Who's who? Really?

(originally dated 02/05/09. I'll get back to getting the dates straight.)

Snow is pretty, when the roads are dry.

I've spent the last two days driving by it, which is much more pleasant than driving through it. Then you don't really see it--your eyes are mostly glued to the road. And to the equally scared (or otherwise messed-up) drivers all around you. You flick your eyes around and say "Pretty. Now has that car fishtailed into my lane yet?"

But the snow was done when I got here. The truck-stop parking lot was fun, and so was the warehouse lot. But the roads were OK.

Waited a while--on both ends--for the receiving department to get organized. Half a dozen drivers were sitting around waiting with me. Anyone who left could expect to get called up to the window while he was gone (good way to end up at the back of the line). So we sat talking.

I usually don't get involved in these bull sessions. Politics will always come up, sooner rather than later, and I really don't like crossfires. But this time there wasn't much else to do, and nowhere to go. I vaguely remember saying something at one point about the difference between money and power (as in CEO's vs politicians, I think). Oooh. Profound.

A couple of hours later I was wandering the store aisles at the truck stop a mile down the road, waiting for my next assignment, and somebody came over and mentioned what I'd said. "I knew then you weren't an ordinary trucker."

Ordinary trucker? Someone else wandered over to join the conversation. One of us was an ex-programmer. Another had a marketing degree. And the third was an electronics expert who was qualified to get a deep-sea captain's certification.

So which one of us was the ordinary trucker?

Louis L'Amour used to say there was no telling who you might find holed up in a line shack back in the day. The cowpuncher in the upper bunk might be a disbarred lawyer. The fellow across the room might be an out-of-work mining engineer or a black sheep from a proper Boston family. You never knew.

I begin to believe him.