Traveling Light:
Tight Spots
Janet I. Buck
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Tight Spots
When we joined the RV Revolution of America and decided to tote our happy home down the freeway at 65 mph, I wasn't quite prepared for all those sneaky blind curves. I had such noble and constructive plans for this adventure. I was going to hook up my laptop and write poetry all the way to LA, not end up with my splattered concentration graffitied on the belly of every passing truck.
When we went shopping for this contraption, I had my sights set on decor and space, but I didn't really consider the fact that we'd end up driving the Queen Mary up the shrinking condom of an urban ditch. The tension around this yacht on wheels was about as innocent as the storage space of an atom bomb, and I knew after a few tandem tantrums that one of us had to keep his cool, but it clearly wasn't going to be moi.
There I sat, in the front seat of impending death, filing my fingernails on the arms of my chair. Even our cockapoo was in the panic dance, poised and ready to crap at the turn of every tight and looming curve. It was that brand of omnipresent dread known only to a tiny dachshund in heat with a barking rottweiler on the other side of a garden wall. Seeing eye-to-eye with humanity is one thing in terms of a writer's immersive vision, but as an Emily Dickinson wanna-be, I wasn't that thrilled about sitting close enough to truth to trade toothpicks with the driver of a cement truck.
It is important to note that I'd been poking fun at my parents for marital banter on the open road. I've now come to the conclusion that these tight quarters produce one of two things: communication or a tombstone. There's no in-between.
I thought of crawling into bed with a book, pulling down the shades in the bedroom, and leaving my life in the competent hands of my husband, but he insisted that I stay up front to help navigate. While I do love the written word, reading maps for me is like translating Chaucer into Japanese without a dictionary. All those squirrely lines kind of run together like coffee rings on a grocery list, and wham!, you've missed another crucial turn. The poor man had absolutely no concept of what sort of impossible dream he'd been simmering here.
"Honey, are there any cars on the right?" he asks. Hell, I didn't know; I had my eyes shut tighter than Congress in the planning stages of a national health care plan.
I also had the bright idea of stopping to visit a dear old friend of mine who lived in the hills surrounding San Francisco. The main streets of Fairfax were slim, to say the least, but he assured me we could make it up that hill. Males, being males, nailed firmly to the floor with testosterone and the estrogen of confidence, Mark and Vlatko figured we'd make it up there one way or the other.
About ten feet before the right turn, I spotted a sign that read No Vehicles Over 3 Tons. Of course, I didn't tell him that until AFTER the exit was made and we were eating branches off trees like the last slice of pizza at a Weight-Watchers meeting. I said, "Honey, I think we're fatter than that." To which he replied, "Speak for yourself." By that time, it was too late; there was no place on earth to turn around, so we sucked in the full stomach of ten tons of metal and tried squeezing our butt into the Twiggy bikini of La La Lane. I wasn't laughing, but I was giving Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz a run for her money with short, decisive, X-rated clips from the hit-song I Wanna Go Home and NOW!
There we sat, the big, bad contemplative Buddha of the motorized human race, scanning the skies for a way out of this mess. After we'd pretty much trimmed the shrubs in the surrounding neighborhood free of cost and scared every stray cat back to the safety of its front porch, we came to another indubitable stop. Getting intimate with nature is one thing; licking the flags off a row of mailboxes is quite another.
All of a sudden, a cop car came barreling down the road ahead and flicked on those onus red lights; my patience was at a dead end with the rest our luggage. It was the season for hysterics. To put it mildly, I was in the mood, so accommodation came pretty naturally. "Officer," I said, "Please don't write us up a ticket for this fiasco. You'll have to put it in the mail or shove it up the muffler to get it to us. Ain't nothing fitting between the windows and those two rows of trees."
He did his police department proud by backing us down the street with a flashlight, step by step, swear by swear. Poor Gretel and I were hiding in the front seat with a blanket over us, cowering to the gods, taking turns peeing on the obituary page of the local paper. I'll Never Go This Way Again kept ringing in my head.
It was one of those moments in life when a writer wishes her inspiration had stayed home.
~Janet I. Buck
An award-winning author, published in hundreds of literary magazines, Janet has also written several books. For more information on her public readings, and latest publications, including the delightful e-book "Desideratum's Doggie Dish," visit her website or email.
© 2000 by Janet I. Buck. All Rights Reserved.
© 2000-2004 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.