I had the occasion to spend a couple of days and one night in a large, mid-western city last week. It doesn’t matter which city because, in my mind, they are all the same.
I was to speak at a convention, and they were putting me up in a very expensive, high-rise hotel in the downtown area of that metropolis. The tallest structure in my entire county is a grain elevator, and this single hotel was more than twice that height. Needless to say, I was a hillbilly in the big city.
I didn’t sleep well at the hotel that night. The constant screams of sirens on the street and revelers in the hallway were noises that were far too different from the usual moos of cows or a howl from a distant coyote, to allow me to participate in any kind of restful slumber. I was up before sunrise with no chores to complete, so I decided to go outside for a bit and get some fresh air.
In the early morning darkness, and relative quietness amongst the maze of glass, steel and concrete, I observed hotel security rousting a couple of homeless guys from their sleeping spots and sending them on their way before the average hotel guests might awake and be offended. I watched as they stumbled away.
Friday, after the convention wound down, I checked out of the hotel and eagerly retrieved my car from the underground lot. I wanted to get out of that city and back home as quickly as possible. Leaving the hotel, I turned right on a four-lane street, but needed to make a left at the first intersection. The left-turn arrow turned yellow just as the delivery truck in front of me made his left. As the sign instructed, I yielded to oncoming traffic, while a lady behind me started honking. There were several cars that needed to clear the intersection before I even attempted my left-hand turn, but the honking lady continued her noise, adding a few obscene gestures that I could readily see in my rearview mirror. I tried to ignore her before finally making my turn. She sped past and made another gesture as I tipped my hat to her. I figured she must have had a bad day.
Once on the outer loop of that city, where the posted speed limit is 65 MPH, a car passed me doing at least 80 MPH, whipped back in front of me and started to slide sideways before finally regaining traction and straightening out. I thought to myself, “Why would anyone live in a city by choice?”
At the peak of rush hour, I made it on to the Interstate highway that would finally take me away from all the madness I had endured for the past 48 hours. A few miles out of the city, I began to realize that many of the vehicles that were passing me at illegal speeds were pickup trucks and SUV’s pulling trailers that were either hauling or towing all-terrain vehicles. In their back windows I could see blaze-orange coats, rifles and camouflage equipment and it brought me back to the reality that deer season would open the next day.
An hour after leaving the city, with my composure more calm, I reasoned that maybe they weren’t so unlike me after all. The only difference was that they were taking this opportunity to escape their over-crowded, high-stress, rat race existence, and I was very simply… just going home.
