Overnight.

Don't know what it is about that overnight Pittsburgh run. Had that trip last night for the first time in two weeks. I finished up at 1430 hours on Wednesday afternoon. I hung out with my wife for a couple hours. Did some sanding on the staircase. Showered and went to sleep at 1800.

I woke up at 2200. I made some cigarettes and filled my Thermos with coffee. My wife had already made my lunch. She's the best. I left for work around 2345.

After warming up my truck, kicking the tires and making sure there was a pallet jack in the trailer, I pulled away from The Dock at about 0015.

Route 28 southbound. I was lost in diesel driving dreams by the time I was passing exit 17. I don't have a get off 'til exit 8.

I think I write when I drive. In my head. Sometimes it's a song on the radio that gets it started. I usually listen to WDVE on the overnight. Last night they played some Zappa. The one about being a dental floss farmer in Montana. That will get your Writing Jones all fired up.

I saw Frank Zappa once. It was in New York and I was maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. I think it was Poughkeepsie. We took a bus and stayed with some cousins of a friend of mine. What a show. After the concert a bunch of us were hanging out in this park near the place we were all staying. The cops showed up and we all ran. That's what you did when the cops showed up. I remember running next to this girl. She had pretty red hair and I had tried to talk to her earlier in the evening. She didn't seem like she wanted to talk to me. Once we were running from the cops that changed. Now she was scared. I wasn't scared. I'd run from the cops before. I'd run from Jersey cops. And back in the seventies if you ran from Jersey cops you better make sure you got away.

So me and this girl run in a different direction from the rest of the group. One thing I knew about running from the cops was that it's better to split up. I had a feeling that the cops were more interested in chasing us out of the park than actually catching us.

(Years later when I was a cop myself, I found out how right I was that night in Poughkeepsie. Sometimes you just want to make people go away so you can have a quiet night in your zone.)

So it turns out that this girl's parents were on vacation. It turns out that her older brother who was supposed to be watching the house had gone fishing up in Vermont with some friends. It turns out that this nice looking seventeen year old red head had the house to herself. She was happy that I had stayed with her and helped her get away from the cops. I ended up staying with her for almost a week, even after her brother got back from fishing.

Yeah, so back to the overnight trip to Pittsburgh last night. I heard Frank Zappa on the radio. Like Robbie Robertson said, it was "sure stirrin' up some ghosts for me." That's what often feeds my Writing Jones. The Stirring. Good ghosts and bad ghosts. Take something real, like the Infamous Poughkeepsie Concert Trip and make something out of it........I really need to start writing again. And this time I think I know how to do it right.

I guess I've always had a thing for redheads.

Hey Tommy. Yeah, she has her last chemo infusion tomorrow. She's been getting sicker and sicker as the chemo builds up in her system. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Keep 'em up brother.