Lesson Twenty-One
Some things really shouldn’t come easily.
"The only job where you start at the top is digging a hole.”
~Unknown~
“Ahem. Pssst! Psssst!! MATT!”
“What”?
“Hop in the truck. We have some paperwork to finish in the office”, Jack said.
“We do”?
“Yes, we do. These other guys can finish up here. I need you back in the office.”
Once inside Jack’s pickup, he just smiled at me as we steered a course southwest for Texarkana, Texas, some thirty miles from our current location in Arkansas.
“We’re out of beer”, he grinned.
So that was our code. When Jack needed me back in the office, we were out of beer and needed some male bonding time, cruising the back roads of Arkansas looking for mischief. They were some amazing days of feeling carefree.
One of the few benefits of my relationship with Janine (besides the birth of our daughter of course) was becoming friends and eventually an employee of her brother, Jack. Although three years my senior, Jack was the first to really demonstrate for me a life of fearlessness.
Although his parents dreamed of him being a doctor, Jack sat in pre-med classes dreaming of owning his own business. Once he earned his degree, that’s exactly what he did. He moved to Texas with his wife Dawn and started his own utility construction business. Although he started small, his business eventually grew to near 2.5 million dollars in annual revenue. And then he went bankrupt. From that financial hurdle Jack emerged at the top with yet another business venture with two partners in Indiana. It went great for years and when that business failed he started another…..and another. In between, if Jack didn’t have an income stream, he took up sales of some kind or another. He never considered how he was going to do things. He just did them. There were times in my younger days I had a hard time understanding his method, but it’s crystal clear to me today. He lived in the moment.
I also considered Jack’s wife Dawn as a close friend and she was equally fearless. She “followed” Jack wherever his dreams led and always seemed to support him. I can’t be sure, but I suspect there were times the risks caused tension in their marriage, but they always seemed to thrive.
Dawn, herself, went to medical school and earned her M.D. while raising their two children and moving around the country with Jack. Since that time, she has rarely actually practiced medicine to any great degree which again always made me pause and wonder why someone would to that. Today I see her quest and applaud the fact that she did it. It’s not a question of why, but why not? She’s a doctor! Who cares if she owns her own clinic!
On another occasion, Dawn spent two weeks in the mountains cross-country skiing, living in igloos, completely out of contact with civilization. It was enormously adventurous and no-doubt, dangerous. I had vast respect for them both, although as I’ve stated, I didn’t always understand their motives when I was younger.
Jack and Dawn were the first two people with whom I remember really discussing religion. Jack obviously grew up in the same Methodist family as his sister and Dawn was raised in a house of staunch Catholics. Yet somehow, they seemed more open-minded; more forward-thinking. We would sit around the campfire on little campouts and discuss the vastness of our universe, or the presence of God. We discussed the silliest things like whether or not saying “Goddammit” was really taking the Lord’s name in vain since you didn’t really MEAN that you wanted God to “damn” someone or something. We discussed heaven and hell, the contents of the Bible and much, much more. Beer will do that for you!
Texarkana was a curious town. Set fully in the heart of the “bible belt”, Texarkana is split down the middle between Texas and Arkansas. The Texas side of Main Street was lined with Liquor stores since that particular Texas county was “wet”. The Arkansas side of Main Street was lined with laundry mats because THAT particular county in Arkansas was “dry”. I could write an entire book about the ridiculous liquor laws spattered across the bible belt, but suffice it to say, if we wanted alcohol in Arkansas, we went to Texas to get it. (Or to the little drive-thru trailer house where a guy sold bootleg beer). In theory, you had to be careful not to buy too much lest you be arrested for bootlegging while crossing Main Street back in to Arkansas. Like I said, ridiculous.
The case of Bud Light was iced down and well within reach as Jack and I began our long, winding trek back to Hope via the back roads of eastern Arkansas. It was frosty cold and flowed freely down the backs of our parched throats as we took turn after unmapped turn down gravel roads, discussing the state of the world, how we wanted his business to grow, how I fit in to that plan, and how we were going to spend all our money in the lap of luxury. The more we drank, the wealthier we became. Those were great days.
The lightly asphalted “farm-to-market” road began to veer a bit to the left and expose the tall sand embankment of a crystal-clear gravel pit. The deep pool of man-made water was surrounded on all sides by tall mounds of sand, nearly fifty feet high in some places and littered with dry brush trying to take root and flourish. We cruised by slowly, our fifth or sixth beer on the way to our stomach, and shared the same thought at the same time. “Should we”?
Jack had recently purchased a new 4X4 truck that was just begging to be tested. Without saying a word, Jack turned the truck perpendicular to the small road and faced the overshadowing mound of sand. From our drunken vantage point, it looked straight up. His foot hit the floor as he drove the accelerator forward and the truck sped the short distance to the enormous sand pile. “Woo hoo!!!” I screamed.
The front wheels of the monster truck sunk in the sand and then grabbed ever so slightly as we pointed skyward and began to inch our way up the sand.
“Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv”, you could hear the tires saying as they spun and tossed sand and sticks everywhere as they inched us toward the top! And then just as we neared the crest, the sand defeated us in the first battle of this war and we slid back down until our bumper scraped the road. By maneuvering until we nearly tipped over, we were able to free the bumper, back across the road and take another run. Same result. At least four times we tried to pound, claw and grind our way to the top of the sand with Jack’s fancy truck, but it just wasn’t to be. Gravity and the slippery sand won every time.
Giggling like school girls, yet defeated, we parked the truck and “walked” to the top of the sand. From the apex of the mound we stared out over the deep, cold, clear water and, mouths hanging open, realized our fortune. Had we succeeded in cresting the mound, we would have plunged immediately into the bottomless pit! There are a couple lessons there I’m sure.
One, don’t drink and drive. Two, a little planning never hurt anything. Three, it wasn’t gravity and sand that “defeated” us, but the universe saving us for another day. Everything happens for the right reason at the right time and two drunk boys drowning in Arkansas wasn’t meant to happen that day. But we weren’t quite finished.
