Two writers & a Crowbar
The Road Trip
“Where should I put my tea…”
It is 6:30 of the morning in the AM.
It is 21 degrees on the other side of my truck out there inside the outside.
Only the left side of my expensive 8 speaker stereo system has any sound coming out of it, I can only hear Garfunkel, not Simon, on the cd that is almost playing.
My alarm system is, uh, I don’t have an alarm system, it shorted and I can only open the truck door with the key, A KEY.
And in the passenger seat, Bob Ley is drinking Dunkin’ Donuts Hot Tea.
Bob: “This is going to be great, ETA looks to be 10:37am.”
I’m having a bad morning mainly because it is morning.
I was running late so I only had time to grab a breakfast of non-GMO Jelly Beans and a Brownie Fudge Swirl Klondike Bar which is almost impossible to eat while wearing camo-mittens.
Me: “Dunkin’ Donuts sells tea?”
Bob: “Oh yes, Earl Grey.”
I hit the button on the steering wheel that is “supposed” to increase the music volume in the truck cab, all it does is confirm why Garfunkel didn’t have a huge single artist career.
Bob: “Do you know how to get there.”
Me: “I have gps I don’t know how to get anywhere anymore, don’t need to.”
Bob drinks his hot Earl Grey tea, I pop a sort of vitamin/lactaid kind of thing in case my Klondike Bar breakfast isn’t up for the trip just as we hit the New York State Thruway in Massachusetts (kind of confusing but if I don’t hear “recalculating” I just keep going even if I’m not totally sure where there is).
Bob is somehow reading the New York Times/The Atlantic/Boston Globe/Rolling Stone all at the same time on his iPhone and telling me all the various highlights.
Me: “I have to pee…”
We’ve managed to go 8 miles on the New York State Thruway in Massachusetts, and I have to go.
Bob is reading something about political unrest in a country that’s not in my GPS so I tell him, “Oh,” spoken in the don’t care way, and then I go pee.
“That’s where we named Jimmy…”
Bob: “Huh.”
We are now halfway between pee stops on the New York State Thruway in New York State where it belongs.
Me: “That Denny’s back there that we just passed, that’s where Barb and I picked Jimmy’s name.”
Bob: “Really…”
Me: “We were headed to Buffalo to see the relatives and stopped there to eat with our daughter, Ashley, she was like 4 years old or something, and we were talking about what to name our son to be born soon, we knew he was a guy, so we were talking…”
Bob is just looking at me as I drive and look at Denny’s in the rearview mirror.
Me: “I wanted to name the boy to be after my Uncle Jim, Ashley wanted to name him, Snoopy, and Barb was cool with James/Jim/Jimmy, so…”
Bob: “So…you never considered naming him Denny…”
Me: “No we didn’t have an Uncle Denny.”
Bob goes back to reading the world newspapers and wondering, you know, about me and this friendship…
I pull in to pee again.
“Turn left at Poland…”
Somewhere about mid New York State Thruway we turned right and started driving down on the real roads part of New York State, even though I kept seeing signs for “Poland,” and “Russia.”
Bob: “Those are the names of towns out here.”
I have driven through or “Thru” Central New York before but I never actually got off the “Thru”part of it before to do the through stuff.
Bob: “There’s also a Norway and a Holland something as well.”
Me: “Any town not named after countries.”
Bob: “Yep, Gravesville.”
Me: “Oh, great…”
Bob: “That’s where the actor Peter Graves is from, his family founded it or something.”
(NOTE: I sort of checked that factoid, you know just in case, turns out Peter Graves real name is Peter Duesler Aurness, and he was born in Minneapolis, MN and as far as I could tell no one in his family was named Minneapolis or Minnesota. Just saying. But at the time I just said…)
Me: “Oh that’s pretty cool.”
Me and Bob, we’ve been a fact checking team for a long while.
“Stop, there’s the barn…”
Me: “Where.”
Bob: “Right there.”
Me: “Where right there.”
Bob: “There…”
And then Bob points to what looks like to be a pile of wood, a big pile.
Bob: “That looks great.”
Me: “I can see the sky through it.”
Bob: “Even better,” and just like that he hops out of the truck, into snow, pulls on his sliver proof cuz Mike gloves, plus some big leather ones he found in his basement, and is off to the almost a barn.
The barn it seems is on a family farm, Bob’s wife’s family farm, I’m not going to get into many details because it’s family, both Bob’s wife and her brother grew up on this farm, probably worked/played in the very barn we’ve come to yank off some wood, so I’m going to be gentle about any details ya don’t really need.
Except this: Bob’s wife is named Barb, so as it happens to be Barb is also my wife’s name. Cool but you know…
Except this: Now pay attention here, weirdness is about to play out…not only are both of our wives named Barb, but, BUT, both of our Barb’s maiden names, their last name, is exactly the same. The Same. Up a notch in “Huh.”
Except this: Bob’s Barb’s last name, of course, now is Ley said like Lee. My Barb’s middle name is Lee, said like Ley/Lee. Cue Twilight Zone opening music.
Uh huh.
Bob Ley with a crowbar.
“Take what you need, just watch out the barn don’t fall down on ya.”
Me: “Um, Bob…”
Bob Ley is standing in snow with a crowbar trying to pull wood off an old barn.
Tell me the truth, you ever thought you would read a sentence like the one above. I may print that out, stick it on my office wall.
ME: “Um Bob…”
Bob turns and looks at me, it is the same look Bob gets when a box of FOIA papers arrives in his office, or someone scores a goal in the World Cup.
ME: “Do you know what you are doing…”
And a board suddenly comes loose, and hits him dead center in the forehead.
Me: “I’ll take that as a No.”
“Watch yer fingers now.”
Me: “What, wait…”
Here’s the scene, somehow Bob yanks a big board off an already massively leaning old barn, I go over and pick it up (truth in writing here, I did it one time which I felt was enough to still maintain my “Man-Card” but not get cold or hurt my 4 typing fingers) and then bring it over and lay it down length wise on two milk cans so we could cut it into 23 inch sections (because the boxes we mail the signs in are the ones that hold the pads that our dog can pee on in the house when we are binge watching Netflix and those boxes are only 24 inches long) and then load/throw them into the back of my made for the outdoors truck.
But…
My job is to somehow make sure the boards that are all wet and snowy won’t slip off the top of the all wet and snowy metal milk cans while the boards are being cut with some kind of round power saw thing that really only stops spinning when you drop it in the snow and unplug it.
But…
Maybe I don’t need these boards after all, maybe I can just go to the hardware store, buy some new boards that will fit in the puppy pee-pee pad box and then just tie the new boards to the back bumper of the truck and drag them home so they look like they just came off an old barn in Central New York and cleverly just sort of write around that fact.
“Watch you’re fingers now…”
Me: “Wait, what…”
