A ROAD LESS TRAVELED (nowadays)

I apologize in advance for this lengthy and ponderous blog. If at anytime you get sleepy trying to read it feel free to pull the eject handle and bail out. The main reason I started writing in the first place was the need to vent from time to time. Sometimes I feel the need to vent due to political or current events. Sometimes the venting comes from a more personal occurrence. This is one of those.


The last service call of the day had me heading many miles in the opposite direction from home, oh well, typical horseshit routing system. At least it's familiar territory. I used to have to go home this way when I lived this direction some 25 years ago.

That was another marriage, another me, another lifetime ago.

I looked at the customer's name on the computer and see that it's the same name as the road he lives on. Not really a coincidence out here in farm country. I drove through the little town of Monrovia on my way to the call, I remembered thinking "I'm only 20 minutes from home" when I used hit this town on the trip home way back when.

Back in those days I worked two jobs to save money for a house and kept up the part time construction work up until I started working for my current employer.

We finally saved up $12,500 dollars, a pretty good chunk of change back then. We found a beautiful 10 acres of wooded hills and valleys, selling price, $12,500 dollars.

Wiped the savings out and we got a mortgage for our house in the woods.

I had always wanted a place in the woods; this place had it all, huge mature trees, 80-foot ravines for boundaries, a creek in the back valley and no neighbors.
I put the septic and foundation in myself and got a nice manufactured house. I was in heaven.
I thought back to days of working in the noisy city, coming home and sitting on the swing and the only sound I could hear was the breeze moving from treetop to treetop. The difference in the ambient noise level from downtown Indy to my hideaway in the hills of Morgan County made the long drive home everyday worth every minute and every mile.

I drove through Monrovia and headed west closer to my to my former homestead now inhabited by strangers.
I made a few familiar turns and it was time to divert from the old route I had made a million times back in the old days, onto the road that was named for the farm family who homesteaded this ground.
I pulled into the gravel drive of the customer’s home.
He was an older gentleman who had left the work of feeding a nation to his sons and his son’s sons. I knew this would be a good work environment, a welcome change from working in the big city. Friendly conversation and discussing the area that I used to live in.
Then all too soon the appliance was repaired the conversation had run it's natural course and it was time to close out the last call of the day.

Talking to the old farmer about life way out here in Gods country made me remember my days out here.
Our first year out here, I put a wood stove in and we hardly ever ran the gas furnace. Cutting 14 or 15 ricks of wood every year was alot of work, but I did most of the cutting and splitting in the fall and winter. I used to love working in the woods when it was cold, the wood splits a lot easier too. I remember the first real cold day of each fall when I would start the first fire of the heating season and go outside to get another arm load of wood. The smell of that first fire gave me such a great feeling, winter was coming and back then that was my favorite time of the year. Now I just count down the weeks till it's over.

But back then, wintertime meant walking outside at night and the constellation of Orion seemed to take up the whole sky. If the full moon was at the right angle you could walk through the woods without a flashlight. It was putting up enough Christmas lights to make Clark Griswold green with envy. I put up all those lights to give my kids that Christmas magic feeling you got as a kid, well maybe it was to bring back a little of that magic to their dad too.

The summer nights the kids and me would get a blanket and lie out on the front yard and look at the Milky Way. It was so dark out there you could stare at a single spot and lose count of the stars. You could look for the blurry star that wasn't a star at all. It was an entire galaxy of billions of stars called M31.
Springtime brought out our white Dogwood and Redbud trees. Soon there would be a bounty of fresh morel mushrooms and a hillside of the sweetest little strawberries you ever ate.
I loved seeing my kids romp through the woods all year long. I built a barn and those kids just wanted to live in it. I put a wood stove in it and an old Westinghouse refrigerator and it kept my beer just above freezing temperature.

I remember the day I was standing at the sliding doors of the barn looking out at the house and our woods, watching the kids play in the yard and I was thinking, wow I have everything I ever wanted in the world, a family, nice place to live, two great kids and a steady job. I'm really content and happy in my life, finally!  The next thought that came to my mind was. What's going to come along now and fuck it all up? I didn't know anything for sure right them, but there was a shit storm brewing and it was heading straight for me. In a little more than a year my marriage, my fortress of solitude, my happy family, it would all be gone and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The transition from that life to the one I am currently enjoying was not an easy one. From being a family man for 17 years then jumping back into the pool at the age of 45 was shock to the system.
I finally settled into middle-aged bachelorhood and was enjoying single life until I met Jojo and she convinced me that I was full of it and I was not as happy as I thought I was and needed to take the plunge one more time. I am happy to say she was right. She restored my faith and trust in the fairer sex.


I pulled out of the retired farmers driveway and headed towards Herbemont Road.  I came to the intersection and stopped much longer than necessary. I looked to the right, the direction I use to go from here to reach the place where I could let out a deep breath, go to the barn and get a cold barn beer, sit on the swing with my kids and talk about their day and mine, for 15 years that was home.

Just up ahead to the south was the section of road that's like a tunnel of trees. Some farmer planted oak trees close together on both sides of the road for about a quarter mile. From the looks of them he must have planted them fifty or sixty years ago. When I first moved out there I was working for IUPUI in Indy. I worked 3:30 till midnight. Sometimes I would save a little gas and ride the bike to work. Coming home I would hit the tree tunnel about 12:45 am. Something about hitting that stretch of road always made me want to crack the pipes open. I loved the look of those big oak trees zooming by and the sound of the exhaust pipes echoing against the them.  When I blasted out the other side of the tree tunnel I knew I would be home in about ten minutes.
Later when I left that job and started running service calls that would end the nice bike rides home.
But the tree tunnel would still mark the beginning of the homestretch even in the service van.

All that used to be just a right turn and a ten-minute drive south.
An old Henley tune started playing, The End Of Innocence, the song I can’t listen to anymore.  Thanks Don, your timing is great.
Actually the music wasn't coming from the radio, it was playing in my head, just like it always does when I think about the day when I had to tell my kids that I had to move out.

The memories of my former life and my kids hung like a cloud over me for a minute, then I turned left and headed north...towards home.

THE END OF INNOCENCE