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Continued…we last left our hero arriving at his parent’s house…
I stayed with my folks Friday night through the weekend, we visited, and caught up on things, dad cooked some great meals, I baked an apple pie, and we looked at old pictures. It was a nice visit, and I promised to be back soon.
Monday morning came around, the truck with no name stood, loaded and ready….coffee in hand, a piece of apple pie (two actually) and I was ready to go. I played “homeward bound” as I left my parents retirement community. I patted the truck’s dash, said a quiet prayer….I shifted up threw the gears, thinking of my boy, our dog, the house, my friends…of Austin. Home, I wanted to be home.
I was only about 1200 miles away. I can make that.
It had been sunny at my folk’s house, but that didn’t last long. Cloudier, and colder with each mile. It was afternoon by the time I hit Alabama. Mississippi was just a place to get sick at a rest stop…by the time I was in Louisiana it was raining hard, and one of my wipers was coming apart. I “mcgivered” it back together and pushed on.
I made the Texas border by 6:00 that evening, 12 hours after I left my parents. I called Sam, and told him to expect me by 10:30.
I called Laurel, an old friend I had planned to visit in Houston and stay at her house over night, I apologized, I wasn’t stopping…I missed my dog!
So I wound the big truck up….all the way to Houston…a wreck had I-10 closed, so after waiting a for a ˝ hour several of us drove over a embankment ( the police encouraged us) through a muddied ditch to the frontage road. Some got stuck…me and the truck w/no name had no such trouble. We picked up I-10 and didn’t miss a beat.
About the time I got to la grange, my hold on reality was starting to slip, some minor hallucinations, that I kept at bay….then Bastrop, almost home…finally I found 183 north, and flew through town. Actually that was the toughest part of the trip. I saw the worst drivers of the trip on that 12 mile stretch…but I made it home. No problem. It was 11:00.
My boy and my dog were waiting. That’s all I wanted when I woke up that morning, to be back home, back where I belong.
Where it smells like it should, and I can fall asleep to the sound of a dog snoring in the back round.
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