❧
There was no reason for me to do the same ol' thang yesterday, so when I drove off from my house intending, perhaps, to get some breakfast and a fresh perspective, it didn't surprise me much that I drove on past town out toward I-40 and the world beyond.
I didn't get far. A couple or three exits later I decided to turn left on I-95 and go toward Dunn, then cut back on Highway 421 to bring it on home to a life of quiet desperation again. The reason I got off at Dunn was there used to be a restaurant there I stopped at occasionally that I wanted to see if it was still open. It wasn't. Gone are the days...
The fact that I know this area from a long time back is because I was raised on the coastal plains, and these little towns and villages all took the same trunk roads to the State capitol, Raleigh, and getting there from anywhere in the southeastern parts of the state was like playing a pat hand in stud poker.
The Interstate Highway system forced all those old routes and trunk roads to conform to their design. No blame. They were designed to collect traffic from the existing network of smaller, more cluttered roads on to express routes with lots of lanes. It had to happen. The United States of American is a large block of real estate. All for sell to the highest bidder. God bless our happy homes?
Sometimes I'm content that I did what I needed to be young to do when I was young. I couldn't do any of that stuff I did presently. I think having to sleep on the ground without any shelter from the ambient weather would be a very miserable existence for me. Yet, I wouldn't take anything for having lived that way with aplomb.
The nightmares I sometime have about being stuck in a huge industrial complex wandering endlessly and futilely to find my way back out into the real world are based on real experiences. I have worked in places like that off and on for years. New work and shutdowns. As long as it offered lots of overtime and per diem I wuz they man. I liked living as a stranger in places that were strange to me.
I liked having a skill the investors needed to make their money work for them. We had an understanding. I earned a right to feed at their trough and get paid for it via highly developed eye/hand coordination. I learned to weld high pressure pipes and steam vessels and do it to 100% x-ray specifications the first and only time. Pipe-welding was the only skill or craft I ever mastered. I couldn't not have done it.
Learning to weld was practical experience in developing insight into what it takes to master about anything. In art I've compared Grandma Moses to Rembrant to specify the difference between primitive and fine art. Grandma Moses worked a natural mojo until she made it do what she wanted. Rembrant served an apprenticeship and had his natural mojo honed by an existing master artist.
My welding was fine art liken to Rembrant. I welded way beyond the finest junk yard talent that ever stumbled through a graveyard to cars. I attended classes and had master welders critiquing my work every day. It has to happen to pass the welding tests to get the big money. It's not that big, but usually the highest on the job site. You have to prove you can do it before they can hire you. Auditions... auditions... auditions!!
Becoming a master welder was the height of my ambitions realized. I didn't get started until I was 35 years old in a field of endeavor where the participants hardly ever last beyond 40 years old because of eyesight. It's the same reason people start needing reading glasses in their early forties.
The main thing about welding for a living at that skill level is that you gotta be able to see really well. Some welders might continue beyond that to some degree. Mostly because it's the only way they know how to make journeyman's wages. But, it's stressful enough when you can see good to weld 100% x-ray work. Not being able to trust your eyesight because of anything that goes wrong with your glasses can go over the top. Skilled labor is still laborious. You gotta get off your tools before your body wears out.
The rudest thing I know about the aging process is that it doesn't know when to stop. Yesterday I was imagining these wizened old men that I have seen frequently enow throughout my life. I don't reckon I spent too much time wondering how they became "wizened". I don't have to wonder about that so much anymore. It's me. Be-co-me-ing with wizenedness can be a real drag, man, but it's a little cute at the sa-me ti-me. My disbelief has caught up with me or stayed with me, as the case may be. I don't believe this is happening to me at the sa-me ti-me I gnow, for sure, it is.
❦
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
