Thursday, June 29, 2017

Who Can Take a Sunrise...

Who can take a sunrise (who can take a sunrise)
Sprinkle it with dew (sprinkle it with dew)
Cover it with chocolate and a miracle or two...

Oh wait. That's the Candy Man! I'm not talking about the Candy Man! I'm talking about the Weirdo Man. Yes. I know that comes as a shock to you.

Perhaps you have gathered that Val does not live in some sugar-filled utopia like the Candy Man delivers from. Her homestead is not near the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Nor is it on top of Spaghetti, All Covered With Cheese. And it's most certainly not like New Jersey, where people ride their bike in a wife-beater smoking a cigarette carrying a rocking cow. No siree, Bob! We're talking about Backroads, by cracky! Things are a little different here in the land where people sit on the back porch with a raccoon frolicking against their ankles.

Monday, I was headed to town mid-morning. I'd gone about three miles, and was just rounding the bend to go from our blacktop county road onto the blacktop lettered highway. There was a blue truck in the middle of the road. That in itself is not unusual. People stop their pickups in the road all the time. They're usually chatting with another pickup facing the other way. Or counting cows in the field. Or waiting for a deer to jump into the woods. Or nowhere to be seen, because they've abandoned the vehicle to go float a kayak down a creek on six inches of water.

This pickup was parked in the middle of the road. At first, I thought maybe he was making a left turn, and was rudely hogging the center line, making it difficult for a car that might be turning in to this road. He was, but not because he was making a left. He was parked. The truck turned off.

Not only was the truck parked, but it also had the passenger door hanging wide open. With nobody in the driver's seat or the passenger seat. That's because Weirdo Man was in the back of the pickup truck. He was wearing overalls over a white t-shirt, and a beard that was not short enough to be hipster, and not long and pointy enough to be a ZZ Top wannabe.

Sometimes people need to get up in the back of their pickup truck. Maybe they're hauling something that slips around. Maybe they need to tighten the come-a-long straps that hold them in. This guy had a load in his pickup bed all right. But it wasn't strapped in.

Two 55-gallon rusty barrels were sitting up against the cab of the pickup truck. People haul them all the time. Nothing unusual about that. It's how rural folks get rid of trash. Not all of them, of course. We have a dumpster. But our side neighbors, the dog Copper's human parents, burn their trash in a barrel. Years ago, their teenage daughter caught the woods on fire doing it. But that's another story. It's not like they're making any worse mark on the environment than those of us who fill up the land with our buried trash, or send it to the middle of the ocean on a barge. Paper and cardboard come from wood, and wood burns, and the atmosphere deals with it. It's all a trade-off on which resources you destroy. Anyhoo...

The unusual thing about this Weirdo Man standing in the bed of his pickup truck loaded with 55-gallon barrels parked in the middle of the road...was that

FLAMES WERE SHOOTING OUT THE TOPS OF THE BARRELS!

Yep. This guy was a multi-tasker, I guess, burning his trash as he drove his barrels to their destination.

Who can take a pickup (who can take a pickup)
Fill the bed with trash (fill the bed with trash)
Park it in the road and inflame it in a flash
The Weirdo Man can (the Weirdo Man can)

There's really not a point to this story. It's just Val, serving you up a slice of her life.


16 comments:

  1. That definitely beats an old dude on a bicycle in a wife beater smoking a cigarette and carrying a large rocking cow!

    How did you get by him?

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    1. Thank you for giving me an excuse to write an elaborate reply!

      I went around him on the left. That's because people fly down that blacktop lettered highway at roughly the speed of sound. There's a little hill crest to the left, where you can't see what's coming until it's right on you after pulling out. So I wanted to see if anything was on the short horizon before I nosed out onto the road.

      I had to hope that nothing was coming on my right, and about to turn into my road where I was sitting, since they wouldn't be able to see me due to the pickup blocking their way.

      Don't worry. I made it.

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  2. Sometimes a story needs no point, an interesting read nevertheless. Do have a wonderful weekend, best wishes!

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    1. Thanks! If it's pointless stories you yearn for, I'm the place to find them.

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  3. You live in a strange place, Val. Interesting. But strange.

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    1. This may shake you to your very foundation...but what if MY PLACE IS NORMAL, and all the rest of you live in Strangeville?

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  4. Cans on fire? Pulled by a gasoline-powered truck? Is that as dangerous as I think it is?

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    1. I'm pretty sure it's not recommended. It might even be in the owner's manual for pickup trucks. But you know guys...they never read a manual.

      That Weirdo Man might also have been LOST, since he wouldn't stop and ask directions to The Burning Trash Barrel Depository.

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  5. Maybe he was burning his trash and the flames went out, probably needed to blow on it to get it going again, can't blow enough air on two cans at the same time so why not jut throw them in back of the truck and go for a ride till they flame up?

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    1. I think you know entirely too much about such a scenario.

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  6. Hah! I'm betting he tossed a ciggie butt out his window and it bounced into one of the trash cans, which then tossed a spark into the other one. So he'd have to stand there and make sure the fire burned out before he kept going.

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    1. That makes perfect sense! As a non-smoker, such a thought had not occurred to me. The flaming barrel on the left, closest to the driver's side, WAS flaming higher than the other one. Like it had been burning longer.

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  7. You have some very strange experiences, Val!!

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    1. Truth is so strange that I WISH it was fiction. I didn't want to be parked behind the flamingbarrelmobile. I can't imagine why that Weirdo Man was STANDING IN A POTENTIAL BOMB.

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  8. Burning barrels in the back of a truck? Haven't seen that before.

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    1. And in all your world travels, too. I could have given you a package vacation pretty cheap. IF I had only known the potential sights you might see.

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