On the Road Less Travelled - Slices of Life
by Randy Cromwell
9 March, 2000 A.D.
As you may have surmised previously, by virtue of the sales pitch at the bottom of all these web pages, the publication of Pith Magazine is partially funded by the very humble occupation of pizza delivery. The particular pizza delivery in question is courtesy of your faithful editor, me. This being the case, I decided that, in addition to using the job's obvious advantages of keeping the magazine circulating, and keeping your ever-voracious editor fed, I may as well also use the job for its particular perspective on that little slice of the world that only a pizza driver sees.
Certainly there are millions of us modern citizens who spend hours in our cars, many days of the week, and some of us even every day. (I wonder if this frightens anyone else, or if I am the only one who thinks that it's strange that we lock ourselves into these mobile metal cages for hours at a time, and just glance at the world through the glass, as we rush past it, in our hurry to get somewhere that we often don't even really want to be, anyway. It all seems so odd. This is a tangent. Please join me now, as we move on.)
The world of pizza delivery is, in some ways, even odder than some of the other employments I've enjoyed. There have been quite a few of them - the "writer's prerequisite," you know. I've subscribed to the myth that a successful writer must sample any number of unrelated occupations in order to become worldly and knowledgeable. All that those jobs really do, besides paying for one's survival, is distract the writer from writing, and often leave him or her either too stressed, or too exhausted, or both, to write anything of value, or so it has appeared to me. Granted, there may be a great number of people who manage to come home from a hard day in the coal mine and whip out a couple of good novel chapters every night, but I don't seem to be one of them. I'm much more likely to come home and read a couple of good chapters, than write any. This has its own value, obviously, but I have not done nearly as much of the writing as I have wished.
This little column is an attempt to correct that situation. It is my intention to use those little incidents that I get to witness, every day, as I meander through the streets of my little town, looking for hungry people. While I realize that I am doing nothing so noteworthy or essential to the race as negotiating treaties or curing cancer, I like to think that I'm doing my part, by keeping the pangs and distractions of hunger away, so that those who are working on such lofty pursuits are able to continue with their noble occupations. It would be a great disappointment to us all if some wonderful advancement were lost, simply because a researcher became faint while waiting for lunch. Thus, I make it my business to be the very best pizza driver that I can be. Somehow, somewhere, some day, I just know that it will make a difference.
When I'm not busy justifying my job to myself, I often get to see quite a lot of strange and interesting occurrences while I'm in the restaurant and on the road. It's my belief that a pizza driver gets to see more drama and humor in a day's worth of delivering than most other workers have the opportunity to witness in their jobs. I am, obviously, on the road quite a bit, and I also spend some time in the restaurant, as well as in people's homes and places of business. Because of this, and because of my need to write, and to be read, I've decided to begin this little addition to my website, and see where it leads us.
The incident I will report today is a perfect example of the strangeness that seems to happen every day, either while I'm on the road, or while somehow otherwise engaged in accomplishing my duties. The incident begins strangely, and ends even more so. I will swear, however, on the strength of my word as the best pizza driver that I've ever met, that it is completely true.
While I'm out making deliveries, particularly during my daytime shifts, I often notice the birds. There are a few hawks that live in and around our little town, and I enjoy watching them drift lazily around the sky. (No, I don't stare at them, thank you. I AM driving a car at the same time, and I consider it to be terribly bad form to explain to officers and next-of-kin that, "Sorry, I was watching the birds.") Fortunately, as I discovered today, it's not always necessary to look up at the sky to do my bird-watching.
I was cruising westward down a residential street that would become a more commercial route just a few blocks ahead of me. Doing somewhere close to the legal limit (of course), I happened to notice that a mini-van in the east-bound lane was about to run over some strange obstruction that was right in front of it, in the middle of its lane. Since I was so close to it, the van could not swerve into my lane to avoid it, but it did seem to be slowing down just a bit to avoid the odd-looking thing.
As I approached, I saw movement, and then realized that the obstruction was actually two fairly large blackbirds, doing exactly what two birds would do in springtime that would make them look like one obstruction. The maroon mini-van was nearly upon them by the time that they decided that they had not chosen the most private road for their rendezvous. I was making my usual bet with myself, that I do in the sort of circumstances where it looks as though another vehicle may be involved in any sort of interesting behavior. The question seemed to me to be a very clear one of: "Will the amorous avians escape certain doom by terminating their embrace, or will they romantically refuse to part from each other, and thereby go into the annals of bird history as the 'Romeo and Juliet' of the Grackle Family?" (It takes a lot to keep a pizza driver's brain amused.)
At what seemed to be surely their final moment, they seemed to forcibly tear themselves away from each other, and sort of "stagger" into flight, to dodge the van, which was only a couple of feet from them, by now. The male seemed to launch himself mostly skyward, and then toward the nearby lawn (which seemed to me to have been a better place for this sort of activity anyway, but I'm not a blackbird - what do I know?), and escaped completely.
The female, as I guessed (Dammit, Jim! I'm a pizza driver - not an ornithologist!) took a mostly horizontal escape route. Distracted as she assuredly must have been when she began that stumbling flight, she did not take all the variables into consideration - namely: me.
With a sort of horrified fascination, coupled with, I admit, a little sardonic amusement, I watched this love-drunk lady bird flap mightily, and I began a sigh of relief as I saw her lift herself enough to clear the front left fender of my speeding pizza-mobile. I never got to complete that sigh, however, because she was not out of danger. I simply assumed that air currents and such would assist her in gaining the rest of the altitude that she needed, so that she could be done playing raven-tag with the traffic, and return to her lover, presumably in a safer locale. I do not know if the air currents were unhelpful, or if she was still too delirious from her lover's attentions, or if, perhaps she was just a few fractions of an ounce heavier now than she had been since the last time she was airborne.
Whatever it was, though, it was enough to get her above the hood of my car, but not enough to get her over the roof. This large, lovely bird flapped one and-a-half times, and then went "Splat-thud" against my windshield, and then tumbled over the top of the car. I felt so bad for her, but I also felt a little disgusted with the clear, gooey streak she left right in front of my face. I think even blood would not have been so bad, but, since I knew very well what she had just been doing, the fluid that she smeared across the glass seemed to be even a bit more disturbing than blood might have been.
Still, there was no further sign of her, and there was traffic behind me, so I sprayed the washer fluid and cleared the windshield, and I drove on, without ever even really slowing down. I looked for the hapless bird in my rearview mirror, but could see no sign of her. I have no idea whether she might have survived our impact, but of course I hope that she did, and that she was in good enough health to return to her partner, so that they might have another go.
I didn't think about it for very much longer, though.
I had a pizza to deliver.
Come back soon for more "Slices of Life" |
