2001-12-06 - 8:27 a.m.
From Tuesday's writing workshop. Ten minute exercise.
I have an uncle who everyone calls "Lunch". As in, "Uncle Lunch". Who drives a tractor trailer for a living. My mother likes to call me with news of his whereabouts. She'll start out conversations with a statement like, "Lunch took a load of screen windows up to Boston last Monday. Can you imagine? A load of screen windows from Freeburg, Missouri going to Boston?"
My mom likes to make statements that show the impact of small-town life on what she refers to as the "Big City." Which to her mind seems to encompass the entire East Coast.
Lunch used to haul pigs from Vienna, Missouri to St. Louis. Four hours each way. For awhile he carried charcoal wherever it needed to go -- which seemed most of the time to be in the area of Iowa.
I remember a brief period of time in which I considered driving a truck. From where I sat in Kentucky, it seemed like good money for just moving stuff around the country. But mostly I think it's because I couldn't think of another way out.
We rarely took road trips when I was a kid -- and never East. If we went anywhere it was west. Towards the Mississippi River and as far over it as we dared to get from our ranch house in Kentucky. We once went to Kansas. Where my father decided he wanted to take a train ride. We rode the length of Missouri from Kansas City to St. Louis where my mother met us with the car.
I remember pulling down the tray tables from the seat in front of me and using it as a platform for my Barbie. We bought Cokes with ice in the club car and I stood in that unsure space between cars, willing the train to go around another curve. I wanted to see if I could steady myself. I liked those spaces between the cars because you could feel the wind like you were outside and see bits of track passing below.
We had studied in school about the Cumberland Gap and the mountains separating us in Kentucky from the rest of the world on the East Coast. I always assumed our lack of immediate access to the Cumberland Gap itself was why we never went East. I assumed there was no way over the mountains because it seemed to take all we had. To just cross that Mississippi River.
