End of the first week of classes. One down, fourteen to go. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. It's not all that bad, actually. It's just that I teach morning classes (one's at 7:30, the other at 8:30). I love mornings. So thought that I'd like to teach then. Nah. I just keep looking out the window and wishing I was out there.
When I was a boy, my dad drove a truck for Russell Oil Company. Basically, he drove around our rural enclave, filling up petroleum tanks at gas stations, etc. Sometimes, if daycare plans fell through, I'd get to ride shotgun with him. And so I have a few memories of riding down dirt roads in a big oil truck, with my dad at the wheel, the c.b. crackling. If we stopped at a gas station, he'd let me run in and get some Red Hots. (In my mind, I can hear the cowbell roped to the door, clanging dull against the glass.)
I am standing in the candy aisle now. Millions of boxes of endless Lemon Sours, Mary Janes, Bit O' Honey's, candy corn, starlight mints, Boston Baked Beans and Red Hots. My dad grabs us two Cokes up from the cooler. He smells like industry, for this is how fathers smell. The ample-bosomed woman at the counter watches me, looking stern. An old, old man on a bar stool upholstered with duct tape sits behind her, silent, behind his thick glasses. She speaks: "Clyde - is this your boy?"
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