Jason S. Harry

You would think making a furniture delivery is a routine thing. Not always. In early-August I pulled into a customer’s lot in Harrisburg, Pa. and parked in an alley next to their garage door. It was one of those summer afternoons when the storms are hit or miss. I had been doing a lot of hitting throughout the day- I was glad I seemed to be “missing” at the moment as this customer was getting a fairly good amount of furniture and I needed things to go smoothly because I had more stops across many miles and I was becoming pressed for time. We were moving along good and then halfway through the process the sky opened up. Things went from sprinkles to full-blast downpour in seconds. We put our game on pause. This did not bother me, even given the time issue, because I had empathy for our customer working without protection on the ground. While I was under the roof of the trailer, he had no ceiling and would get instantly soaked (along with his brand-new furniture.) So we waited....

My physical body has been failing me for at least a month. It’s actually failed me in cycles for a few years now, perhaps because society has programmed me to believe that at some point I have to pay for a mid-life crisis in full. Maybe I’m on its doorstep. Previous cycles of ill consisted of bouts of diverticulitis. In my latest cycle, my brain has held up a sign that says, “New and improved: Now with lower back and hip pain!” I have never considered myself miserable, but my mind and body were teaming up and doing their best to convince me I was. The larger side of my waking consciousness would not stand for it. I was tired of the charade and began a deep retrospective journey. Wednesday afternoon my RV suffered the failure of a component vital to its health and that predicament left me stranded in a hotel in New Jersey while the local dealer attended to the issue. Me? I retired to a hotel to attend to a book I’ve been reading that I have found insightful regarding my curr...

Wednesday of this past week I made a delivery in Cobleskill, New York. Afterwards, I decided to make some lunch in the RV for two reasons: I was required by the DOT to take 30 minutes off within the next hour and there was a MacDonald’s inside the adjoining Wal-Mart Supercenter. An after-meal coffee would make a good day better. After a decent lunch consisting of meat loaf I set sail through the parking lot to grab my caffeine fix. Halfway to the door, I spotted a bumper sticker that made me stop and consider its message. I liked what it said immediately, so much so that I snapped a picture of it with my phone. “Who is this John guy?” I wondered. “He is lucky that only the mountains call him. Everything calls me, sometimes all at once. It can be problematic.” After making my way inside the corner of the Wal-Mart I was happy to see I had the good fortune to enter on the side that contained the Mickey D’s. No long walks through a cement monstrosity with too many peop...

Monday, December 7 th , 2015 was a day that shall remain a busy memory in my professional life as an over-the-road truck driver. I completed a multi-stop trip in the state of Connecticut. After that journey was finished, I grabbed a fresh box of furniture and set off in the darkness for the small town of Morrisville, Vermont, which resides in the northern middle of the state. As I neared my destination I noticed Morrisville-Stowe State Airport was sliding by outside my passenger window. I looked over, twisting my neck all around, trying to get a glimpse of just one airplane. I’m also a pilot and that’s what we do- it does not matter what kind of airplane we see, any kind of wing reminds us of our happy place and the mere sight of one is akin to aviator porn. (I think I did manage to see one half of a Cessna 172 fast asleep in the tie-down area of the airpark.) It was after ten at night when I pulled into the parking lot of the Big Lots store I would be delivering to in the...

I spent a night in Delaware last week at my favorite campground. Behind it sits a great little spot of water named “Records Pond.” I was down at the water’s edge looking at the morning (pictures can be found on my Facebook page ) and I had a flashback from youth on the way back to my RV. During the short walk two school buses showed up to take away their victims. The first bus showed up halfway back, the other as I was in the grass separating the campground and Records Pond. When the second one arrived, I was kneeling down because I was real curious about the empty spaces between the wispy seed heads of a dandelion covered in frost. I saw the bus in the background and quickly spun some knobs on my camera and shot the above photo. Then the memories came rushing back. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was finish school and set about doing what big people do, without the regiment of a bus coming for me every day during the school year. I wasn’t sure what exactly grown...