Another Place Episode 25

Another Place Another Time

Book Two

Luke and Traveler

Episode Twenty-Five

My training program was nothing like I’d imagined. The next morning, as when I opened the passenger door and began climbing into the cab, Daddy said, “Luke, did you bring a notebook?”

“No Sir.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Do you remember what I told you last night?”

I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, so I said, “Yes sir, I think so.”

He grinned, “Luke, I said I would teach you, and then I said this is school and I’m the professor. Luke, that means notes and notebooks. Now go back in the house and find some empty notebooks and pens, and then get back out here.”

I climbed back in the truck a few minutes later. This time I had my school backpack, the one I thought I’d retired at graduation the night before. I said, “Okay, Daddy, I’m ready.”

“Good,” he said, “Write this down and memorize it.”

I pulled a notebook from my pack and turned to an empty page. Daddy said, “You thought this would be about technique, and it will be, but driving techniques will be the smallest part of what I’m going to teach you. Driving isn’t about shifting, steering, or backing. Driving, like everything else in life, is about something else. It’s about attention, knowing, and trust. Write those three points down and memorize them.”

He checked both rearview mirrors, then slid the tractor into first gear. As he engaged the clutch he said, “I won’t talk anymore for a while and you won’t either. Don’t ask any questions or say anything at all, just watch everything. Listen to everything. Feel the traffic; get in touch with its mood and its flow. When you can do that, you’ll be able to be become one with it, and Luke, you aren’t driving until you are one with the traffic. There isn’t a technique that will make you one with traffic; oneness is the result of knowing how to pay attention and then doing it. Now, pay attention like you’ve never paid attention before, because in an hour you’re going to have your first pop quiz.”

Exactly an hour later we were fifty miles east of Birmingham. Daddy, who hadn’t spoken a word in the past sixty minutes, said, “It’s time for the test to begin.” I looked at my watch. It had been exactly an hour since he had last spoken. There isn’t a clock in the truck and I knew that he hadn’t looked at his watch. I wondered how he did that. I forgot those thoughts when he started asking questions.

“Have you been paying attention since we left the house?”

“Yes sir,” I said. I’d watched everything he had done since he pulled away from the house, and I thought that I was ready for a pop quiz. I was wrong.

He didn’t ask a single question about anything that he had done. Instead he asked about the vehicles we’d seen, road conditions at specific points, the weather fifty miles back, and even what was on the road at mile marker seventy-two. I couldn’t answer a single question.

In my only act of defiance during my training program I said, “All right, do you know what was on the road at mile marker seventy-two?”

He laughed, “I sure do. There was a tire carcass in the inside lane, a chunk of rubber about four feet long. If we’d run over it, there’s a good chance it would have flown out from under our drive wheels and taken out a trailer landing gear, or a brake hose, or possibly a passing car.”

I said, “Well, you could have memorized that.” Then I recalled a 1954 Chevy pickup I’d seen at an exit thirty miles back. I remembered it; because I love 1954 Chevy’s and hope to have one someday. I asked, “What was on the side of the road just west of the Argo exit?” I should have known better.

He laughed, “That’s too easy, Son. It was a restored, but not stock, yellow 1954 Chevy pickup. It was a good restoration, but it wasn’t complete. I noticed the engine had been smoking because there was soot on the tailgate just above the exhaust pipe. I’d guess the engine needs some attention. I also noticed the spare tire carrier was empty and hanging down on the road, which probably accounts for it being on the side of the interstate. It had low profile tires, which means that one on the side away from us could have been flat, and we wouldn’t have noticed. And I remember…”

I interrupted, “Okay, okay, I get it. You’re smarter than I am.”

He laughed for a few seconds, then a serious expression took the place of the jovial one, “That’s not true, Luke. Let me tell you what happened to you when you saw that pickup truck, and then I’ll tell you what happened to me, and you’ll see the difference. It has nothing to do with intelligence.”

I felt better when he said that he wasn’t smarter than I was. I laughed and asked, “Are you psychic? Are you going to read my mind?”

He smiled and said, “Let’s see if I can.” Then he told me that as soon as I’d seen that truck, I’d started dreaming about owning one just like it. He said that I began to plan for it, figuring how much it would cost, and how much I’d have to save, and when I would have enough to buy it. I couldn’t believe it. It was as if he had been inside my head.

I guess he knew that he was right, because he didn’t ask me to confirm it. Instead, he told me what he had done when he saw the yellow pickup. “Luke, because I was in the moment, and didn’t start daydreaming, I saw the pickup. I mean I really saw the pickup. You didn’t.”

I protested, “But I did see it, Daddy.”

“Luke, it’s important that you understand this. You saw the truck for a split second, and then you went into your head, and you saw the truck you want to own. The shift from the truck on the side of the road to the truck in your head was so quick and smooth, you didn’t even realize that it had happened, and I’m going to prove it to you.”

I just stared at him and waited.

He said, “You didn’t see the soot on the tailgate did you?”

I tried to recall what I had seen, finally I said, “No sir, I don’t think I did.”

He said, “How many exhaust pipes did it have?”

“I don’t know?”

“What color where the letters in the word Chevrolet on the tailgate outlined in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you notice the spare tire carrier?”

“No sir.”

He asked, “Shall I go on.”

I looked at him and thought, he is going to be the professor. “No sir, that won’t be necessary.”

“Good,” he said, smiling, though still looking straight ahead. “Here’s the point. The truck exists in this moment. It doesn’t exist in your thoughts about the future or the past. It is only in this moment. You saw it in the moment only for a few seconds, and then, you left the moment. You shifted your attention to the future. The most important driving practice for you to learn is the practice of attention.”

“Practice?”

“Think of it this way Luke, attention has to become your practice just like medicine will be Tim’s practice and law Jerris’s practice.” As soon as he said it, I knew that he had given me the key to driving. Over the next couple of years, I came to realize that what he told me that morning was the key to more than driving; it was the key to living.

He paused, then asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying, Luke?”

I considered the question and said, “I think so, Daddy. However, I have an idea that it’s going a take some time to get it. I mean, first I have to understand that I can control my attention, and then I have to learn how to do it.”

He said, “Luke, I’m proud of you. In an hour, you’ve seen what driving is really about. Frankly, I’d have been happy if you’d gotten that in a month. To do it in an hour is impressive.”

He let me sit with that for a couple of minutes, then he said, “All of your lessons will center on the practice of attention. You cannot be present until you’ve mastered your attention, and there’s no technique that will compensate for not being present.”

He didn’t say anything else for a while. We picked up the load of steel and drove forty or fifty miles, before he spoke to me again. Then, out of the blue he said, “Luke, your attention is the most valuable asset you have. Years ago, I read a series of books about a shaman named Don Juan Matus. Carlos Castaneda, the man who wrote the books, said that Don Juan claimed that ‘Attention was man’s greatest gift.’ After a lifetime of studying and practicing attention, I agree with Don Juan. Attention is the faculty that allows you to place your awareness where you want it to be. And where you want it to be is in this moment, not shifting from the past, to the future, with occasional pauses in the moment to see if anything is happening that you need to know about. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir, I do. But I’ve never thought that I could control my attention, at least not for more than a few minutes. I’ve used it to be present when I felt that something important was happening, or if someone told me to pay attention. But within seconds my attention wandered again.”

He laughed and said, “That’s the way almost everyone uses their attention, Luke. They do it because they don’t know there is another way. Now you know, and now you can begin learning how to use and direct your attention all the time. Are your ready to hear some more?”

I nodded, and he continued, “Remember, the primary use of attention is to get in and stay in the moment. When you are in the moment, you are one with the traffic. In other words, it’s not you, the truck, and the traffic. There is only the traffic, and you are one with it. Everything is simple when you understand that you are one with everything, and not somehow separate from it like a spectator sitting in the grandstands.” He paused, and then said, “Excuse me, don’t you think you should be taking some notes?”

I found my notebook and pen and asked him to repeat what he had just said. As near as I can recall, he repeated it word for word, and I wrote it down just the way he said it.

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