Sunday Morning, April 22, 2001

On Sunday mornings around here is one of those news magazine type shows called, oddly enough, "Sunday Morning". It's a little different from most news shows though, in that it has a lot of good stories, not all the blood and guts that are so popular today in news programming. Now I don't really pay strict attention the whole 90 minutes the shows on, I'm usually doing other things while it's on, but when the last segment comes on I stop what I'm doing and watch. This last portion of the show is only about a minute long but it commands my attention. What they do is put a microphone and camera somewhere out in nature where a city boy like me doesn't often get to see or hear, a babbling brooke with fish catching flies, a field with grazing animals, some wild flowers swaying in the wind, no humans, no voice overs, just a few moments with nature, undisturbed. I try to allow the beauty of this peaceful segment of the show influence my mood for the rest of the week. Some times it works.

I live a few miles outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It's called the suburbs, but it's so built up and over crowded here it may as well be part of the city. I drive a tri-axle dump truck for a living. I haul stone, sand, dirt, and blacktop for a local quarry or get rented to various contractors to haul material for them. My truck, when loaded, can legally weigh 73,280 pounds here in PA. 80,000 pounds if I'm in New Jersey. The average car weighs in at 2,000 pounds. Lots of hills here in PA make the truck very slow or really fast, what most people in cars don't realize is, gravity and momentum work big time with heavy trucks. I always have some one in a car jumping out in front of me, causing my heart to jump out of my chest, so that they don't have to be behind a slow truck. Near misses can make my days pretty stressful. But I do love to be outside, I don't think I could work in doors all the time.

(I was working for a different company when I wrote this, the trucks below are my current employers trucks)

(my work truck)

Remember all the hype about the Y2K bug? Y2K kicked my ass. No, my computer didn't, nor any computer that directly affected me, crash. The world on January 01, 2000 was pretty much the same as it was on December 31, 1999. I was just in the middle of a real bad string of luck. My father died in 1999, my marriage fell apart in 2000, I had some extremely bad financial difficulties in 2000, and I put on a lot of weight so my health isn't that great. It seems like anything that could go wrong has, with one exception, I haven't escaped all this crappy luck in a bottle of booze or some other drug. One PLUS, a very important plus, on a mile long list of negatives. Of course, for me, this one plus makes the list of negatives a whole hell of a lot shorter than it could be. I have to remember that I am allergic to alcohol, and other drugs, I break out in handcuffs. All in all, the year 2000 (Y2K) was a rotten year. 2001 hasn't shown any signs of being different so far.

I get up to get ready for work every morning at 4:30am EDT. As a result I get to see the sunrise pretty often, but while at work I don't pay it much attention. I remember when my wife and I were still in love early in our relationship I would wake her and my step daughter up in what they called "the middle of the night" and drag them out to the car. I would then head to the New Jersey shore about 70 minutes away from home. There I would drag the family onto the beach and we would watch the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. It was an awesome sight, something very relaxing about the sunrise. Most people are still in bed, it's the most peaceful time of day for me.

Today, I had my own "Sunday Morning" moment and it lasted little over an hour. Boy, did I ever need it. While making a delivery a few weeks ago I passed by a spot, like so many others, that I said I'd have to come back to on a day off. I don't often go back or even remember it was there, my day to day life can be overwhelming at times. Well this time I did go back, I got on my motorcycle and it was towards the city, not away, I went. The City of Philadelphia has a pretty extensive park land set up called Fairmont Park. I went to a section called the Belmont Plateau. From here I sat on a hill with rolling fields and trees all around me. it was about a half hour before sunrise. I could see the Center City Philadelphia skyline (about 5 or 6 miles away) from my perch.

It was beautiful with all the lights and shapes of the building tops. I could hear a woodpecker pecking away, song birds singing and the peacefulness of an undisturbed morning whispered hello, and there were a couple of squirrels chasing each other around the tree tops. Indeed this was a true "Sunday Morning" experience. As sunrise approached (6:13am according to the local weather service) the clouds thickened, bummer I thought, but even so, I've already enjoyed a peace I haven't felt in years. The power of nature is amazing, from total destruction to absolute peace, amazing. All of a sudden there was a small streak of orange peaking through one of the cloud layers, the clouds had opened a little area of sky for me, and through some trees, who only had a hint of green on their branches, there it was, a piece of the sun, getting ready to start a new day. There was just enough of an opening in the clouds I could see the whole sun as it climbed into the sky before it disappeared behind more clouds, bright orange, awesome. Like the trees just starting to grow new leaves I felt a sense of renewal. I hope to hold onto this peacefulness. I had my camera with me and shot a whole roll of film hoping to capture this moment. It was overcast so I don't know if the shots will turn out, but the ones in my memory are clear, for now at least.