Our

Story

by

Lawrence Abby Gauthier

ace reporter

The Westphalia Periodic News

Next Stop, Mars

Part 2

Benny, the over-the-road trucker and a fictional me, had just delivered a 20-ton load of paper from a mill on the Oregon coast to a warehouse in New Jersey.

He sent a Qualcom message to dispatch back in Omaha: “Unloaded. Ready to take off.”

While waiting for dispatch to reply, Benny had one of his Bean Visions. Like most all of them, it was a glimpse of the obvious that would never go away.

Obviously, if he just took off without knowing where he was going, then obviously when he got to the first intersection he wouldn’t know whether to turn left or to turn right ...

... leave it up to feelings and he’d go around in circles until winding up in the ocean or in a ditch.

He had to know where he was going to make a plan to get ‘er done.

Obviously.

Just then, dispatch replied. Benny was instructed by somebody with authority in the chain of command to pick up a load of Mars bars at the Hershey Chocolate factory in Hershey, PA, and take it to the big Walmart Distribution Center on I-35 just north of Dallas. Three days to get there. Piece of cake. "10-4 good buddy, over and out."

When Benny got to the first intersection, he knew just what to do.

Because I’m the writer, the “ace reporter” who creates “Benny the over-the-road trucker,” I know all his Bean Visions. Getting ready to write this week’s column, I recalled one of them, the one he had at the New Jersey docks, the one with Mars bars in it.

For this week’s column, I was planning on writing about what was going on now in America from the perspective of a new old timer, retired with enough to live on, on a sunny Easter morning in a quiet house at the eastern fringe of a sprawling metropolitan area, where Denver comes up against the endless, empty forever plains… and then pausing, like waiting for dispatch to reply. Are we going back, or to somewhere new?

Are we going Back Again to memories of a time when America was Great – when America, and nobody else, was Number One… “USA! USA!” Children were starving in China, so eat your peas! A dreamy Norman Rockwell scene where everybody in the neighborhood seems to have enough of what they need and negroes have their own fountains to drink from.

Back to that?

Or maybe we'll be instructed to go someplace new. To Mars, perhaps?

We could colonize Mars. Throughout history, earthlings have exhibited a peculiar inclination to colonize, usually ending in wars. But if we were going to Mars, we’d get a chance to do it in a place where nobody else already lives — a clean slate on which to superimpose a civilization created in our own image and likeness. Imagio Dei! A place where everybody is an immigrant.

(...to be continued)