Trent the Truck Driver

52 Stories in 52 Weeks: 2007: ## 14 Trent the Truck Driver

By: Mr. George Patnoe Jr.'s Ambidextrous Writing Brain + Mind

As a very young boy, Trent’s dad had always given him miniature toy cars and trucks as, gifts for fun, for learning, and for dreaming. Trent collected and played with each miniature toy car and truck as if it had a life of its own, just like the real cars and trucks that were to big for him to drive. As Trent looked down onto each miniature car or truck, Trent tried to imagine being the driver of each car or truck, just as if he was the adult driver in each specific miniature toy or truck. As Trent’s hand pushed each miniature car or truck, Trent imagined being in the driver’s seat and he imagined scenes from colorful pictures in magazines and books or from his dad’s collections of both film and digital pictures. Trent’s favorite miniature was the miniature truck that adults called the transporter truck that carried and hauled the miniature cars to any car dealership anywhere in America. Trent was not old enough to know the country called America, even though he said the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of every school morning. Trent feared that other young and inexperienced students were also lifting up their hands and repeating patriotic words and phrases without knowing what they all meant. Naturally, the adults knew more, but they would not tell much, just as they would not tell much about driving cars.

But as Trent pushed the transporter truck to the miniature dealership store that his dad had built for him, Trent would think about what kind’s of people would buy what kinds of cars. There were so many cars to choose from; not only in Trent’s backyard, but even as they drove by Trent’s house and school and church and store and even the school bus. As Trent sat on the school bus, he would wonder where all of those drivers were going, and what kind of music they might be listening to, and how much money they earned, and what kinds of pets they owned, and if they went to church or believed in a God somehow. Trent worshiped at a local church with his parents, but he would rarely listen to the preacher because he mainly repeated what he stated in every Sunday lecture. Instead, Trent would look around at the people and he would try to guess their jobs, where they lived, and more importantly, what kind of car they drove.

After each sermon, Trent would watch people walk to their cars to learn if his guessing games of matching people with cars were correct. Trent just loved trying to read people by the cars they drove and the shoes they wore and the pens they wrote with and the books they read.

One late night, his dad brought a new friend home for dinner. His dad had met him at a highway restaurant while they were eating their meals at a counter top. People sat really close at the restaurant’s counter top, so friendly strangers could chat if they were in the mood to chat. One word led to another word, and Trent’s dad invited the transporter driver to dinner. The transporter truck driver was also a writer, but very few people had read his books. He wrote books about his travels on the highways throughout America. The book’s cover had a huge and colorful transporter truck that was loaded with new, shiny and colorful sports cars and a few pickup trucks. Trent smiled at the book’s cover and then thanked the transporter driver. As they all sat down for dinner, Trent’s dad and the transporter driver talked about worldly issues, as Trent looked through the book.

Trent opened the book and he started to read the book, and he looked at the colorful pictures. Each picture had the huge transporter with cars on it, but the cars and the backgrounds were different on every page. There was a picture of the Big Apple city of New York, with its tall buildings, while another page had the gambling streets of Las Vegas. Then, as he turned the pages he saw a picture of a farmers home, with tall corn fields in the background and cows and even a few horses nearby the house. There were so many more pictures. Under the pictures were footnotes that described the state and even the car dealerships of where the transporter driver was taking the new cars, for the people who needed new cars and trucks to drive to work, to school, to church, to the store, to everywhere in America. Trent was more interested in guessing what kind of people would be purchasing what kind of dream car. Trent had seen how hard his dad worked to buy his new car, and he simply arrived at the logical conclusion that everyone who owned a brand new car must have worked really hard to pay for their colorful dream car.

Just as the transporter truck driver was about to leave the diner table, to leave the house, the transporter truck driver turned towards Trent and asked him, "How would you and your dad like to go for a ride in a real transporter truck before I leave town. We could take a ride now if you have nothing else to do?" Trent turned towards his dad and smiled, knowing that his dad would get the message. "Sure, we can take a short ride." His dad responded. As they stepped outside the house, Trent saw the huge transporter truck, with all of the cars on it. Trent was so speechless, that his dad picked him up and loaded him into the transporter trucks seat. Trent looked at the dashboard with all of its instruments, and then he looked out the window. The transporter driver started up the engine and off they went. Trent watched the driver move his hand as he shifted the gear stick.. Trent wanted to read the transporter driver, but he was just so interested in the truck and how to drive it. He was trying to memorize every move of the transporter driver. The view was great.

As Trent looked out the window, he felt on top of the world. He could look down onto all of the other cars and trucks. The transporter driver said, "A driver is always guessing or reading what the other drivers are going to do as they drive down the street. There are slow and careful drivers and then there are the fast and careless drivers. Just remember this Trent, Speed kills more drivers and their passengers than any other cause of highway deaths. When you grow up and you drive a car or a truck, always remember to drive careful and do not speed beyond common sense. No one can disobey the laws of physics. Do not pretend to be a race car driver on the highway." As he finished those words, a speeding car passed the truck and it almost hit a motorcycle.

The transporter truck driver returned them to their house, and he waved goodbye.

Bedtime had arrived for Trent, so his dad quickly reminded him to take a shower so they could read the book together. As Trent laid under his truck print bed blanket, his dad picked a chapter from the book. His dad opened the book to a chapter with a picture of the transporter truck located next to the Grand Canyon. His dad read the footnote under the picture, ‘The Grand Canyon is a deep gorge in Arizona, which was formed by the Colorado River. It is almost 227 miles long and between 5-15 wide, and in places, it is almost 6,000 feet deep. It became a national park in 1919. Trent looked past the truck and he looked at the Grand Canyon. He said, "Wow, I bet every transport driver gets to see many places like that." His dad responded, "Well, the transport driver mostly drives the transport truck from the car maker to a car dealership or seller. He probably does not visit a new place every day or even every month. But every once in a while, the transport truck driver takes a short break from driving and he visits a place like the Grand Canyon. Good night Trent."

Many years later, Trent had just woke up from a dream, while he was sleeping in his own transporter truck cab, on a small padded bed in the cab. Trent still had the copy of the book that he had received as a boy. But now he was writing his own transporter truck book. Only instead of pictures of America’s grandest of big and small cities and towns, and its farm lands and its rivers and lakes and mountains, Trent’s book was a book about the special people he had met throughout his travels in America. He had pictures of a mystic, of a teacher, a very old Indian, and other Americans that were born in America, but also of people who were born in other countries.

‘What does it mean to be an American?’ Trent always asked himself as he traveled from one town to another town or city. Trent always moved every few years or so just because he always needed a change of people and scenery. As Trent drove on the highways of America’s countysides and of America’s small town and huge cities, Trent would look down onto the cars that were once brand new and shiny, he would look down at the drivers of those cars and he would wonder how many of them were truly happy with their cars. Trent knew that everyone wanted a brand new shiny car or truck, but he also knew that somehow, after they became used to their cars and trucks, or after their cars and trucks were scratched or damaged, or the paint was just dulled by the sun and sea and road salt, everyone realized that all new cars and trucks ended up as rust, sooner or later.

Adult’s cars and trucks are not really toys, but machines of steel and rubber and modern day electrical systems so people can travel around the planet earth, to work, for money, to buy nice clothes so people can go to school and work and even to the state parks. A BMW for transporting businessmen to work, a four wheel drive sports utility vehicle for transporting nature lovers to the state parks, a corvette for transporting lovers to a party, a police car for transporting criminals to jail, fire trucks for transporting firefighters to fight fires, an ambulance for transporting sick people to a hospital, a school bus for transporting children to schools, taxis for transporting people who did not own cars or trucks.

It seemed everyone had a place to go, except the older people who knew that once they had traveled as much as they wanted, and they had no where else they wanted to go, there was only one place waiting for them, at the end of their lives. Trent realized this fact very early in his transporter truck driver career, which is why he sought out all of the different religions he could in his spare time. He had visited many kinds of Christian churches that preached different views of the Bible, and he had also visited Buddhist monks who believed in ‘the four noble truths that state all existence is suffering, that the cause of suffering is desire, that freedom from suffering is nirvana, and that this is attained through the ‘eightfold’ path of ethical conduct, wisdom and mental discipline including meditation.’ Trent had thought a lot about suffering; he had no choice! He had seen to many car and truck accidents for to many reasons on America’s highways and byways. Some people died slowly, even if they were driving slowly and being careful, while other people died fast, without one seemingly ounce of suffering. What would the Bible and Buddha state about the suffering of car and truck accident victims? Laws of chance and probability; laws of nature; laws of physics and laws of metaphysics; laws of God - what are God’s laws? thought Trent.

Trent now lived in Alaska, where he had met some very old Eskimos shamans, or people who could communicate with the spirit worlds and even travel to them. Trent would listen to the Alaska’s shamans as they told him strange stories of the great beyond, but he had never experienced any kind of religious or mystic experience. One old Eskimo shaman had become a friend to Trent, but he had died a short while ago, though Trent thought that he could somehow hear his voice.

Trent poured himself some coffee after he hopped into the transporter truck seat. The morning was cold in the winter’s air, but he had to drop off the cars to the assigned car dealership very early that morning. So Trent stepped on the clutch as his hand moved the gear stick from one gear to another, as the transporter truck picked up speed on the snowy and icy road. Soon, it had reached a seemingly safe speed of fifty miles an hour. He saw the lit mountain tunnel ahead of him. He always remembered the old drivers advise of not playing games with the laws of physics, so he slow down the transporter truck a bit, just to be on the safe side. He thought that when he entered the long tunnel, that he would be on dry road, so he would be safe from sliding on ice and snow. But he never saw the black ice; a transparent ice that is hidden to all drivers.

Trent had driven for thousands of rides, but this was the first time he heard the roar of the strange sound, though he had no time to turn his head around to see what was pushing the truck’s rear end towards the tunnels’s steel frame, he nevertheless realized that a snow avalanche had just missed the front of this truck, but not its rear end. As he looked down the yellowy lit tunnel, he felt the transport truck being turned over as it smashed into the tunnel’s wall, until it stopped, up against the tunnel’s wall. When Trent snapped to half consciousness, he felt the blood that dripped from his forehead. He quickly realized that his head had slammed against the truck’s steel frame, and the glass window was broken, but all of a sudden, Trent was then in a different tunnel.

A tunnel without air, even though it was airy. A tunnel with light, but not light from a million light bulbs. A tunnel that he could never see with his brain, but which he now saw with a different kind of mind, an immaterial mind. Trent, being half aware and half unaware, thought that he was half way between death and life, but he still felt alive as a conscious human would feel, only as if he were slipping into a dream beyond the sleeping dreams of dreaming mankind. But this was no dream. Trent had to get his wits about him as he traveled into this new tunnel of light.

As Trent realized that his human body of bloody skin and broken bones still laid half way out and half way in the human mountain road tunnel, he felt his a skinless and boneless part of him, a part of pure consciousness, traveling beyond earth, between earth and yet another place, another dimension, another realm of time and space. Yet somehow, Trent knew he was moving through another kind of tunnel, a tunnel that he was beginning to see more and more as every second passed in the meta-tunnel.

He saw other specks of light, many specks of light, so many specks of light that he could not see them, even with his new awareness of seeing and hearing. Yet, in a split earthly second, Trent felt the touch of a touch he had felt many times before on planet earth. The touch of an old friend, that of a very old Eskimo Shaman who had tried to teach Trent meta-life lessons for his traveling book, but before the Eskimo Shaman could finish those meta-life lessons about the spirit world and time travel and even traveling to other worlds, other universes. Trent did not have to think a word, because he somehow knew that he needed to learn another lesson from his friend the old Eskimo Shaman, before he woke up in the earthly hospital, or just in the broken and cold mess of a transport truck.

In an instant, Trent saw himself next to a hot and bright fire on earth, with his old friend the Eskimo Shaman speaking in the English language. The Shaman looked up towards the stars as he talked to Trent. "Throughout all space and time, and beyond space and time, many connections are made by all living creatures, yet some connections are more powerful than other connections. When two souls meet on earth, the most powerful connection is that of love and not of cars and trucks. It is one thing to read people by the cars they drive and the clothes they wear, but there is another tool of how to measurement people, and that tool is love. How much love does a person give to the flowers, to the trees, to all animals (especially before we eat them) and even to other people, especially to those people who truly need love.

Yet, love can not be measured by a car or a machine on earth. Love can only be measured by the invisible light that shines within the heart of a true human being. When you return to earth, seek to increase your own love while you love all living creatures even as you love the universe and the planet earth’s life that is a gift from the Divine Creator. But talk to no one of that invisible love, for true spiritual love is beyond all earthly words. Nevertheless, write about that love in your books and when we meet again, we shall learn more of love on earth before you return to this tunnel."

Trent felt the invisible hand no more as he raced through the meta-space and time, back to the body that was bloodied and broken. As he felt that body, he felt other hands on his skin and muscles, as they carefully lifted him up to an ambulance stretcher. He looked up towards and nights bright stars and then to the bright lit mountain tunnel, and he started to laugh, very loudly. As the ambulance attendants pushed Trent’s stretcher into the ambulance, Trent asked them if they could turn him around so he could watch the lights in the tunnel. The attendants turned the stretcher around, so in went Trent. They gave Trent some morphine to kill the pain, but Trent was still wide eyed enough to see the dim lights of the mountain’s tunnel. Trent closed his eyes after a while, and relaxed. Trent started to see his old friend the Eskimo shaman while he heard his whispering voice, "I will help you write that book too."