From the Flatlands

In the flatlands of Georgia the wind chimes yielded to air raid sirens as my wife and I sought refuge in the bathroom. I played guitar in the darkness while tornadoes knocked out a power station north of us on the great savannah where last week sixteen workers were burned to death as a sugar refinery spontaneously combusted on the edge of the intercoastal waterway where we counted seventeen alligators in the dying salt marshes.

I played classical guitar for two drunk truck drivers in a garage off Mapmaker Lane. "Why don't you just wail on that thing?"
"It's a classical guitar."
"Pick the hell out of it."
"I can't pick a classical guitar. The strings are nylon."
"You can't pick that thing?"
"Nope."
"What good is a guitar you can't pick?"

It cost 61 cents a mile to drive a flatbed last week. One of my trucker buddies paid $681 to fill up his truck that morning. He took a load of pine boards north, passing a load of pine boards headed south. "How crazy is that?" he asks. "Everything you eat comes on a truck." Everything.

Diesel costs $4.16 a gallon in Ravine, Pennsylvania, where a magnet in the Truck Stop reads, "Virginia is for Lovers, but Pennsylvania has Intercourse."

I had the best damned Po' Boy Hoagie I have ever tasted at a pink stucco roadside stop named Steffens Restaurant in the middle of nowhere Georgia. It was crammed with local boys with their camo and beer bellies. We ordered Sweet Tea and tried to hide our northern accents. We sent our compliments to the cook and the waitress looked surprised and said, "Well, if you liked it so much you'll just have to come back!" I wish we could.

It's the Economy, Stupid. The Economy. Everywhere, Everybody is talking about the Economy. A store owner in St. Augustine is wondering whether she should sell her business now before it gets worse. "It's gonna get worse," she says. It's hard to get a room because people are living week to week in the cheap hotels. One paycheck ahead of homelessness. The big building projects in Flagler County, Florida, are on hold until the economy improves. Where do the workers go? Where are the jobs? Trust in Jesus. The Lord will provide. That's how we get through. My wife and I look for a statue of St. Anthony at the Mission of Our Lady of La Leche. Our dollars go to support anti-abortion groups. It's the Economy, Stupid. The Economy.

It has been days since I have tasted silence. My wife watches an Australian play with a rattlesnake as I sit with my laptop and read about how St. Augustine of Hippo, an Algerian pagan, conceived the ideas of original sin and just war. We are on a beach of shells at the edge of the continent where the Spanish conquistadors searched for the fountain of immortality and founded the oldest white city in the western hemisphere. Today as the oyster catchers play tag with the waters, the turtles are dying, and the traffic drowns out the sound of the waves.

It has been days since I've tasted silence.