CCpart2ch9

22 July
I-79 near Morgantown, W.V.

“And you know it’s time to go, through the sleet and driving snow,
Across the fields of morning (or mourning), lights in the distance.
And you hunger for the time, time to heal, desire time,
And the earth moves beneath your own dreamland scene.”
--U2, “A Sort Of Homecoming”

No sleet nor driving snow so far on this trip –a little driving rain west and north of Charleston and a lot of slate-gray clouds, but
easy drivin’. This is definitely my homecoming run now; after much to-do yesterday trying to get a simple eastbound load –I
ended up going all the way from Columbus to Bowling Green, Kentucky, less than an hour from Nashville!—I got hooked up
with a load to northeast Jersey, and my dispatcher says I can deadhead (drive empty) from there. I do hunger for this time; it’s
been several weeks since I last slept in something other than the bunk. (Truck sleep, I’d guess, ranges from 25 to 75% of the
quality of sleep at home, in a bed that doesn’t rumble, in a room bigger than a walk-in closet.)

I don’t really like to quote song lyrics. It reminds me of the cheeseball adolescent love notes I penned in junior high and high
school (gawd, I hope none of them ever surfaces if I become a public man of letters). But I was listening to “The Unforgettable
Fire” this afternoon, and it struck me what a homecoming theme this whole tour has had, from the first New England-bound trip
that ended for me in Chicago, to the Sam Adams delivery in Braintree, and now the actual homeward-bound run. It seems like it
has been so long away for me, and really it was less than a year ago that Aubray and I moved out of Greenfield, committed to
senselessness and Alaska bound. Maybe it is because my life is so different now; about this time tomorrow I will walk into my
mother’s house…just me, no “better half” by my side. That hasn’t happened in almost ten years. Maybe that’s why it feels like
it’s been so long.

This particular route has brought me into close proximity with some other surrogate homes: Morgantown, the place of one of
my most memorable adventures, in many ways the birthplace of my writing life as I know it today. Now I’ve reached the state
of Maryland, my first home-away-from-home, and where I consider my spiritual life to have been born. Tomorrow morning I’ll
see Easton, Pennsylvania, the place where Aubray and I met and fell in love; still one of my fondest haunts anywhere (double-
entendre intended). In fact, I think I’ll show up at 5 AM for the opening of the Easton Bakery and get a couple canolis.

* * * *
In the interest of authenticity, I must note that this is where I left off before going home. The last day was not as simple as
planned –again. They found a trailer at the railyard in Jersey City that needed to go to a Wal Mart DC in New Hampshire. I didn’
t mind taking it so I could get paid for the miles home, but many complications arose, and some of the most ferocious rain I’ve
seen anywhere fell most of the morning –I never actually saw the Manhattan skyline, the sky was so dense with clouds and
rain—making the Jersey Turnpike into a waterslide. I don’t think I crossed the GW ‘til around
2:00, which meant rain-soaked afternoon traffic through all the Connecticut cities. Basically, it was not a good day for writing,
and I didn’t even try. All I wanted to do was get the day done and get into the cozy, dry warmth of my mama’s house –which I
did around 9 PM to a very welcome greeting.

I didn’t miss out on my canolis though, in case you were concerned. Easton Bakery canolis and Dunkin Donuts coffee at
5:30 AM: it felt like 1997 all over again, when I would roll off the couch in my attic roost/writing studio on N. Sitgreaves Street
and walk through Easton’s still heavily Italian, dense little urban jungle –a five-by-fifteen block swatch of South Philly, slightly
mongrelized by Afro-Americans and French-Irish-WASP mutts like myself, transposed 60 miles upstream on the Delaware
River—to the bakery, which sits in a neighborhood, divinely surrounded by rowhouse homes. One can imagine that young
aspiring writers who are now my grandparents’ age were making the same morning trek for donuts and pastries to start their
working days decades before. There was a ten-month stretch that year when I worked locally and started mid-afternoon, and
another month-and-a-half in the middle when I didn’t work at all, that I probably began my day with this delightful ritual more
often than not.

Inside the little notch in the knotty pine wall that is the Easton Bakery, you are

greeted

by an overwhelming, colorful abundance of

confectionery

treats and lacy

wedding

cake displays. The walls are adorned with black-and-white pictures of

young

damas

in wedding gowns and faded paintings of old Italian ladies leaning

over with their

elbows on a table and their foreheads on their hands, praying the

rosary; I’m sure

somewhere there is a framed photograph of the pope, offering

someone his blessing.

And as much a fixture as these items, you will also see someone I call “the

Sweetheart

Lady.” She is short and olive-skinned with short dark hair –pretty

close to the

stereotype of a middle-aged Italian woman, without the weight

problem—definitely, I imagine, part of The Family. She is there every day that the bakery is open, Sunday morning being the
busiest, and she greets everyone she helps, man or woman, as “sweetheart.” In fact almost nothing comes out of her mouth
directed to a customer that doesn’t include some term of endearment: “What can I get for you today sweetheart? Anything else
with that hun? That’ll be $2.75 sweetheart.” She is as dependable as the sunrise. Maybe that’s why I keep going back there.
The canolis are good, but far from the best I’ve ever had, and it’s not like I’m attracted to her, like I want to be her sweetheart
when she says it. I just love the idea that six days a week (closed Monday) a person can walk into a place of business and be
talked to by another person the way God would talk to us. God would want everyone who comes into I AM’s bakery for a
canoli or an éclair or a sticky bun to feel like a sweetheart. Whether or not there indeed was something in her Roman Catholic
upbringing that inspired the Sweetheart Lady to start this personal ministry, or even nothing so formal as church experience, you’
d have to be a damn fool not to see God’s guiding hand in her life.

Anyway, the Sweetheart Lady is still there, still dispensing her own kind of sweetness with each crème puff and muffin. If you’
re in Easton, Pennsylvania in the morning, go on down and say hi; they’re one block north of Northampton Street (the main
drag) –I want to say 7th Street is the intersection, but I’m not sure cuz it’s been a long time since I needed to look for signs. I
do know it’s the turn off for Route 248, then stay left as the road forks. –HC Leominster, Mass.

© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production

N ext --Chapter 10