pickup truck mechanic today. He may have time in a few days to help me figure out if the battery is taking a healthy enough charge. I suspect the connections along the negative and positive leads are corroded or loose and corroded. We’ll find out.

Ciao,
G. M. Goodwin
23 April 2018