I finished my vidalia onion, ham and cheese sandwich and as I stood up to get my mother more Coke, I said,

“The good news is I don’t have to be here and the bad news is that I am here. Now what do I do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Friday, you called me because you couldn’t turn on the computer. Then you couldn’t turn it off or force quit an application. All the while Mack is screaming at you because you can’t print his portfolio. I’d repeated command, option, escape so many times, to force quit AOL, I turned to Diane and whispered, command, option, suicide. Then Mack asks me how to open a CD jewel case so you can watch Duck Soup on the computer, except that it’s not a jewel case because it’s a tape, not a CD. I thought I’d get here and find two people in need of spoon feeding. Instead I find both of you looking better than you have in months.”

I raced myself to Evansville. On my last visit, I’d made it to Cincinnati in thirteen hours and forty-five minutes – a personal best, exceeding my previous record by two hours. This time I approached the valley with modest skyscrapers in thirteen hours and thirty minutes, and that included two half hour naps. (Btw, Adam, at no time did I drive as fast as I do on 128.) By 7:30 PM I was sitting at Sully’s in Louisville, eating chicken fingers and listening to a single performer hitting all the high notes.

I’d brought the perfect assortment of CD’s which included new radio shows downloaded from rusc.com, Devils and Dust and a Hank Williams collection sent to me by shinydome. I played Hank when I got to southern Ohio, where even the locals were complaining about the heat.

Unfortunately, I was in too much of self-imposed hurry and I missed three photo ops. The first, a toll taker in New York, who was all of seventeen and looked as pretty as any of Matt’s friends. Think about that for a moment. In between tolls she studied from a Spanish book on her lap. As I drove away I had to have an imaginary conversation with her about how my own son went to Nicaragua last year, and this year he’s going to Spain, and that she, too, should leave the country.

The second missed op – a couple who walked up to me outside of Sully’s. He, young, dark, with a vacant stare.. She, much older, weather beaten, with long stringy blonde hair.

“Is there a pub around here?” she asked.

Behind me were four in a row, but I automatically began answering the question with, “I don’t live here,” except that before I could say it, she repeated, “Are there any pubs around here?”

I turned, pointed and said, “Sully’s is good.”

She looked hard at me and said, “That’s all we wuz asking.”

That response wiped the smile right off my face, but before I could follow up in kind, her friend held up plastic credit card looking thing.

“See, we have a card.”

Then they walked away.

The third missed op is what I saw the last time I drove through Ohio. In New England, our road kill consists of squirrels and other small mammals. In Ohio, deer litter the roads. I counted seven, and those are the ones that lay freshly dead, on their side, cloven hooves pointing towards traffic.

Sully’s in Louisville.

Bigger Picture

It’s 4 AM, I must be on my way to Evansville.

Happy 45th Birthday, Adam.

Saturday, we dropped in for lunch.

After the roast beef.

Photo Gallery