The premature heat from the May sun shown down on the blacktop highway as the hills of New Mexico's San Mateo Mountains rose up behind Interstate 40. Tall in the distance and short in the valleys, the rugged forests of Cibola National Forest hardly made a dent in the topography of the red-orange earth. Speeding westward, traffic rolled unorganized, a mass of colors on the horizon. While the mid-day sun burned brightly into the already long early summer's day, I looked toward sundown, calculating how much distance I could cover between now and then. Pushing miles, I hoped to get into Arizona before noon. I could fake a nap on the "comic books", aka logbooks. That way I'd be able to do my driving during the daylight hours. Going by the book I'd be forced to attempt sleep during the desert midday sun, then run all night. Yeah, right.

Today the desert high country seemed particularly welcoming to thoughts of complexities, profundities, and hypocrisies. As I drove, I thought about many different subjects I have always wanted to address, should just the right audience and occasion present itself. Of course the largest obstacle to my delivering such well-reasoned opinions must have been a simple oversight. No one had ever asked. A minor detail. For when the imagination soars and uninterrupted time allows creative forces free access to unused brain cells, amazing things are dreamed. If only some one would ask, I could dazzle, sound bite, and spin on just about any topic. Yes, imagine that; a trucker invited to participate in the process. I visualized a great speech, perhaps before the National Press Club. Standing before a podium, I'd take a glass of water and sip from it as I surveyed the audience.

I shifted the truck into the eighteenth gear and let her roll with the cruise control set on heaven. Returning to my dream, I wondered as the truck floated if I'd be the first man to ever address "them" wearing Wranglers and a neon pink brushpopper shirt, complete with pearl snap buttons. Would I speak about life in a northwestern county, delving into the misperceptions city folks had about our unique culture? Would I launch a commentary on Chicken Haulers? Or pursue my personal thoughts on all things impersonal? The thoughts clicking through the space between my ears were like an out of control odometer, unordered and carelessly random.

Beginning my mental lecture to an invisible audience, I look out over the well- dressed and suited audience, smiling. Taking off my baseball hat, shuffling my papers and note cards, I clear my voice and lean forward. It is then that things begin to turn a little south. An impulse of unexplained misfortune overtakes my arm, and in a tornado-like flurry the collected contents of my speech are launched off the podium. Releasing my carefully crafted words, cue cards, and assorted papers into free flight. They drift gently down over the startled reporters. So too went my credibility. Only in the superstitious New Mexico desert could a man's daydream get hijacked and turned into a nightmare. At this point, most people would shift their imagination and regain control over their fantasy. Not I. I had to know where this would all end. My thoughts returned to the Press Club as a mixture of dread and anticipation filled the cab.

Resuming my speech, now winging it free-form, I mentally count off all of the points I would cover. The brilliance of government regulations began my thirty seven-point speech. Addressing the wisdom of manmade laws set against the realities of a body's natural biorhythm, I spoke with credibility. I question the federal government's "hours of service" regulations, the rules that tell drivers when they can and cannot drive. These crazy regs often mandate truckers drive during times when they are the least alert. Damn a driver's natural clock! Forced to operate at night, when every study suggests people are more inclined toward sleeping, the logbook regulations actually promote that which they are trying to discourage; truckers sleeping behind the wheel! The audience nods in support. I continue.

According to the double-messaged behavior of hypocritical courts, lawmakers and DOT cops, tired drivers trucking through the wee hours of the morning are preferable to the logical alternative. Drivers try to conform to the regs, toothpicks keeping eyeballs open, while everything in their systems urges a shutdown.

The laws instruct us to drive, 10-4 when we are tired, and sleep while we are awake!

Meanwhile back at the scales, DOT officers pull drivers in for a look-see, checking 'em up and down, knowing that eventually even the most conscientious driver will try to stretch the laws and maybe lie a little on the logbook. OK, lie a lot. Approaching the truck smiling their evil vulture cop smiles they know that better than sex or a twenty-pound trout, truck drivers operating under the guidance of their internal clocks rather than against them, make for a good catch and quick advances up the super cop ladder. Better yet, the never ending stream of logbook tickets makes for some very generous, nearly impossible to challenge, revenue for the states.

These hours of service regulations require, "Ten hours behind the wheel, followed by eight hours off." This insanity results in a driver's sleep schedule rotating around the clock. In Vietnam, POW's called the same treatment sleep torture. In America, DOT cops call it, "safety and compliance," based on paper-pushing, golden-badged whims, rather than sound science or even common sense. How many dead drivers ghost those logbook regulations, their memory served up as a chilling testament to the false claims of revenue-driven regulations that beat the hell out of their own stated safety goals? Falsification of logbooks is often the only way to get around these antiquated rules and still safely operate. Drivers constantly push the law, get caught, and pay the fines. Everyone familiar with the current system is aware most drivers "work their books." Dispatchers dispatch by it. Shippers base their deadlines on it. Receivers await their freight counting on it. If truckers operated strictly by the law, instead of conscience, fatalities would increase, state revenue would drop, and the nation's freight would slow to a crawl. The motto of survival on the road states, "Drive when alert, let your body guide you, and get a good traffic ticket lawyer."

Interrupting my daydream and the wonderful fantasy of my speech, I looked down at my own logbook sitting on the shotgun seat. If I timed things right and crossed the right scales at the right times, I would be where I wanted to be, when I needed to be there. I would also break every logbook rule in the book. Arriving safely in Fresno, I'd be well-rested, but illegal as hell.

Smiling, I passed a New Mexico trooper writing out a "safe driving award" to a man with a California-plated Vette. I issued a silent dare; "Catch me if you can, badge happy man." Knowing all the while that, more times than not, he would.

Returning to the fantasy, I finished my presentation. The audience applauded respectfully. And for a moment, I actually believed that things would change as a result of my appearance before the National Press Club. Public opinion would turn in our favor. I just knew I'd made an important impact on the press. I smiled down at the audience, pride swelling up in my chest.

Then came the questions. Relaxed, I nodded to NPR's Nina Totenburg. Before asking her first question, she grinned at me. "Mr. Anderson, that was a remarkable presentation. Of course you realize, and I believe I speak for my colleagues, that we simply had no idea of the challenges faced by truckers out there on the nation's highways. Truckers are truly heroic, considering the working conditions they labor under." She patted her hands together and the rest of the room resumed its applause.

As I felt the adoration of the press gathered before me, I thought to myself, "This is the best daydream I have ever had." They absolutely loved me! Basking in their admiration, for the first time in my life I finally felt the respect and honor that had been so long in coming to those of us in the trucking profession. The press wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been warned they were. From my exalted position at the podium, the reporters gathered below looked like wonderful harmless people. People who toil tirelessly to present the stories they cover fairly and accurately. I did not see any liberal media bias. I saw brotherhood. Nina remained quietly standing there while the applause died down. She smiled at me again. I considered inviting her up to the ranch and wondered if she would come. We could become good friends and I would dazzle her with endless trucker stories. I again nodded toward her as she prepared to ask me the first question.

She grinned as she stepped up to the microphone. "Mr. Anderson. By your own admission you have driven while tired. In fact, if the quote I have written down is correct, you said you have numerous trips under your belt where you can't remember anything from Seattle to Vancouver, Canada, a distance of nearly two hundred miles. Did I understand you correctly?" She was still smiling. But she didn't seem so nice anymore.

The rest of the press corps was also smiling. But it was a slightly different smile than what I'd seen only moments before. More hyena than happy. Some were licking their lips. I wasn't sure, but it appeared some of them were actually growing fangs.

Suddenly I didn't feel so loved. I still felt wanted, but more like the kind of wanted a deer feels just before a mountain lion leaps. I felt like dinner. Their dinner. I looked back at Nina. Stunned, all I could do was nod.

"So you admit that you have driven while tired. And if I understand you correctly, broken federal laws, lied on your logbooks, hid from law enforcement officers and even on occasion, tried to produce false documents just so you could continue to drive while tired?"

I was the deer in her headlights. Paralyzed, I stood blinking, trying to think faster than she could question.

"Do you really expect the motoring public to buy this notion that our highways are yours to do with as you please? Making up excuses for your behavior and blaming it on shippers, receivers, law enforcement, and antiquated hours of service laws? Is anyone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to drive under these conditions?"

Again I could only nod. My mind raced. This must be what surgery without anesthesia feels like. "So you believe someone is holding a gun to your head?" In the background, the radio station went to the emergency broadcast system, its jarring dissonant tones bringing me back to reality. The daydream dissolved but I was still shaking. Unsettled, I concentrated on the highway ahead, gratefully aware that in the land of make-believe, you can end a jackknifed press fiasco before it threatens to make a fool of you in front of yourself. Nina was never coming to the ranch. Ever.

Surprisingly, the same desert which leads me to visualize these grand scenarios, produces tremendous fear and anxiety in others. An international food broker friend whose business is concentrated in the Asian Pacific markets, once relayed to me the fear that the openness of the desert brings to his foreign clients and visiting friends from those crowded Pacific Rim lands. Living in overbuilt and densely populated cities, they are used to an ever present crush of humanity. Suddenly confronted by the opposite, they react with fear to the vast spaces presented by the wide open spaces of the desert southwest. Huddled together next to tour guides and gleaming motor coaches, they survey the miles of unoccupied openness rising up before them, and their resulting uneasiness is instinctive. It is as if the clean unpolluted space of the desert might suddenly swallow them whole.

With all that room to walk around, stretch, and simply take in, these visitors to the Mojave generally choose to remain safely crowded together. Somehow it is unspoken that by congregating tightly around the bus, they can make a stand and hold off this ominous threat as they pause in their trek through the desert. I feel the opposite. As the open space decreases, so does my comfort level. It is not at all intimidating to me to be the only soul for miles; solitary on some isolated blacktop route. My enclosed world of the truck becomes a small dot, slowly making its way from one mountainous horizon to another. Sometimes I feel almost absorbed into the road as I travel the arid valleys between those lonely ranges.

These are the quiet highways where solitary travelers greet each other with a wave. A minimal effort extended between strangers with the shared knowledge that such greetings occur infrequently and that the rare fellow traveler met at hundred mile intervals does not equate to crowded highways or threaten solitude. The momentary distraction and interruption on this road less traveled is a welcome diversion. It is a shared understanding that balances the peace to be recognized in all that aloneness.

Yet for many, getting lost in ones thoughts and the threat of having to occupy the mind when there isn't much scenery to provide stimuli is an intimidating proposition. Most visitors to this landscape opt out of this silent introspection. They would rather travel in the company of strangers, via the radio or books on tape, than spend their travel time surrounded by silence and open space. Sometimes I think the real threat that the vast deserted territory of the West holds for her visitors from more crowded regions reaches beyond the intimidating proposition of so much open space. It really involves the prospect of too much dreaded "one-on-one" time with one's self.

The empty scenery flying by the windows mirrors not only the landscape, but the soul. And the last thing many travelers want to see when they are "getting away from it all" is all that might be in the soul which needs to be gotten away from in the first place. It is no small surprise that so many travelers refer to the Mojave as something to "get through" as they drive from isolated city to isolated city. These hurried travelers will never savor the quiet time framed by big sky views. And perhaps they shouldn't. At least not without the company of a good therapist riding along beside them, ready to deal with all the issues such introspection brings out.

The traffic raced along, surrounding the red Kenworth. Mentally reinforcing my inner criminal and horrified at the terrible turn my little daydream had taken, I reevaluated my logbook plan. Guilty, guilty, guilty. No one outside the industry could ever hope to understand the miracle of freight movement in the new dot.com, just-in-time world. Nor would they care how many laws are broken every day to make it happen. As disconcerting as the abrupt exchange in the fantasy Press Club had been, I took pride in my profession. Despite being members of one of the most dangerous occupation groups, truckers still roll, keeping the nation supplied with all goods and services that they need. Like the bumper sticker says, "If You Got It, A Truck Brought It."

How many consumers would choose the rotten lettuce at the supermarket…the stuff driven all the way across country, legally by the book? How many business travelers wouldn't object if their plane couldn't leave the ground because the jet fuel didn't arrive at the airport on schedule? Or, I wondered, would the head of the DOT mind, the next time he sat on the toilet, if that the load of "just-in-time" toilet paper wasn't?

The flying public doesn't tolerate the loss of a single airliner. When there's a crash, the aviation industry is held accountable, from plane manufacturer to airline management to pilot. But in trucking, year after year, more than 5,000 fatalities a year seems an acceptable risk outcome.

For a bit my thoughts quiet. Becoming just another incognito rubber-wheeled cell in the nation's bloodlines, I keep up with the parade. Now and then I spy a minivan's load of precious cargo, kids aged 6 or 7, their arms flailing in an up and down motion. Slowing down, I run alongside, blasting my air horn. The horn invariably delights the kids as much as it scares the hell out of mom.

If I could just ease my load of patio furniture across Arizona's San Francisco Mountains before the sun falls headlong into their horizons, I might not find my face marked by perpetual squinting. Gearing back up, I drive on by the screaming Pokemon kids, pass a silver Airstream trailer, and resume calculating the rest of my trip. The high country near Flagstaff and her honor guard, the San Francisco Range was still three hundred miles away. Kingman was another two hours west of there. Needles, California, where I wanted to bed down, seemed even further.

At a time like this, the best distractions are food. Sometimes the only creature comfort of a long haul is the day's meal. Food becomes the focus of hours of thought. Visualize it. Touch it. Taste it. Smell that pseudo-home cooking. The meal stop might be the only human contact a driver has for 24 or 36 or 72 hours. Piped-in country music and neon chicken lights light up the restaurant windows in the predawn. Tomorrow's twilight comes complete with ripped vinyl booths on the side, easy on the stuffing. The waitress might give a good slap with her menu, the bus boy might smile, or the lady behind the cash register might have a funny new JB Hunt joke. 30 minutes of humanity surrounded by idling diesel rigs, cigarette smoking men short on time and shorter on love. It is a buffet of humanity. All of us feeling dried up as the food, as if we had been sitting under the heat lamps way too long.

Passing time and miles while awaiting the passing of the salt and pepper, I began thinking about the day's gut bomb. Should I tempt fate and do the Italian Surprise! Buffet? Or should I go fast and greasy? The buffet I could pay for out of frequent fueler coupons. The fast food would be paid for with heartburn, saturated fat, and chronic gut ache.

Still, like all truckers, I look forward to these times. The luxury of being stationary. If it's spitting snow outside, I might be warm. If it's raining, I might be dry. And when I'm lonely, I might get me a stolen wink under the buffet glass from a stranger in wranglers.

Just the thought of that potential meal got me a hundred or two hundred miles further.

k.d. lang sang about Constant Cravings as the hum of Little Red Ride 'em Good's reassuring purr kept perfect time with the thoughts of a day gone surprisingly sweet. Turning up the volume, I passed the low slung hills outside of Grants, New Mexico and began to make the run toward the higher elevations of Gallup. The song ended, the station signal became grainy and I found a replacement station out of Albuquerque. Remaining clear and blue, the sky fell open in front of me as I traveled ever west. All thought of food vanished as my attention fixated on the horizon and the descending mile markers to the Arizona line. I found a National Public Radio Station that was perfectly clear and for once I actually kept the signal through an entire program. It was "Talk of the Nation" time. Hot damn!

Mental stimulation on the road comes in bits and spurts. Especially where radio is concerned. Listening to hours of programming while the miles click by on the odometer, truckers keep up with what's happening in the nation via talk radio. Some of the programming is entertaining, and a few shows are actually informative. The radio hosts become best friends, gossips, and confidants. Or, in the case of Howard Stern and his fellow shock jocks, reminders that some class clowns never grow up.

The cast of characters accompanying me and my fellow nomads is as varied as the landscapes we travel. Change in America can be measured on the bandwidth dial. Whether it is Rush Limbaugh's "Republican Revolution," the rants of G. Gordon Liddy, or the midnight wackiness of the recently retired Art Bell, fiction often moves from fad to reality. And the remaining bits of truth are pushed aside in favor of entertainment.

One hopes that radio audiences know better than to take any of these shows seriously. The hosts themselves occasionally remind their listeners, loyal fans and skeptics alike, that they are merely entertainers. Still, a few of these professional talkers seem to have bought into their own hype.

There's Dr. Laura, for instance. Perfect for those times when a driver needs a fix of motherly advice. Like all good parents, she is inconsistent as hell. "Act as I say, not Do as I do," is her motto.

Listening to Dr. Laura from her beginnings on KFI radio in Los Angeles, I have witnessed her frequently changing views, tilting ever more toward the right with each further penetration into the deep southern radio markets.

I remember her once advocating gay adoption. At that time, she professed to believe that a gay household was almost always better for a child's well-being than a state-run institution. She has since reversed her rhetoric.

In the old Dr. Laura days, she actually listened to her callers instead of jumping to conclusions, second guessing them and subjecting them to one-sided moral tirades. Her radio ethos was not as much about her, as it was about her assisting people in need. Other changes occurred as well. There was a time when the good doctor went so far as to say she was no one to judge committed same-sex unions, and regularly dispensed on-air advice to these couples. Those days seem forgotten now under the reign of the new Dr. Laura. Suddenly anyone who doesn't agree with her "has an agenda" and is "out to get her." The new Doctor is in, but she's in tight with Christian conservatives ,who admittedly have an agenda of their own.

Enough. The dial spins as the soul seeks new audio companionship. As much as the AM radio crowd drives me crazy, the FM gang can be just as bad. If there is an agenda on the AM dial, it is arguable that the same is true of FM, especially where National Public Radio is concerned.

Here the rule is substance, substance, and more substance. Rhetoric devoted to relieving the stupidity of humanity filters tastefully down from the elite studios of NPR. Where the conservatives on AM view God as reigning over us from heaven, those at National Public Radio seem to believe that if God would have just listened to Ira Glass or Cokie Roberts in the first place, half of society's ills could have been prevented.

Listening to Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" and her usual lineup of elite liberal guests reflecting on world hunger, world conflict, and the world view of various artists, the frustration and longing I feel for alternative guests peaks about every other show. NPR talks a lot about celebrating diversity. But celebrating diversity, "Fresh Air-style," often seems to encompasses only the very liberal.

I am rarely surprised by Gross' guest selections, questions, or reactions. I always know exactly where she is headed, long before she gets there. And just as one can assume that Rush rarely takes conservatives to task for their excesses, Gross seems equally reluctant to pursue lines of scrutiny which might hurt the causes or people she favors. Drawing upon her extensive background knowledge regarding the entertainment industry, Gross interviews everyone from the up and coming to the nearly forgotten. She is very good at what she does. Yet she could do much better. I often get a sense that those who share her political persuasions get a free ride. The predictable ruts Gross travels are just as well worn as those of her more conservative contemporaries. She has done a fine job of introducing the artistically uneducated to established urban cultures.

But what about giving her urban audience a little more of the riches to be found in less traditional venues? Her selection of topics is narrow and elitist. Reinforcing the view that public radio only peddles itself to those who identify with the higher arts, the left, and all things highbrow, Gross rarely addresses common people's lives. Sure, the lady from Philly occasionally acknowledges that some good culture has come out of the south. Flannery O'Connor and Bailey White are damned good writers. But what of the passion of NASCAR fans, the lovers of tractor pulls, and attendees of monster truck races? I am sure Bailey White would find culture there. Flannery O'Connor, God rest her soul, might have too. Is Gross afraid that by addressing the interests of common folks, who far outnumber those who attend the ballet, she would be "dumbing down" public radio?

Someday I would like to see Gross grapple with the complexities of a gathering of gunsmiths and outdoor craftsmen in Cody, Wyoming. Instead I fear that her coverage of western art would translate into a week-long exploration of the "Burning Man" in Nevada. On "Fresh Air," could a renowned lawn ornament crafter get the same respect as an avant-garde artist who pisses on a crucifix? Whether recognized or not, the common classes have culture and artistic pursuits. It isn't highbrow, it may not be urban or politically correct, but it is arguably "fresh."

Still, I admit that when I am on the road I listen to National Public Radio just as faithfully as I tune Rush. One doesn't have to agree to find stimulation. Were it not for public radio, huge expanses of the western landscape would have no live audio companions at all. These forgotten territories, whether stretched out and baking in the sun or assaulted under a ten inch dump of snow, are not commercially feasible markets. Ad revenues are scarce and Arbitron and Nielsen surveys don't register. This is the land of frontiers.

With stale coffee in one hand and the gears working through another, I listen to "Morning Edition" rise along with a Front Range sun. Sometimes the commentators cause me to pause and ponder. Eight hours later, 450 miles further down the road, and another time zone away, "All Things Considered" forces me to re-consider. NPR commentary, layered with news, peppered with weather, and brimming with human interest makes the miles fly.

But outside the cities, radio signals are fickle. They fade in and out at the worst possible moments, static overpowering my broadcast companions, leaving me enraged at yet another missed ending. On occasion I have lost precious road time because I slowed the truck in order to hear the conclusion of something on "Morning Edition." When signals faded during particularly interesting features I have gone so far as to stop entirely, standing silently on the cab steps, one hand holding the roof antenna, the other stretched to a point on the Kenworth dash just shy of the tachometer. Don't laugh. It works. Sometimes. On other occasions, the secret to catching all of "A Prairie Home Companion" could be found by turning the truck around and facing the wrong direction in the rest area parking lot. Pathetic, I endured the ridicule of my peers on the CB, all so I could listen to the Lake Woebegone gang dish up their Powdermilk Biscuits, "Talent from Towns Under Two Thousand," and dedications from far traveling Lutherans.

I also became addicted to NPR fund-raisers. I couldn't, "just say no" to pledge drives. I never met a pledge pitch that didn't tug at my conscience. Soon, coffee-mugged incentives started filling my mailbox. One friend, upon learning about my unresolved NPR guilt, suggested that I was a closeted Catholic just waiting to be born.

Actually, I worried that if I didn't contribute, I wouldn't ever learn how to fix my car. On Car Talk," Click and Clack (aka the Tappet Brothers, aka Tom and Ray Magliozzi) taught me things that even my mother was unable to instill. A Saturday morning spent with the two of them reinforced the fact that men are indeed inferior. But we are so oblivious to our plight that it doesn't matter. And that two people really can know less collectively than they do apart. From them, I also learned that I was consistent in my inconsistency, capable of choosing the worse possible brand of automobile year after year.

From Michael Feldman's "Whad'Ya Know?" I learned I knew little. Wisconsin accents sound even more endearing in stereo than they do at the Petro truck stop on Interstate 94. I discovered that trivia is trivial but that the stretch from Cedar Rapids to Des Moines goes by faster with "Whad'Ya Know?" than the wandered musings of an actor translating a book on tape.

Each Sunday, I listen as Daniel Schorr explains the week to me. In five and ten and fifteen minute segments, this large world becomes smaller. And I realize that maybe we aren't all as far apart as the rallying cries from the far sides can make you believe. Keeping company with the miles and the truckers, the NPR commentators fill my cab and the distance between myself and the outside world grows a little smaller. One beautiful, fresh word at a time.

Yet there are also times where words are too much, and it's music my heart desires. My radio appetite resembles the tides, constantly pulling one direction or another. And as much as the art of radio is about endless choices, the reality of big city radio forces us to make one choice. We are trained to tune the dial and expect something in return for where we let the it land. A country station must play country. A rock station must spin rock. There isn't any mixing and matching. The audio middle ground has left the building.

These stations market themselves and define their audience, hoping that the right combination of programming, hype, and hoopla will sell their advertisers. Hooked on Phonics, Tums and Five Tanks of Texaco. In return, we listeners get traffic on the seven's and ten hits in a row. The NPR trade-off becomes silent pledge drives in exchange for cash sent in envelopes. Meanwhile, we the silent listeners can only wonder about all that we hear. Do stations wonder if we even care that they call their format du jour "The Peak" or "The Bear" or "The Mountain"?

Fortunately, there are still a few radio renegades. Opinions and objectivity can be formatted. The renegades can't. Some nights on wide-open Texas highways, I've found those non-formatted, non-focus grouped stations, where Garth is played alongside the B-52's and George Winston. These stations feature DJ's willing to take a chance and walk out on the edge. It's the real world equivalent of college radio. Under twinkling stars and dancing northern lights, a Great Falls, Montana DJ spinning a hundred miles south of me, inspires me to truck on through the night as he lays down Frankie Goes to Hollywood, followed by Everything But the Girl, followed by Collin Raye.

Sometimes my mood insists that the radio go off and the tape deck take over. The energy levels run high and I need a downer to calm the driver from the drive. The choices of audio entertainment are plentiful. Recorded books on tape from Cormac McCarthy to Anne Lamott bring the mental random drift back into specs, restoring the listener's direction.

Other times, it takes something a little stronger. Audio accompaniment not available from the mass merchandise music or book store. It's at those times, when the fatigue and the hypnosis of the miles lulls everything into a constant drone, that DJ's fresh from the power dance clubs come to my rescue. Even "real" men, those hard-collared buddys who don't dance, understand that sometimes the best hedge against fatigue is a beat. A back beat, a break beat, a metal synthesized beat, or a mixed beat. Artfully laid down by DJ's who know how to keep dancers gyrating for twelve hours straight. Those club DJ's re-mix our interstate lives, translating strobe-lit, sweat dehydrated after hours frenzies into another 500 miles on the odometer. Beats per minute traded for miles per hour.

My friends from the DJ booths did more than transform those roads from the same ol' same ol'. Their clubs became my laid-over home away from home. Waylaid in Oklahoma City, delayed in Dallas, and replayed in the Gay Bay, I sat in their booths while they talked about the energy of the house tonight and whether the "vibe" was right. If it wasn't happening they told me why. And when the vibe called and the groove was in the house, they didn't have to say a word because I could feel it.

These electronic angels have often brought me back from the brink of sleep, letting me hammer out an extra hundred miles. Or more. I rolled on because they cared enough to rocket ship their skill onto cassette tape, FedExing their captured circuit party to a Flying J outside of Little Rock or Des Moines or wherever I was. 120 beats per minute turned inside out took me from Rock Springs to Laramie. Or Billings to Missoula. A new tape meant a new boost, banishing boredom from well-traveled routes so familiar I could trace their curves blindfolded.

This is "new" church. A Holy Ghost, "Thank You Jesus!" revival where alternative spirits move as the dancers spin through their nonstop gyrations. The beat and the mix become one with the heartbeats on the floor, and eventually, through my tape deck, with the pounding of the highway. Thanks to my generous friends from the clubs, I traveled not just by the bounce of the air seat, and the grind of the gearbox, but refreshed from the thump of their prerecorded art. Grabbing a fresh tape from a FedEx envelope, on any given Monday, the masters of the mixes recharged my batteries and many loads in danger of being late were rescued.

Another radio station faded and as I climbed out of Grants, New Mexico, I wasn't ready for the stillness of silence. I found an old dance mix tape made by my friend Jon Williams, a DJ out of Sacramento. The tape was several years old but Jon's talent transcends the trendy mixes of most DJ's and his older stuff borders on timeless. Over the years, Jon has grown to know my rhythm. Accurately reading me from thousands of miles away, the overnighted arrival of Jon's work always hits the spot. Translating my love of slow beats per minute and more dudes than divas, his playlist cartwheels over variety and comes to life. Risking traditional beat, diversity, and the status quo, he rules the world of bootleg mixes and reigns as the master of the unauthorized remix. With Jon spinning it's possible to hear Aaron Tippin backed up by Mariah Carey, with a little bit of the artist originally, but now not formerly known as Prince, sampled in. Working George Winston into deep house, or Clay Walker backing Paula Cole, he goes where no typical club DJ dares to tread, spinning with an edge and style that would no doubt have the original artists in fits.

When I first met Jon I didn't understand his talent or how much of a role music played in his life. One day he joined up to ride on the truck. Intrigued with trucking, he wanted to understand the rhythm of a gear dancer. As we rolled our way north out of Sacramento toward Washington, I also tried to understand him. It was nearly Thanksgiving and already the roads in the high country were treacherous. While the landscape turned white, signaling the advancing elevation and falling snow, Jon negotiated me through an endless maze of "Name That Tune," bringing me back to my college days in Seattle as a short-term DJ in a now shuttered hip-hop club. The songs he tossed out brought back bittersweet memories. Memories that reminded me of the power of music to free one's mind. And the power it has to land young renegades in trouble. Like Jon, I had my own history of mixing. But mine landed me on social probation. I began mixing tapes for friends while attending a Christian college in the mid-eighties. I dedicated my life to retro and even pre-retro, Sometimes mixing the immaculate Amy Grant with the likes of the even more immaculate Village People. A certain element of the student body who made a mockery out of residence life policies and "Christian Living for the Lord" was all too happy to follow my turntables of debauchery wherever they spun. Many of us were incognito preacher's kids who were adeptly skilled at getting into trouble without getting caught. Forbidden on campus, only proud outlaws on the run from Residence Life danced. My dorm room became an impromptu disco and a haven for the sins of the flesh. Coined "Studio! Hit the Floor!," every time the RA walked by, the decibels dropped from the sounds of Rick Astley to the sounds of silence. Recordings documenting our decadent activities were smuggled out the door as quickly as I could make them. While the campus was officially dedicated to leading people to the Lord, I led them to the dance floor.

As Christians, we are told that the flesh shall pass away and that deception is futile because all sin is usually discovered. No matter how good you think you are at hiding it. The residents of Marston Hall thought we were very good at getting away with all things carnal. But we weren't good enough. God is better. And, contrary to our Sunday school theology, He enlists well-paid spies whose soul mission in life is to narc on anyone remotely on the verge of having a good time.

It had to be this way. And it was. Infiltrated by a guilt-ridden traitor on his way to salvation, our days were numbered . My career as the Pied Piper of the pulsating penis set ended abruptly when a porno mix I made sampling President Reagan, Dr. Ruth, George Michael, Book of Love, and Madonna mysteriously made its way to the Dean's office. The Powers That Be saw no humor in Dr. Ruth advocating putting peanut butter on a penis to make it taste better while Ron and Nancy Reagan countered with "Just say no!" to the accompaniment of George Michael belting out "I'm your man!!!"

Abruptly, my days of spinning on campus were over. My talents took me elsewhere. Landing me in my first and only DJ job, in a very questionable nightspot. The club was "in transition." Located in Seattle's Bell Town neighborhood, at that time still in the infancy of its gentrification from rundown to hip, the club catered to an African American crowd that did not understand how a white boy wearing cowboy boots could know the difference between Salt N Pepa and Bobby Brown.

That summer, after several weeks as the college kid-boy spinning discs in a black, cigarette-filled venue, I concluded that neither the city, the college, nor the clubs were for me. Bailing out of academia and into a truck, I sold my records, and the mixing boards. On the run into a self imposed exile my only glances back were secret, stolen, and full of hope that the confiscated tapes from Marston Hall never made it from the Dean's Office to my father's. All of my life I've felt the call of the open road. I lived for midnight road trips, 500 mile family jaunts to see grandparents, and the horse show circuit. Stationary in a dorm, survival became the equivalent of stifle. Needing more than the late night fix provided by the beat of a set of Technics turntables, and silenced within the walls of an unaccepting Christian university, everything in my life seemed close to cave-in.

Somewhere in the dawn of my senior year, the call of perpetual motion beckoned. And for once I listened to that melody above the roar of a business degree that promised a lifelong desk job. I saw the writing on the wall: become a well-paid cubicled paper pusher, or a broke adventurous "no boundries" diesel pusher. Coming to my senses, I sold out of the sell-off of my soul and pursued a financially challenging job, "that anyone could do" because it was what I knew I was meant to do.

My family responded with horror. When she heard of my premature end to college and immature entrance into trucking, my step grandmother cried, "Now I can't brag about you to my friends anymore!"

Still, my love for the beat remained. As Jon rode shotgun, we talked about all the old school classics. I felt like I was back in homeroom.

I give DJ's a great deal of respect, viewing them as artists and translators. They are the readers of vibe, groove, and energy. Watching Jon as he looked out the window of the cab, I saw a glimpse into the world of those who rise at the sun's setting and return hours later, spent, dragging themselves to bed long after dawn. His finely-tuned energy was both exhausting and exhilarating as he channeled his musical vision to me. Working with various artists in live performances or bringing to life their canned recordings, he repeatedly risked his reputation to please the whims of the fickle clubbers who demand constantly changing, high intensity entertainment.

As the music Jon recorded the night before at San Francisco's Pleasure Dome played over the truck's tape deck, we rose higher and higher into the mountains. I felt the beat build as Jon translated with increasing energy where he was taking us with the mixes. Soon the peaks of the Eastern Cascades gave way to the high volcanoes of the Three Sisters, Three Fingered Jack, and Mount Jefferson. The magic of harmony and melody built and Jon took greater risks to bring the dancers, and (after the fact) my truck, higher until we finally crested the jack pined-plains of the high desert.

The music climaxed as we crossed the Crooked River Gorge and the Deschutes River. I felt myself gripping the steering wheel tightly just to hold on against the maddening beat. Gazing over at Jon, I realized he was holding on just as tightly. Not because of the beat, but due to the fact that we were traveling on the edge of a cliff. On his side of the truck the road dropped away hundreds of feet.

I damn near split a gut and busted up laughing. Jon could stand unfazed in his DJ booth before thousands of expectant partygoers while working the lights, taking calculated chances and pushing the envelope of sound. But he is terrified of heights! Fearless in the clubs, here in my truck, he was out of his element.

Looking over at him, white knuckled and pale, clutching the armrests, I was reminded that risk is in the eye of the beholder. I could effortlessly roll forty tons of truck safely down off the side of a mountain, but could never bring thousands of party-goers to a frenzy. Jon, on the other hand, could bravely manipulate the masses to a oneness that defies description. But on the side of this mountain, he touched fear and winced as he beheld the power of all that space.

That day, as the skills of one person were compared with the other, the spinner of disc and the spinner of eighteen wheels. I learned that respect, like risk, is all in the eye of the beholder.

On the outskirts of Gallup, New Mexico, the largest Native American City in the nation, I drove into the western sun. Checking my watch, everything seemed on schedule. The music, cranked up loud, varied just as the landscape. I played Jon's most recent tape from a gig at a Sacramento club called Faces and basked in the memories of our shared truck ride nearly a decade earlier.

Lost in the music, I didn't hear the beep of the Qualcomm. That innocent beep. The dreaded chirp, signaling the beginning of a bad day or the first sign that dispatch was on the warpath. My dispatcher, a kind man named Stan, did his best to shelter me from the wild whims of sadistic load planners. Thankless men in thankless jobs, load planners have the ability to move freight. But their gift also translates into the ability to move grown men to tears as holidays, funerals, births, and other important mile markers of life are hot-shotted, bypassed or forgotten.

Freight or family. It's a dismal choice. Sometimes months of planning fell to pieces over equipment breakdowns or breakdowns in communication. The choice between love of life and "get a life" easily blur in trucking. Usually the misfortune begins on the load planner's computer screen, is transmitted to dispatch, and climaxes by imploding all over a driver's meticulously formulated home time plans. Qualcomm is simply the messenger.

Spying the little red light signaling an unread message, I scooped the keyboard off the floor. The single line message on the green screen was simple. But I hated it just the same. "Call me. There's been a change of plans. Stan."

Gulp.

I have grown to hate the words "change of plans." My day of fantasy and reflection suddenly vanished under the simple assault of the words, "Call me. There's been a change of plans."

Lunging to replace the keyboard, I wondered exactly what Stan meant by, "a change of plans." Part of me already knew the answer. With two days to get to Fresno, I knew I could get the job done if the weather held and "Lil' Red" was a good girl. I prayed the load planners hadn't just destroyed my plans. Pulling off at the Giant truck stop, I parked the big red Kenworth and began my trek across acres of hot asphalt. My gut told me I was gonna hate the results of the call to Stan.

Entering the building, I was reminded what an impressive oasis the Giant travel plaza is. The truck stop hosts a theater, several specialized retail stores catering to truckers, a few fast food outlets, and endless phones, shoeshine booths, and anything else a driver short on time and long on needs could want. All of it conveniently located in the middle of nowhere, out in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Breathing in the aroma coming from the restaurant, I remembered that I was famished. Job before pleasure, I made my way toward the phone booths. Overhearing one driver as he screamed at a produce broker about the revenue on his load, and listening to another yelling at his wife about the fact she wasn't pulling her fair share of their matrimonial load, I cringed. So much hate and discontent clustered in such a small space. A typical day in the life.

Grabbing the phone, I dialed the 800 number of my travel agent, aka dispatcher.

"Hey Stan, it's Tim. What's up?" I held my breath.

"Well we got you on a different pre-plan. How long until you can be in Gallup?" There was a strange, discomforting quality in his voice. Something unusual that sounded sort of friendly and sort of like someone trying a little too hard to "give" you "free" flowers in an airport. Deciding on the spot that Stan would never make it as a salesman, I braced myself for whatever came next.

"I got a team headed there now to grab your trailer and they will deliver that load you got tomorrow…" Then there was silence.

I hate silence. It means Bad News is coming. News that makes me whine and pout. I felt the frown forming on my face.

Hesitantly I asked, "And?" I just knew there had to be more.

I was not disappointed.

"I need you to grab that team's loaded trailer, deliver it early tomorrow morning and then head back toward Albuquerque." Stan was really too nice to explode on and I swore I would not join the screaming chorus of pissed off drivers around me in the phone lounge. But I didn't have the whole picture yet either.

"Albuquerque?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

"Stan, I just came from there." I knew I was on the verge of whining. Grown men do not whine. Cowboy trucker men are simply not allowed to whine. But I wanted to whine. I needed to whine. Nope. No matter what, I weren't gonna do it.

"Is there more I need to know?"

There is always more. In trucking, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. The rule applies most effectively when a driver is about to get screwed. I could feel it coming and Stan knew it.

"Stan, talk to me. Tell me…"

He interrupted me. "Tim, the team you are going to switch with is still several hours west of you. Head to the TA Truck stop on the west side of Gallup and let me know when you have dropped your trailer. Then you might want to grab a nap because they show an ETA of 6 hours out. Once you get their trailer you need to get it to Albuquerque by 4 AM so they can unload it. Then I have a reload scheduled. It's first come, first served. But they quit loading at 9 AM, so you will need to get empty as soon as you can." He paused and I knew the worst of the bad news was still to come. "You won't be taking that load either, it's already pre-planned for another team.

Translation: I was being asked to make a lot less money. And spend a lot more time doing it. It's the trucker's lot; "Paid by the mile, screwed by the hour."

I wanted to say something. But I didn't dare. My mind raced with lots of things to contribute to our happy little discussion. But most of those sentiments would not get me anywhere but in trouble. The concept of napping was definitely out. No way is a man who is pissed off because he isn't making a dime because of some nameless load planner shit-canning the miles the truck was supposed to be making, going to be able to take a nap. If I got in the sleeper and tried to get some shuteye, instead of sheep dancing over my head, all I would visualize would be my well-laid plans going up in smoke. And an anonymous load planner with a stick of dynamite up his ass.

Stan broke the pregnant silence. "Tim, you still there? Look, I know this isn't where you wanted to be going. I will try to get something better for you out of Albuquerque tomorrow."

I did my best to keep my diplomatic cool. "Stan I think it's best if I have a few moments alone in my time-out chair. Because if I don't, you won't like me very much. Let me call you back." "Uh, yeah. Call me back and I'll start working on that reload." He still had that quality to his voice. I wondered if there was something even worse sitting in some Albuquerque drop yard with my precious little name stamped all over it. A hand-stack load that had been sitting there for a week going somewhere like El Paso. One that no one wanted. A load that suddenly had "Timmy" written all over it. And another name as well. The one that simply read "sucker."

For some reason when men get angry, we are bound by our genetic code to do something physically compelling to demonstrate to everyone around us that we are angry. It is NOT sufficient to simply raise our voices. Women do that and it never seems to get them anywhere. Men are creatures of action. We do not want to be misunderstood or ignored. Nor do we want anyone to doubt the sincerity of our intentions. It is for this reason that real men celebrate our inner selves by throwing, hitting, kicking, and if the celebration is truly special, destroying inanimate, even cherished, objects. All of this completely nullifies the whole "men aren't in touch with their feelings" theory. We are. And those feelings are just waiting for an excuse to launch something airborne.

I proceeded to the scrub at the edge of the parking lot and looked for some things to throw. I briefly considered stomping on the pavement or hitting a wall, but that would have resulted in pain which would have made me madder. My time out chair seemed way too stationary for this celebration and after throwing rocks, screaming, and getting about 30 strange looks, I felt much better. In fact I felt so good I decided not to call Stan back right away, lest he decide to add any more generous contributions to my party. Not everyone can get away with giving their dispatcher the silent treatment.

Jumping back in the truck I followed his instructions. I dropped the trailer on the west side of Gallup, leaving many hours of unscheduled time. Time to waste. Still far too agitated to sleep, I did what all truckers do when the going gets tough: I bobtailed to Wal-Mart.

The store was crowded with Native Americans, many of whom were speaking indigenous first languages. I spent some time looking at Hot Wheels, but didn't see anything interesting. I looked at compact discs but was likewise uninspired. I looked at junk food and barely got out before putting myself in danger of gaining thirty pounds from a bulk sale on Ding Dong's.

Across the parking lot from the Wal-Mart I noticed a generic looking shopping mall. Some of its stores were familiar national names. K-mart. JC Penney. Others I didn't recognize but with time on my hands it seemed a true tragedy to miss out on an opportunity to pursue further retail therapy. Trudging across the parking lot, I targeted the Penney's store. The first set of doors I came to was locked up and barricaded. I tried another entrance. It was also closed. Finally I found an open set of doors and walked in out of the heat and into an eruption of smells; cotton candy, popcorn and cigarettes.

This was like no JC Penney I'd ever encountered. The place was haphazard with merchandise strewn in the aisles, clothing scattered about, and barefooted children running everywhere. Letting the heat dissipate from my skin, I stood still as my eyes adjusted to the light.

Gallup, New Mexico is no center of prosperity. Travelers pass a long strip of commerce running parallel to Interstate 40, with a branch running northward out of town along Route 666. The city defines fast and loose. The familiar arches and buckets of franchise restaurants hold court next to native pawn shops that stand next to mobile home dealerships advertising, "Native languages spoken here." On any given day the trail out of town is populated with hitchhikers, their thumbs outstretched for a ride to Farmington or Shiprock or maybe the middle of nowhere. This is a town where the up and coming may be just temporarily trading places with the down and out. Gallup is on the edge of a "nation" where nearly half of the people might not have running water, a phone, or a toilet. But they damn well have a brand new Chevy 4x4 truck parked in front of a brand new single-wide trailer that already looks twenty years old. Everything in and surrounding Gallup is about irony.

White men in Albuquerque and the galleries of Santa Fe dismiss Gallup as a sort of ghetto, surrounded by sage and parched prairie grasses. Yet from my perspective, few places in New Mexico or eastern Arizona can claim cultural superiority. Life as it is lived on the largest reservation in the nation is just what it is, and it seems to work for them, in this isolated little city on the edge of the edge. The mall doesn't vary with the scene on the strip and the scene on the strip doesn't vary much with the scene up in Farmington or Shiprock. Gallup is just bigger and much more in your face about the perplexities of the complexities surrounding our Native Sons. Corporate America came to Gallup and set up shop, but there remains an uneasy truce between the bean counter culture and a sacred culture's way of life snaking backwards in time as far as the eye can see.

Walking out of Penney's, into the halls of the mall, I notice an art show taking up the mall's center aisle. In the darkness of a corridor that lacks the airy skylights of newer malls, I didn't pay much attention to the art. My eyes were drawn first to the stores. Many spaces were vacant, but a few housed pawnshops similar to the ones out on the strip. Indian rodeo cowboy chaps hung against the windows with prices slashed. Chaps once worn with pride, but traded for funds to fix that Chevy. Or maybe to get a phone. Or a drink.

The store clerk looked up as I strolled absentmindedly into the pawn shop. Immediately discounting me as unimportant, she returned to her beadwork while I had the treasures in her shop to myself. I was harmless or invisible. Walking over to the window facing the mall corridor, I felt the chaps. Once brightly colored and worn where chaps are meant to show distress, the colors would have been flashy in the arena when they were new. In spite of the wear, they were much nicer than any pair I had ever owned. As I held them and savored the aroma of man and horse and bovine, I reflected back to where those familiar smells led.

My mother was the family fashion coordinator and determined the attire her children wore into the show arena. Mom was convinced it was her duty to make sure the judges noticed her children. If there is one non-Lutheran gene in my gene pool, it is my mother's lack of discretion in outfitting her kids. When it came time to enter the arena, not only did we not blend, we represented a holy ghost revival colorfest, her darling dazzling young performers, surrounded by cowshit, horseshit, and murmured whispering voices from the stands. "Hey check out that kid in the crazy chaps out there…it IS a boy isn't it? No Shit!"

In my mother's mind, a gray dappled Arabian gelding or a buckskin golden bay quarter horse wasn't flashy enough on its own. To take that first place buckle or the ribbon or the trophy mom needed to highlight the efforts of her competitive kids. She sought that special hook to captivate and reel a judge's eye our way. As the mounts we rode did their flying lead changes and sliding stops and occasionally even launched us toward the stands, all eyes were on us. Not because we were exceptional. Not because we had the best horses in the county. Not even because our tack sparkled, perfectly clean. Attention came our way for one reason and one reason only. We were the only boys in all of Oregon with turquoise neon chaps.

If my mother ever feels a twinge of guilt as far as my sexuality is concerned, it no doubt is caused by the memory of the hideous sight of her son wearing those neon-turquoise chaps. Surrounded by a sea of other young men in brown and tan and black chaps I was screaming before I knew how to scream, flaming before I knew how to flame. Of course the judges noticed. Of course the spectators in the stands noticed. Even my horse hung his head in shame and we both just wanted the whole experience to be over with. But not until after we took that blue ribbon. Which we did more times than not. Leaving the memories brought to life by the pawn shop, I walked out of the store and came face to face with the most exceptional work of art I had seen in a long time. Staring down at me from a ragged pegboard jammed with art was the most compelling sketch of a young Native American girl. Her round eyes hinted of tears and she had full soft cheeks. The wise but equally sad stance to her posture captured on the canvas made me forget that I was standing in the middle of pedestrian traffic. I don't really know why I hadn't paid much attention to the art show in the mall when I first wandered in, but suddenly I could not ignore it.

"She's incredible, isn't she?" The voice came from behind me.

Turning, I looked at the man who had spoken. He was an older white gentlemen, a bit heavyset, with light gray hair and small round spectacles. Looking at me and then back at the art that had knocked me stationary in the midst of power shopping, he demonstrated expertise just by his gaze.

He continued. "Incredible. Both she and the art…She is one of my best. But there are others. So many others." He sighed as we both turned our attention back toward the sketch.

While he spoke I closely studied the art that surrounded me. For some reason I thought about Rush Limbaugh and his "talent on loan from God." I knew that what I saw, all of this creative blessing sketched on limited materials and hung on a haphazard pegboard, defined true talent on loan from the creator. Maybe Rush was just a runner-up.

Now circling each of the makeshift easels, the man narrated a tour of the show, pausing before certain pieces to tell me the story behind the work. Occasionally a family would briefly join us and their children would give the man a hug. Then, with young outstretched arms pointed high and pointed low, the kids laid claim to where their art, and I am sure a piece of their soul, rested in the dim light.

"You know," he continued, "the stories behind this art can break your heart. Some of these kids have an hour and a half trip on mostly dirt and mud roads to get into Gallup just so they can show their parents and relatives what they have done. Many of the schools have no money for supplies and so we improvise. God you should see how we improvise. But the talent is there. We almost lost the entire program last year. Here, where the culture is so important and it just barely hangs on, so many of these kids are looking for anything to hold on to other than the gangs."

I looked at a picture of a modernistic coyote with brilliant markings and a fluid fresh combination of colors. Placed above the coyote, a Dallas Cowboys emblem was incorporated into a traditional native design. On another pegboard, a wise elder stared out from a soft charcoal drawing. In the countenance of his weathered face a high school sophomore captured a timelessness that transcended understanding. I looked at each work in the dim light and found myself unable to do anything other than stare in silent wonder at the talent of the young artists and the compelling story that their works told of their lives.

The man was speaking again. "There would be more students here today, but one of my our high school boys was killed last week and most of his friends are with the family. Some traditions we are losing. But others, especially when tragedy strikes remain."

I looked at the man and didn't know what to say. I knew about the reservation and the poverty that sometimes overwhelms the senses. I knew about the strange and the magical and the disturbing forces that perpetually seem on a collision course over the skies of the reservation.

And I knew about my own encounters and the order of chaos on the rez. The unexplainable aberrations that differ so much from my own definition of sanity. I had my experiences. Like the time when, pants at my ankles, I watched native jewelry hawkers frantically scurry to set up shop on the cold floor of the men's room of the I-40 rest area between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona. Moving inside, trying to avoid the detection of state patrol officers who felt "no soliciting" includes the art of the timeless hosts of the land, the merchants frantically waited for the all clear before scooping up the contents of those blankets and returning to the burning sun. Reclaiming the attention of the tourists in their motorhomes away-from-home, they again spread out their wares, trading tradition for the lure of the strangers' paper gold.

I remembered the panic when a strange new killer virus appeared almost overnight. When the hanta virus arrived on the reservation, formerly healthy members of the tribes were suddenly stricken. Most of the infected died horrible deaths. The white-coated, white-skinned outsiders from the Centers for Disease Control appeared on the scene and for months fears of strange new plagues joined the old standbys of AIDS, alcoholism, emphysema and malnutrition. No one knew what to blame and so they blamed everyone and everything. Rumors on the CB about new diseases on the rez kept truckers hungry, afraid to stop at the area's restaurants for months.

Hauntings of the first kind kept my attention as much as the art and the instructor standing before me in this surreal mall on the last outpost of this New Age. This was real. The art spread through the mall. The stories, the pain and the struggle born on second hand, passed-down materials. Unpolished, but deeply spiritual.

The true southwest is touchless, beyond the understanding of the rich California spiritual journeymen seeking wisdom from thunderdomed meccas. A million dollars worth of southwestern art, complete with crystals, sweat lodged bieges, channeled pastels, past lives coyote pinked and sky framed shaman turquoised with meaningless visions, misses the point. The southwest experienced from the safety of Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque also misses the point.

Incorporating all of this spirituality, minus the influence of Gallup and Shiprock is fundamentally too damn safe. Missing the tragedy behind the beliefs, how could southwestern art and spirituality be complete without the binged alcohol firewalking, the endless poverty and the going without and the making do with nothing? No overpriced galleried rain stick can shake away the culture gone AWOL. No Kachina doll can remake the injustice. No pretty bright purpled Indian blankets teach the meaning behind the colors of the sunset drawn when dawn seemed so uncertain. A few hours spent in a Gallup art show taught me more about First Nation's cultural and spiritual sovereignty than a lifetime of subscriptions to cowboys and Indians magazines.

Applying all I knew of life on the reservation, I considered the totality of art. The blood baths and the whiskey baths and round mud huts and round two year old eyes staring out of threadbare blankets at the Shiprock Kentucky Fried Chicken, forced me to see more than the pictures on the pegboards. I saw more than the instructor. I saw life on the reservation and a life that I only had a small grasp of. And what I knew scared the hell out of me because it was so close and so real. And it reflected a reality that beauty so often represents. The disturbance of a soul.

I have felt the gut-punch desperation of near jackknifes and barely avoided slaughter as I encountered those silent people in the middle of the night, walking down the centerline of highway 666, herding goats, their horses following behind. I have seen lights in the desert south of Shiprock, where during the daylight the only break in the horizon is the break of horizon. Images of a reservation mini-mart culture's beer cans littering the parking lot and the morning after souls littering the tables of the laundromat. Even on those journeys just passing through, I felt that somehow I wouldn't. That if I was careful, I too might be perched on the last stand before the middle of nowhere became my everywhere .

Tim Anderson Photo by Allen Bagwell

Wanderers and herders and ghosts. I knew of the conviction of a 1 AM waitress at the Petro truck stop in Grants, who warned as the coffee tumbled out of her pot into my mug, "Hon, don't you dare EVER stop on that highway. Keep going until you get to Jamestown or up to Cortez, but don't stop on that highway. Never pick anyone up. There are ghosts up there. And outlaws and the Apache and the Navaho and all the rest of them. No matter what anyone tells you, they all still have outlaw in them. I've heard too many stories."

I nodded, chewing the remains of the remains of the previous day's buffet while she continued her warning to the nearly deserted coffee counter. "There have been stabbing and robbings, and I know of drivers who have come in here terrified after giving ghosts a ride. And those are the ones that lived to tell about it."

Highway 666 was not about getting kicks on the art deco remains of Route 66. The road is about getting the shit scared out of you, complete with rug burns on your soul. This was not a neat and clean gallery in Santa Fe or Albuquerque. It is life on the rez, a rout that most normal travelers miss. If freight wasn't in the wagon, the highways of more appealing places beckoned. Durango. Moab. Monument Valley. Taos. Forget about Shiprock, Farmington and Naschitti. But this was the southwest, the easel of the students whose art I was looking at. This landscape of desperation was all many of them knew. This was where miracles were born in the middle of ugly. As I stood in the mall looking at the haunted, the magical and the disturbing, and the grotesque painted beautiful, I knew that some of these kids already "got" what most of us spend our entire lives trying to understand.

The man was talking again and my thoughts became centered on his words. "You know we almost canceled the show this year. The district said it was too expensive to put on and they needed to channel the funds to where they could be more effectively utilized. But we convinced them that it was important and two of us basically put the whole show together ourselves with very little resources. This show is important. Especially for the kids. Their art is legitimate and it reflects their lives."

He seemed waiting for an answer. Looking at the white-haired gentle man, isolated in the middle of impossible circumstances, facing a place where the learning came tough, and the never-ending heartbreak of the stories of his students threatened to douse the remnant of hope, I wondered. I considered. I debated. What could I say to demonstrate that his drive on behalf of the children of another people was legitimate? To acknowledge his status as saint in the shrine of a near deserted mall?

I returned to the first picture, the one of the round-faced woman, and the emotional pull of that work. Surrounded by the Indianized images where cultures combined under the glow of an Orange Julius booth, I could say little. I was spent by the glory of the experience of all that I'd just felt. "The work is very good. People would pay a fortune for something half as real up in Santa Fe. These children say more with one piece of art than a thousand stories about reservation life in "USA Today" could ever capture. I just can't imagine where they might fly if they only had the resources for decent materials, a well funded art program, and opportunity."

The man nodded and smiled. I reached out and shook his hand. "Thank you for standing up for the show, for your dedication to the kids, and for sharing this…all of this with me. I hope someday I will see some of these kids in 'Southwestern Art.'"

He laughed. "So do I. So do I."

I called Stan from the truck stop. The minute he realized it was me there was a pause. I translated his hesitation and visualized him sitting there 1500 miles away in the sterile and hectic world of dispatch. I felt him steady himself for what I am sure he expected would be an outburst from me. A pity party commentary on the sorry lot of my life, the lack of miles and the potential hand stack load that I knew he didn't wish on me but that was coming my way just the same. I felt his desire to run for cover and I met him at the pass.

"Stan, thank you so much for laying me over. You have no idea what just happened. I can't even believe it myself. I wish you could have seen it. I really do." My voice had that sing song quality that I hate. When I am excited about something it makes me sound like a child high on Cap'n Crunch. Or just like a true dork.

There was definite hesitation in his voice, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Uh, OK."

"No Stan, I mean it. I just had the most incredible experience and it's all because of you and the layover. But I think all of this was meant to happen. I just wanted to apologize for my attitude and let you know that I'm sorry for being such a royal butthead."

I recounted the trip to the mall, the beauty I'd seen within the context of art on the reservation, and the miracle of the meek under the influence. Under the influence of the talented hands of God, working amongst the distressed, the discouraged, and even the pissed.

Stan probably thought that I was even crazier than he'd previously believed. But it is the sort of craziness some people think is cute as long as they are assured it will never affect their own gene pool. We ended our conversation on the up and up and I eventually ended up back in my truck, headed back to Albuquerque.

Jumping into "Little Red Ride 'em Good," I pulled out of Gallup. The desert lay before that big red hood, and the Kenworth purred under the fading last rays of another glorious southwestern sunset. As I grabbed gears and set to making Albuquerque, I considered the day and all the places that I had been mentally, physically and emotionally. Life is never settled when you are in transit. Sometimes it isn't even settled when you are stationary. Life for a gear jammer is about moving on while looking back. Constantly checking the mirrors. Surveying where you have been is as crucial to where you are going as the horizon that big rig chases. Objects in the mirror are larger than they appear. Sometimes they sneak up on you. Sometimes they get lost in your blind spot. But in order to move forward, you have to make sure you aren't entangled in anything behind you.

That night as I drove, I thought about art and its greater meaning in my life. Under the softest mood moon I considered where I was going in the context of where I'd been. Reflecting on how sometimes the only way that any of life makes sense is through the hand and eyes of an artist, I sighed. An artist might capture in a few brush strokes what I could never say in a million keystrokes. The subtle contrasts. The highlights. The shadows. And the clarity.

I thought of the beauty of the desert and her motion. I thought of the reservation and the complexities of culture. I thought of Stan and how in reality he was the best dispatcher I'd ever had. And I wondered if he thought good things about me. In hindsight I figured that he probably tried to forget about me. I decided that maybe that was for the best.

As I settled into the motion of making miles, I once again reached for the radio and found Delilah and her "Lights Out" radio show. It's a show that is heavy on love and emotion, and ruled by all things of the Goddess. Normally I would have kept the dial rolling, as a man can only handle so much Barry Manilow and Celine Dion before he is tempted to grab a beer and maybe tune up the volume on WWF Wrestling to equalize things. But tonight under the moon I felt the unmistakable influence of a caller dedicating a song to his wife on their anniversary. I let the dial rest and listened as the radio show navigated the waters of loss and love and longing and lonely while I navigated the desert. Sometimes the callers celebrated the sweet. Sometimes they tried to overcome the sour. And sometimes the callers reached high and brought the house down as they shared the relished blessings of experience, accomplishment, and the miraculous.

I listened to Delilah for the remainder of her show, a new record for me. As I rolled, the whine of the tires gave motion to the events of the day, the months, and my life. Accompanied by the fire hot high points of a live broadcast across the airwaves, I realized that I traveled through the highways of life just like the callers. Despite the risks, the disappointments and pain of loss, to truly live meant there was no other choice. I reexamined the thoughts of this day. Dr. Laura, and Rush. The work of young native hands on canvas. The pull of motion and the draw of layovers. I thought of all that and more in the context of a harmless little radio show called Lights Out." Accompanied by the soul touching sounds of that show, I rolled down the highway, and rolled with the punches. No matter where I rolled, I figured it was all good in the end. The Sweet. The Sour. And Especially, the Hot!