[Art of Seeing Blog] The Lonely Highway

[Chris Carter]

First few paragraphs of a short story written by Tom Reilly. To read the entire story click on the link at the bottom of the post.

Tom spends a great deal of time on the road. He rebuilds and repairs packaging machinery for the food and drug industry. Most of his clients are involved in bagging coffee beans and ground coffee.

The plot of The Lonely Highway is familiar, but one that most folks never grow tired of.

The Lonely Highway

by Tom Reilly

I got into Wichita at about 7:30 at night. The drive to McPhearson was 87 miles of flat, straight highway with nothing but oilrigs dotting the shoulders. I had done the route a few times before and knew how long it would take to get to Dumont’s hotel. Once there, I could go down to the bar, have a nice tall glass of Wichita Red and hit the sack relatively early.

Well, that didn’t happen this trip.

I was a little over an hour away from the airport, just past Newton on interstate 135 when the beer that I had on the plane started to kick in again. Rather, the beer started to kick again inside of me. I could feel the pressure rising in my groin and knew that if I didn’t stop soon I’d have to pull off and go on the shoulder. Not that that really mattered, you see. Heck, all that was out there was a bunch of oil rigs grinding away in eternal drones of unlubricated metal. There weren’t any other cars, trucks or even horses on the road. I could pull over, shout at the top of my lungs, blast the horn, shoot a gun, heck shoot a cannon and nobody would hear.

link to the rest of the story....

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Posted By Chris Carter to Art of Seeing Blog at 11/16/2007 02:52:00 PM