September 05, 2003

my world without scrap paper

I had convinced myself that the thick early morning fog would make me invisible to the radar guns in the Highway Patrol cars. Had i remembered to check the volume on the alarm clock, i wouldn't need to be driving 90 mph through the winding ashpault on rt. 50 in the dense fog at dawn.

The train left at 10:00. I was told it takes at least three hours to make it to Pittsburgh. So with my windows down, Mike Doughty on the stereo, and my brights punching into the fog, i drove. Outside, autumn was beginning to steal the summer away, but i didn't have time to try to stop it.

So with my duffel bag in the back seat, and the plot of my adventure scribbled as phone numbers on a card i cut out of scrap posterboard with my sister's pocket knife the night before, i shot like a bottle rocket out of Marietta up to Cambridge, and wished my only wish to be that the world and everything in it would stop except for me and my car.

By the time i streaked through Wheeling, the sun had burned away the fog, and i had by then convinced myself that with or with out fog i was invisible.

i looked out at the farm houses with white siding and propane tanks in the side yards, and saw a man riding on a tractor mowing the hillside in front of his house. I caught myself waving at him, as if he could see me blurring down the freeway. i wondered if the world could stop, and i had time to tell him my story, if he would be envious of it. i wondered if he would be willing to trade his white sided farm house and his hillside for a duffel bag that was packed in 5 minutes, a train ticket to New York City, and a pocketful of phone numbers as my guide.

I missed the train. I forgot the card i cut out of scrap posterboard with my sister's pocket knife on her coffee table at the payphone in the greyhound station.

So as i sat in the back of the greyhound bus watching New Kingsington pass very slowly out the window, while the boy in front of me spilled popcorn through the seat and onto my leg, i began to think about how nice it would be to be mowing the grass on a hillside in front of a white sided farmhouse.

She would be waiting at Penn Station at 8:00. I would be climbing off a bus at the Port Authoirty Bus terminal at 9:00. The Musuem was leaving messages for me back beside my alarm clock with the volume turned down. and i was sitting on a bus with a duffel bag i packed in 5 minutes stuffed on the shelf above me, a one way ticket stub, and anything in the world- except a card i cut out of scrap posterboard with my sister's pocket knife - in front of me. and for a minute, I was afraid that my wish had come true, that time really had stopped. I think riding on a greyhound bus can easliy trick you into thinking that.

But as the brakes hissed and the bus lurched on out of the Harrisburgh bus terminal, i was glad that time can't stop, and i was glad the kid ran out of popcorn, and i was glad that while i am well aware of what it feels like to be mowing grass - i had everything in the world in front of me.


It would, however, had been much easier with the card i cut out of scrap posterboard with my sister's pocket knife there too.

Posted by Todd Roeth at September 5, 2003 08:52 PM
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