Boots in the Road and Other More Typical Mirages

The road to Corpus Christi was fraught with peril. The day began as the last several have with “thick of fog” as we used to say in Maine. It was hard to figure where it has all been coming from as we have been relatively removed from the bodies of water that would produce it, but none-the-less there it was. We took our time getting started to avoid starting the drive in the worst of it and chose instead to do some prep for a leg of the trip a few days down the road that would see us traveling through an underpass that we are marginally, or shall I say “just barely” able to pass under. We took our measurements with and without air in the bags that lift the coach to travel mode height and double checked our figures. If all goes well and we have our calculations right we should clear it by a couple inches. If not, I suppose we’ll be talking about that soon enough. For now it seems safe.
Still, hours after getting on the road, we came upon what looked to be road construction. It’s never fun, but it’s no biggie either. Saw the big electronic arrows that tell you to get to one lane or the other, some flashing hazard lights, the break lights on the vehicles in front as they slowed for the inevitable delay that often coincides with those signs. But as we got closer there were signs up saying, “Accident Ahead.” And there was one. And it must have been a doosey! A pile up- the kind you get in heavy fog when driving speeds do not match up to road and visibility conditions. A California kind of highway accident! The kind that can only happen when everyone is caught off guard in a moment at the same place and time. There were cars on carriers. There were cars still in the gulley. There were cars rolled over and cars askew in the road. It had been bad. There was broken glass and plastic and metal all over the place and fluids wetting the road. There were fire and police and rescue crews all over. The debris field was surely a couple hundred feet in the road and at the end of it all, right smack dab in the middle of the road, was a pair of boots.
Now I’d like to tell you it was a pair of extra fancy rattlesnake skin cowboy boots to make this even more of a Texas story, but I can’t. More likely they were a pair of mucking boots that fell off a fire truck or similar. But what a representation of what had happened here earlier, I thought.
Still further down the road we came upon a second accident. Three 18 wheel tanker trucks had mashed each other pretty handily and the chemical cleanup crews were on the scene and working away. What I am sure were normally nice clean shiny tank trucks were coated in the green slime of fire retardant and absorption material that looks like what they use when they seed the side of the road on new highway construction. Again it was a strange image of what had happened, and you understood the message without having to see it play out and luckily without being involved. No doubt both scenes were the result of very heavy early morning fog. Texas’ version of the New England white out played out for all the passers by to view!
And still further down the road, as the shock of the last two scenes faded, the “real” Texas classic emerged from the fog of the morning and into the heat of the day. What now looked like beautiful and grandiose lakes started to appear everywhere. In fact they were the fabled mirages of the flat lands and the desert. They are stunning - just not real! But real enough so as to make you understand why a man dying of thirst in the desert surrounding him would spend his last ounce of energy in a desperate attempt to reach the water they purport to offer. They call to you from far away, yet you can never get any closer than you already are…
That evening in the campground on the bay we took a stroll in the wind out onto the fishing pier. At the end of the pier we struck up a conversation with a family doing some fishing as day turned to night. He was a Spanish man dressed in patriotic red, white and blue theme threads from his head wrap and cap to his sneakers and everywhere in between. We talked about fishing and we talked about his service to this country in the Marines. He proudly showed me his leg brace that keeps him walking even though his knee was severely blown away. He lifted his shirt and showed me the waist wrap that lets him stand so he can fish. He was thankful to be there fishing. He was happy. He was a Texan. He was a Mexican. He was also an American and made a point of it! As we are want to do, we shook his hand and thanked him for his service before heading back to the coach to put the day in perspective.
You see, at the end of the day, and in their proper perspective , not all things are as they may first have appeared to be. Some things that seemed to be, are not. And some things that seemed not to be- are!