Dallas Guitar Show
Dallas Guitar Show
I'm standing on the front of a 400 LB Dallas Guitar Show pallet tipping precariously down a ramp made from a big piece of steel "strapped" to the loading dock so hopefully it doesn't slide and dump the pallet. I'm about to tip it down this ramp hoping it will slide into the back of a sprinter van that is about four feet lower than our loading dock, as the driver who speaks mainly Russian is repeatedly saying "It's only 400 lbs" and my phone is going off three times in a row. "Time to ride lightning" and the group that gathered to help laughed and backed up. I jumped and drove my boots into the pallet and...
I think about the garage in Minnesota I lived in through a winter after dropping out of college. I slept next to my bandsaw underneath a heating blanket. I had a pet goose named Burt. I rolled tape at 3M as my midnight shift job.
I think about the 1981 Mercedes 300 D I took a night train to North Carolina to pick up. The kid who sat next to me was carrying a framed painting of a train and he knew the times for every Amtrak route in the country. I slept under the bench at the station. The seller picked me up the next day 8 hours late and we drove around for another three hours together as he checked out other cars he wanted to buy and flip. One of them started on fire and the seller was running back to our car as the korean man was yelling "I'll take $600". It was not a good sign. I converted it to run on vegetable oil. I'd pull up to the waste dumpsters behind chinese restaurants and pump it into the tank. It heated the oil with a line running from the radiator to thin it out and had a centrifuge in the truck to filter the oil as I drove. When the oil got hot enough to run I flipped a valve by the steering wheel.
I think about my six year old step son sitting in the back of the truck after having trouble buckling his seat belt saying, "Why is everything so hard?"
I think "All good stories involve suffering." I think about how suffering can become an identity instead of a merit badge. How we can make decisions based on that identity instead of on the life we want to lead.
I think, "burn the boat" and give the pallet another heave.
I think about the garage in Minnesota I lived in through a winter after dropping out of college. I slept next to my bandsaw underneath a heating blanket. I had a pet goose named Burt. I rolled tape at 3M as my midnight shift job.
I think about the 1981 Mercedes 300 D I took a night train to North Carolina to pick up. The kid who sat next to me was carrying a framed painting of a train and he knew the times for every Amtrak route in the country. I slept under the bench at the station. The seller picked me up the next day 8 hours late and we drove around for another three hours together as he checked out other cars he wanted to buy and flip. One of them started on fire and the seller was running back to our car as the korean man was yelling "I'll take $600". It was not a good sign. I converted it to run on vegetable oil. I'd pull up to the waste dumpsters behind chinese restaurants and pump it into the tank. It heated the oil with a line running from the radiator to thin it out and had a centrifuge in the truck to filter the oil as I drove. When the oil got hot enough to run I flipped a valve by the steering wheel.
I think about my six year old step son sitting in the back of the truck after having trouble buckling his seat belt saying, "Why is everything so hard?"
I think "All good stories involve suffering." I think about how suffering can become an identity instead of a merit badge. How we can make decisions based on that identity instead of on the life we want to lead.
I think, "burn the boat" and give the pallet another heave.
