Another Place Episode 26

Another Place Another Time

Book Two

Luke and Traveler

Episode Twenty-Six

That was the beginning of my education as a professional driver. He taught me how to be present all the time. He said, “There are no accidents. Traffic, weather, and road conditions are your life, and, like all of life, they are never stationary; they are continuously changing. Life isn’t an event that you watch when you want to watch and leave when you’re bored. Life is like an ever flowing river. If you are in the moment, you flow with life, so you’re never surprised by it, and you aren’t bored or frightened by it either. If you allow the conversation in your head, or a daydream about the future, or something that happened in the past, to take your attention away from the moment, you’re no longer aware of traffic, weather, and road conditions, because you are no longer in the moment with them. You are out of the flow, and the flow will drown you, because you have a truck in it, but your attention isn’t present. When that happens, we call the results an accident, but it isn’t an accident.”

It was a few minutes before he said anything else. I waited. “I’m going to share one more lesson, with you and then we are going to ride a while in silence. I’m not used to all of this talking.” He laughed as he added, “Even though I’m the one doing almost all of it.” Then he said, “Write this one down, Luke, it will give you a better idea of what Don Juan meant when he said that attention was man’s greatest gift. You are your attention. You go where it goes, and you are the object of its focus.”

Though he never took his eyes off the road when he talked, he must have sensed that I was about to ask a question, because he held up his right hand and said, “No questions about that until you’ve sat with it for a while. Play with it. Watch your attention, and try to find yourself somewhere outside it…you’ll soon see that it is impossible. Then you’ll understand that you are your attention. With that understanding will come the knowledge that the most important task in life is to be in charge of your attention because it constantly defines you.”

That was the end of the conversation, until we stopped for dinner at a roadside restaurant a hundred miles south of Akron. Daddy locked the rig down, swiveled around in his seat, and reached under the mattress in the sleeper box. He pulled out a gift-wrapped package and said, “This is your textbook. Everything you need to know about driving is in this book.”

You can imagine what I expected, and I’ll bet you have an idea that it isn’t what I found in the package. You’re right on both counts. I ripped away the party wrap and found a copy of a novel called Round the Bend by Nevil Shute.

“What’s this?” I asked as we walked toward the café.

“It’s a novel,” he said.

“What’s it about?” I asked.

He grinned, “It’s about airplanes and flying, prophets and aircraft mechanics…and stuff like that.”

“But you said it was about driving.”

We stopped walking, and he said, “Luke.” I turned toward him, and he put both hands on my shoulders. Looking deep into my eyes he said, “I said that everything that you need to know about driving is in that book. I didn’t say that it was a book about driving. You said that. You said it in your head. You said it in that conversation that you are always having with yourself. Stop talking to yourself, and get in the moment, read the book, and begin to learn how to pay attention.”

I read Round the Bend, and I began to think of Daddy as a philosopher like Connie Shak Lin, one of the two principal character in the book. The only difference between the two was, Connie’s practice was aircraft mechanics and daddy’s was truck driving. That didn’t turn me off on being a driver. In fact, it just made me want it more, because I knew that when I learned to drive in the moment, then I’d also know how to live there.

For a year, I learned about being in the moment, as I began my practice of being consciously present. I learned about attention and how to use it, without fixating on a specific point or detaching from the moment. I learned about knowing, and trusting my knowing. I had never dreamed those were the subjects that I would be studying. To be honest, I never dreamed that I didn’t already know them.

I learned driving techniques too, but that was the easiest part of my education. Being in the moment, on the other hand, demands constant vigilance, which means constant work.

The day finally came when he told me I was ready to drive. He said I had learned my lessons well, and he added that he was proud of me. I’ll never forget that first mile, no matter how many more I log.

Three more years of training followed that first one. I learned everything that Daddy knew, as he held nothing back. He was the best; a philosopher and a professional driver in every sense of the word. Since the night that Daddy gave me my first copy of Round the Bend, it has been my constant companion. In the book, Connie Shak Lin is a ground engineer, an aircraft mechanic of the highest order. He teaches other mechanics to be present as they work, and he explains the power of choosing to be present. To aid them, he gives them techniques to insure that they stay present. Thousands who met Connie began to think of him as a prophet, a mystic, and even more.

Through the years I’ve come to know that Daddy, like Connie Shak Lin was a mystic; one who just happened to be a truck driver.

***********

Four years to the day after my apprenticeship began; we were going to pick up a load in Birmingham. The Old Man was driving. Without taking his eyes off the road, he said, “Luke, I’m going to go by Kenworth, before we load.”

He took care of his truck as if it were a baby. It was ten years old and looked and ran like it had just rolled off the showroom floor. It had over a million miles on it, and I had never even thought about when he would replace it.

I was studying the atlas and routing the trip when he said we were going to stop at the Kenworth dealership, otherwise I’d have reminded him that it wasn’t due for service for another five thousand miles. I didn’t look up from the atlas, “That’s fine; the load isn’t going to be ready for pickup for two hours.”

That day became another in a long list of days with the Old Man that I’ll never forget. In a few minutes, he turned into the driveway of the Kenworth dealership. There was a long, conventional cab tractor parked in front of the sales office. It was the star of the show, the most magnificent truck on the lot. It was black, with polished chrome wheels, and an extra-large, walk-in, sleeper box. I could tell from the diameter of the dual, chromed, exhaust stacks there was a 450 horsepower CAT engine resting under the massive hood. There were at least a hundred balloons tied to it, from the front bumper to the rear axle. The tractor was facing the entrance driveway, so I couldn’t tell if there was any ownership identification on the side.

Daddy drove straight for that awesome truck instead of driving to the shop entrance located on the backside of the lot. I looked at him and said, “Hey, where are you going? Were you blinded by the chrome or hypnotized by the balloons?”

He just grinned. In a couple of seconds, he had stopped alongside the balloon-draped, truck. I glanced out of my window toward it and did a double take. I couldn’t talk. Painted on the side of the gleaming new tractor, in gold script, I read:

Robert & Luke Jenson
All States Trucking Company

Clinton, Alabama

I don’t know how long I sat there with my mouth open, and I probably had some tears in my eyes. I was so choked up I couldn’t have talked if I had known what to say.

Finally, Daddy said, “Son, you just graduated. Come on; let’s take a look at our new office.”

*********

We drove that tractor for more than eight years, over a million and a half miles of trucking. I learned more in those eight years, than I’d dreamed of in the previous twenty.

We were heading east, running empty, just outside Albuquerque, one morning. I pulled into a truck stop, fueled and parked the rig before waking Daddy. With the engine shut off and the rig locked down, I turned toward the closed sleeper compartment and shouted, “Hey! Are you going to sleep all day? Roll out and I’ll buy your breakfast. Then if you play your cards right, I may even let you drive.” I waited for his gruff response. There wasn’t a sound from the sleeper, and suddenly I knew in my gut there wasn’t going to be.

I pulled the curtain back. He looked to be sound asleep. There wasn’t a single worry line on his forehead. He looked like a baby taking a nap. Only he wasn’t asleep, and I knew it. I sat there and looked at him for a long time. I cried a little. Not much though, because I knew that would have ticked him off.

He had known the end was close, and he had tried to tell me, but I refused to hear it. One of the last things he said to me was, “Son, one day I won’t answer the call. When that happens, you may feel sad. That’s only natural. But, Son, don’t feel sad for long. There’s no reason for it. It happens to all of us and when it happens to me, I won’t have a single regret. So there’s no reason for you to be sad.”

A month earlier, as we were traveling west, just outside Oklahoma City, he added something that will be with me until the day I don’t answer the call. He said, “Son, I love you. These years we have driven together have been the best years of my life, since your mother passed. I think the worst thing that can happen to a man is to live his life the best way he knows how, then up and die without having the chance to tell anyone what he has learned. Luke, you wanted to know what I knew, and I have been able to share it with you. That is enough for me. That’s enough for any man. I hope you have the opportunity to pass it on to someone before you’re done.”

I thought he was going to add something, but he didn’t. He put his gaze on the horizon ahead, squinted into the sunset and easily guided eighty thousand pounds of steel, diesel fuel, cargo and the two of us toward the on-coming night. I stared toward the sunset too, letting his words burn into my mind.

**********

I wiped away my tears, pulled the blanket up to his chin, fired up the big, turbocharged CAT engine and pointed our “office” toward Alabama. I didn’t shut it down again, until I parked outside our house on Lookout Mountain.

It was a simple service, held in the old rock church on the mountain, just down the road from our house. The preacher didn’t have much to say, neither did Tim nor Jerris. None of them knew Daddy the way I did, and I kept what I knew inside. Besides, I knew that nobody else would understand it anyway, except Mama who was waiting for Daddy in the old cemetery behind the church.

*********

Two years later, I replaced our “office.” The new one is identical to the original. It’s black, and the gold script on the door says:

Robert & Luke Jenson
All States Trucking Company

Clinton, Alabama

I post two episodes of Another Place Another Time every week

For info on receiving each episode directly on your Kindle click here
Or, if you don’t want to wait, click here to purchase the complete Kindle version of the book.

Currently I’m working on The Mystic Trilogy – the first volume – The Sages – it is posted weekly – click here to read the first and all subsequent episodes.