0
0
Making the most of the Highway to Hell
(I took this photograph on my drive into the office on Highway 183 on April 25, 2024. This is a live-action shot of the misery of a modern commute.)
The Highway to Hell…
I cannot prove it, but I believe the highway to Hell is an east-west artery in the heart of Dallas/Ft Worth, a sadistic stretch of life-draining asphalt innocently named Hwy 183.
Along the stretch of 183 that separates my home from my office, is a cross-street aptly named Industrial Blvd. I intend to turn that into a song, a poem, a sketch”¦or all three someday.
It is ironic or something like ironic that the other nickname for “Industrial Blvd” is “FM (farm-to-market) 157”. There was a time that I remember well when the south end of 157 cut through farmland, past pig styes, cattle, and hayfields.
Runs right through me
Few things stress me or test my mettle as a man of faith and goodwill more than morning drive in the mess we call the Metroplex.
I pulled the following from macrotrends.net:
Chart and table of population level and growth rate for the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area from 1950 to 2024. United Nations population projections are also included through the year 2035.
I call BS on those numbers. They have to be higher than that. Still, 6.5 million Texans refusing mass transit and rideshare on sheer, reckless, Devil-may-care orneriness makes for a mighty clogged highway (sewer) system.
Becomes a haven”¦
I am not afraid to be alone with my thoughts, even if it is smack-dab in the middle of 6.5 million mad cow-diseased morons who happen to have all decided to accompany me to work.
(Lord, I apologize for that one right there )
The beautiful thing about being human is the ability to teleport. We may not have it figured out physically yet, but, mentally, we can fly away.
I have worked out – and sometimes forgotten before I could get to pen and paper – some of the best stories, poems, articles, and essays of my life on Highway 183. I have flown to yesteryear and laughed with my father, sat in my mother’s lap, romped with my children, and revisited mountains and oceans with my wife”¦all while sucking fumes from the bumper-sticker-bearing beaters the tree-huggers ironically drive.
Since I was a little boy, I have had this power of imagination so strong I could live in two worlds at once. My imaginary friends may as well have been flesh and blood. They had families, hobbies, idiosyncracies, and backstories.
Little Lou, Ugly Jack, and Prophet John were all born during Morning Drive on 183. Pancho & Lefty also came to life on Hwy 183.
I don’t have to sit in traffic when teleportation is just a memory or fantasy away.
And a library
My favorite gridlock activity is reading.
Easy, now. I do not mean reading with my eyes. I am not holding a hardback in one hand and the steering wheel in the other.
I mean listening to audiobooks. Between Amazon’s Audible® and Spotify®, I have listened to somewhere around 150 books over the past 15 years. Some have been for pure pleasure, some for inspiration, and a few for business insights. From lengthy 50-hour listens to shorter three- to five-hour books, I have found everything from The Wisdom of the Bullfrog to Loose Balls inspiring and entertaining. I have become better acquainted with people like Winston Churchill and Quanah Parker, not to mention Willie Nelson, George Carlin, and Bono.
What about you?
Do you deal with traffic? How do you deal with it? Do you listen to audiobooks? What kind do you prefer?