<![CDATA[
<bgsound src="LuciadiLammermoor.mp3">
]]>
I was driving along a high rocky ridge on the side of a mountain somewhere. The vehicle I was in was a dune buggy type of contraption with roll bars and no roof. There was someone in the passenger seat to the left of me who was probably Charles. Before the memory of driving this dune buggy along these cliffs, we were doing something that led up to us having to drive in this vehicle, but I can’t remember what it was or the other people who were with me earlier. The cliff we were driving along had a crude trail or road constructed into the side of the cliff, made for vehicles such as the one I drove in, to ride along and traverse this very dangerous path. Although it was indeed a road of some sort, it was still very rocky and almost indistinguishable from the rest of the cliff. The cliff was comprised of light tan- and brick-colored stones, like you would see in an Arizona desert. The trail was very uneven and bumpy, and I had to drive as close to the side of the cliff as possible or we would plummet off the path and to the bottom of the chasm beyond, which was at least 1000 feet deep. The trail was barely wide enough for me to drive along. I was rather surprised that I was able to drive along this trail as well as I could and Charles and I seemed rather calm about the whole thing, like we weren’t really in that much danger, although we certainly were. I continued maneuvering this dune buggy along the path with the cliff to the left. I don’t know how high the cliff was or even where I was going, although I may have known when I was actually dreaming this. We started driving when it was daytime, but it quickly turned dark and suddenly it was getting more and more treacherous to drive along this cliff, not being able to see where the road actually went. I remember seeing some kind of light in front of the dune buggy as if the thing had headlights, but this still made it very hard to see. It felt to me as though my dream wanted to make it as difficult as possible for me to be able to drive along this path, and that was why it suddenly turned dark. I was slightly able to see where the road winded and sometimes I just guessed where it went and blindly turned, hoping I was going the right way. The scene somehow got a little blurry, as if since I was kind of able to still drive along the path in the dark, then something else needed to be added to make it even harder for me. It was like the windshield was smeared and this made it hard for me to see just where I was going. I thought about just stopping once or twice, which would have been the smart thing to do, but again, I felt no fear and continued just turning and driving as though falling off the cliff wasn’t such a big thing. Finally, the blurriness and the night vision made it too difficult to see and I didn’t make a turn sharp enough up and to the left, so the dune buggy lost traction and began sliding off the road. Normally under these circumstances, we would have tumbled end over end and crashed down the side of the canyon, killing us and destroying the dune buggy, but instead we slid smoothly off the side of the cliff, the dune buggy sliding sideways, and we eventually landed on the canyon floor. Charles and I kind of laughed, saying stuff like: “Oh yeah, like that would really happen when falling 1500 feet!” These comments were confusing because although I don’t think I actually knew I was dreaming, the comment we made suggested we knew that if this wasn’t really a dream then we would not have slid down the cliff like that and landed safely. We knew we would have been shredded from the fall, but it didn’t surprise us that we were fine. Perhaps I somehow knew that I was dreaming and had nothing to worry about.
I was on a hill or incline of some sort that reminded me of that hill with the huge mounded steps in downtown Puyallup at the bottom of North Hill that I climbed once when I was depressed in 1981. In front of me, sitting on the hill, was a desk of some sort. It appeared to be the usual sized office desk, like the kind people normally sit at in offices. Also with me was Menson, the guy I used to work with at Costco who used to stock the freezer but hurt his shoulder riding a bike or something so he got stuck stocking candy. The desk was made of a hard black plastic with a pebbled grainy top surface and had a cup holder in one corner of the top. The desk sat on one of the flat surfaces of one of the large steps, a step that was about halfway up the hill, around 100 or so feet high on the hill. The desk seemed a bit old but was sturdy. Menson and I were steam cleaning or pressure-washing the desk. I vaguely remember holding a thin hose of some kind and spraying the top of the desk with a swoosh of pressurized water. I was facing toward the front right of my desk at an angle and I guess I was standing on the desk. I recall spraying out the little compartments and drawers of the desk. I would pull out a drawer and spray the water into it, splashing water everywhere. In the top right hand drawer, which I remember as being an 8-inch by 4-inch jobee, beige and with a metal handle, was an old picture of the Fairchild plant on South Hill. It was an aerial view and I think there may have only been one or two buildings in the picture. The picture was kind of faded, looking slightly browned and a bit warped at the edges. This made me realize that this was a desk that used to be in the Fairchild building somewhere. Why it was now on the side of this hill was a mystery to me, but it does kind of symbolize the fact that the place is being gutted right now and all the office furniture and equipment is being removed to be used elsewhere. After some time, Menson propped the desk on its side, folded its legs inward, and handed it to me like it was a fold up table, and it was then that I realized that he had been doing most of the cleaning on the desk, not me, and he had done a great job of it as well. As I looked at an angle down the huge steps or mounds, I saw two men on stepladders on the step below mine. They were 20 feet away and the ladders they were on were 8-foot-tall numbers. The men had that construction guy look, you know, tool belts loosely hanging from their baggy but-crack-revealing pants, and hard hats adorning their short-haired noggins. They were probably facing away from me as they stood on the third or fourth rung up on their perspective ladders. I’m not exactly sure what they were working on but it looked like maybe they were changing light bulbs, although of course they couldn’t have been doing that because there was nothing above them but empty space and the sky even further above that. Between the legs of their ladders was snaked an extension cord that I had put there earlier on, although I can’t remember doing it. Apparently it was there to power a tool that I was working on that needed to be plugged in and that was what this extension cord was for. The cord was the orange kind that I have at home and use from time to time to weed eat. The cord twisted and turned on the ground as it wound between the ladder legs and then down the hill and out of sight. The next thing I recall is seeing Zeman, the freezer stocker from Costco. This scene somehow was part of the same dream where I was on the hill with the ladder guys, but if Menson from Costco hadn’t been there then this scene would have been totally unrelated from the first part of the dream. I guess I was at the freezer/cooler section of Costco and saw Zeman there, walking around. As he walked by me he was humming a song that sounded really familiar. The song reminded me of a tune I may be able to relate to something I heard earlier in life. The lyrics were: “A low dog comin’ . . . A low dog comin’ . . .” It was like an old Jerry Reed or Jim Stafford song. It had that country folk feel to it, but also had a cool kind of beat, not necessarily the country twang permeating over it (a sound I absolutely despise). I remember seeing Zeman with his short blonde hair and white T-shirt, being in front of the glass freezer or cooler doors, and hearing him mumble this tune. The song, which is one I have never heard in real life and is another one of those songs that I would never have heard unless I dream, sounded really familiar so I asked Zeman what the name of the band was that did that song. Before he could say anything I told him not to tell me (“Don’t tell me . . . don’t tell me.”). Finally I gave up and couldn’t place the band’s name that did that song, which I usually can do because I’m so damned perceptive. However, Zeman revealed to me that he didn’t know the name of the band either that did the song. After some time Zeman finally told me that the song was one that was performed by someone that was like Buck Owens. I then said: ”You mean like Roy Clark also?” Zeman replied: “Yeah.” Then we started hearing that ol’ pickin’ and grinnin’ music but this time it was live and not from a radio or anything like that. Zeman and I walked around the corner of a regular latex painted wall, much the same pattern as walls in my home, and there was a barn scene with hay and all that stuff to the left around the wall and there in the flesh was Roy Clark and Buck Owens. Although I barely remember any of the details here, I know that Roy Clark and Buck Owens were there sitting on bales of hay or something and were doing their Pickin’ and Grinnin’ routine, just like they did on Hee Haw, and now they were playing that A Low Dog Comin’ song like there was no tomorrow.
Top of page
Main page