On The Road Day 3, “I is a Carny”

I passed out in the cell within minutes of being locked up. I must have been totally exhausted both mentally as well as physically. I awoke to the smell that emanated from me.  It was a lethal cocktail of gray water, lack of showering and overall lack of quality personal hygiene. I did not care where I was, I only knew I had to shower and quick.

Whether it was from the sound of a middle aged whining New Yawker or the fact the whole jail took up the odor of my being, it wasn’t long  before the deputy came to escort me to a clean shower with plenty of hot water. The small things in life, you don”t realize how much they mean, until they are taken away from you.

The instinct of wanting to stay under the water was as strong as the instinct of not wanting to get locked up again. The funny thing as I look back, no anxiety had come over me at all. Maybe this was due to the fact that t I knew I had done nothing wrong. But the feeling of calm did not last long. As the guard approached my door and out of a police drama from TV came the words we have all heard before, I was to be given one phone call.

If you were in the same situation who would you call? It was a no brainer for me. I had only one person who I wanted and needed to call, my wife. The thoughts now were what the hell am I supposed to tell her? How do I explain the fact I am in the middle of the Kentucky back woods sitting in jail? It was not going to be an easy call to be sure.

Thank god I married such a gem, as the only words that could come from her mouth were that of worry and if I was OK. I knew then what a lucky guy I was. Either way, the fact that I had to make this call was so unreal. Here I am out to make money and now I am calling to have some transferred so that I could get out of jail. The bond was set at $500 and I got to hear for the second time in as many days the fact that I had to be back in court. Will I make it three for three?

I was led back into my cell to await the proper paperwork. As I sat in the cell I had glanced at the “loser” remark on the wall. With nothing else to do, I started to figure out how these words could have been placed there. Sitting on the cot, in jail, in Kentucky, as a carny, wondering how your a loser was scrawled.  Ah what a life I lead.

It took me awhile but I did figure it out. The guy who did this, has to stand on the toilet seat and with the tip of his zipper flange, etched in the concrete walls the words. Now picturing THAT in my mind, made my plight a little easier to take.

As soon as I got into the front of the courthouse I took out my cell phone to call Jack and see what I was to do now. I call and get his voice mail. A lot of good this is doing me. The two knuckle heads I had been traveling with are no where to be found. I opened the front doors of the court house and looked up into the afternoon sky, reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption, lacking of course the rain and the background voice of Morgan Freedman.

I sat down hungry but clean and awake. Even my aches had subsided, I was ready to get back into action. As an hour passed, then two, my phone finally rang, it was Karla, the smiling corn dog women. her voice was pleasant and much like my wife, her first concern was about my safety.

” I am doing fine Karla, what am I to do now?”

She told me some of the trucks were still on there way from the old venue and she would arrange for one of them to stop and get me. She did explain it wouldn’t be until later that evening and that I had to wait.

I asked her if she knew what happened to the box truck and the bunkhouse and she said she hadn’t a clue. But that Jack was looking into it. Which made me wonder why she had called and he didn’t. She explained to me that Jack was in fact her husband and he had asked her to make the call. Interesting, I would have never pictured these two together as man and wife in a 100 years. She being kind and friendly, he was not. Maybe they were much like Paula and Simon on American Idol, that love-hate kind a thing.

Thank God I never blurted out to her what a jerk her husband was.

The sun was setting and still no ride in sight. The town I was in seemed to be closed after 6 pm. No one on the street, not a noise to be heard, except the rumbling in the far off distance of coal trucks traversing back and forth on the highway.

I am sitting up against a tree when I see what looks like a firetruck heading toward the court house. On the side of the cab was the name of the ride company who was my employer. Sure enough I was finally going to get out of Macon County, without my ass being touched by a toothless hillbilly. Or was I? As it turned out the guy driving the truck could very well have been the same guy from the Deliverance movie.

There were two of them in this small cab and they were towing the main parts of the Ferris Wheel. My only seat was going to be somewhere holding on for dear life on the back of the trailer, in between the gondolas and the scaffolding. Maybe I should have brought along a camera, they would surely give a better visual and document the fact that this actually was happening to me.

We still had a good two and a half hours to travel. The air was getting a bit nippy and the high humidity levels turned into a a mist, then a steady drizzle, followed by a constant rain.

IN my head I figured up how much I had made so far, from all this work and toil and misery. Let’s see $1000 a week divided by 7 days, comes to about $145 a day. $145 a day divided by so far 20 hours a day equals $7.25 an hour. How the hell did I figure $1000 a week was going to be a great paycheck for work? As we pass a McDonald’s on the left hand side of the highway, I think to myself, the kid salting the fries was making $1.25 an hour more than I was!! Not to mention I have laid out $500 for bail and at least another $100 for leaking gray water all over PA. I stopped figuring at that point.

Right now I truly am a LOSER.

LOSER

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Posted by Eric on Sep 20 2009 Filed under FUNNY, TRAVEL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry