2008 Woodie Awards
Searching for time median
Rudy Ornelas
Issue date: 1/18/07 Section: Opinion
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It's the middle of December, and I am riding shotgun in a semi truck looking for a flatbed trailer in the middle of the nothingness we call Kansas. The blistering cold makes me shiver despite the fact the sun is out. The bumpy roads make me wish I had never agreed to come help my cousin.
The task sounded simple enough; go to a nearby town to get a tractor that had just been repaired. In order to do this, we had to go get the semi, check, unhook the trailer, after slight troubles, check, and then go find the flat-bed trailer, which my cousin's boss had lent to a fellow farmer. We're stuck. The farmer gave us general directions on where he left the trailer, but it was becoming evident to me that either he was trying to keep it for himself, the trailer didn't want to be found or... the most likely scenario, our knowledge of the back roads was so poor that we had probably passed the thing 10 to 15 times without noticing.
Despite the uncomfortableness and frustration of the situation at hand, I noticed a beauty out there. A sense of a whole other community just outside the breaches of town, which I would never be a part of and never ever understand. Seemingly endless fields for miles around, with the occasional house propped up on a hill. Workers doing their assigned task, which I doubt were really assigned, but rather they just knew to do.
Just then we came onto an unusually smooth road, and as I looked around I felt like I was in slow motion, everything out there was quiet and peaceful. The noisy things were a calm noise, which was more relaxing than anything else. If the semi had not been so loud I might have had to bite myself or something to make sure I was still alive.
Those are the things I noticed out there while I was "Cruising in the Heartland Of the Heartland Of America" on a treasure hunt from hell. The whole job should have taken maybe two hours; we had now been looking for the trailer an hour and a half.
Then I reminisced with my cousin about how all we wanted to be when we were little was farmers like our dads. And how far fetched the idea of me being a farmer is now. However, he seemed to ignore me still trying to figure out where the trailer was. So I leaned my head out the window and started remembering the complete opposite of my current location; New York City.
The task sounded simple enough; go to a nearby town to get a tractor that had just been repaired. In order to do this, we had to go get the semi, check, unhook the trailer, after slight troubles, check, and then go find the flat-bed trailer, which my cousin's boss had lent to a fellow farmer. We're stuck. The farmer gave us general directions on where he left the trailer, but it was becoming evident to me that either he was trying to keep it for himself, the trailer didn't want to be found or... the most likely scenario, our knowledge of the back roads was so poor that we had probably passed the thing 10 to 15 times without noticing.
Despite the uncomfortableness and frustration of the situation at hand, I noticed a beauty out there. A sense of a whole other community just outside the breaches of town, which I would never be a part of and never ever understand. Seemingly endless fields for miles around, with the occasional house propped up on a hill. Workers doing their assigned task, which I doubt were really assigned, but rather they just knew to do.
Just then we came onto an unusually smooth road, and as I looked around I felt like I was in slow motion, everything out there was quiet and peaceful. The noisy things were a calm noise, which was more relaxing than anything else. If the semi had not been so loud I might have had to bite myself or something to make sure I was still alive.
Those are the things I noticed out there while I was "Cruising in the Heartland Of the Heartland Of America" on a treasure hunt from hell. The whole job should have taken maybe two hours; we had now been looking for the trailer an hour and a half.
Then I reminisced with my cousin about how all we wanted to be when we were little was farmers like our dads. And how far fetched the idea of me being a farmer is now. However, he seemed to ignore me still trying to figure out where the trailer was. So I leaned my head out the window and started remembering the complete opposite of my current location; New York City.
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