My alma mater, while being one of the top-rated Visual Communications schools in the country, suffers from having one of the worst college websites ever. They had built a cutting edge site in 1998 and did nothing to it but tack on extra sections and pages, none of which look alike. Right now the alumni pages are down and I can’t look at the drawing schedule.

Another late half paycheck. This is so damned annoying…

10:05 PM On the way home tonight, with two large crepe myrtles stuffed into the back of the Scout, I crawled down I-83 waiting for a blinding summer thunderstorm to slacken off. She was running smoothly, NPR was murmuring about the Enron scandal, just barely audible above the engine rumble and slick sweeesh of wet car tires on pavement. I merged south into clearer lanes and at the bottom of the hill I noticed a red truck off in the distance with a distinctly old profile. I sped up just a bit, and his slow pace made the distance narrow quickly. His truck was another International, a mid-60’s pickup, with the name ‘ESTHER’ written in broad brushstrokes on the left of the stamped metal tailgate. I pulled up behind him, craned my neck over the swirling branches clogging up my rearview, and pulled out to the middle lane. ESTHER motored along in the slow lane, carrying a big canoe on work racks. I pulled up alongside and waved to the guy driving, a heavily tattooed man who waved back to me, smiling. We drove like that for a little bit, and I overtook him doing 50, grinning widely. He got off somewhere between the two ends, and I was sad not to be able to talk with him about ESTHER. I’ve seen her around town over the years, usually when I’m driving the other vehicle, and I haven’t seen the driver.

It’s rare, and sometimes it doesn’t happen for a long time, but when I get an occurrence like that happening, it makes me feel better about a lot of things, and like I belong to a secret community. Sometimes that’s all I need to feel better about life.

Unfortunately, my digital camera was under the seat, so I couldn’t get a picture of ESTHER. Maybe next time….