Truck of the Irish

And I thought these guys were my friends.

I’d been back from my vacation in Ireland just a few days when I had another one of my mutant freak show nightmares.

Things had been kind of quiet on the dream front—as far as I can remember—but I reckon my overheated psyche couldn’t sit still after my first real vacation in two years.

Seals—my recently declared spirit animal—played a role in this latest delusion, but not a particularly helpful one, along with a man I have not seen in nearly four decades.

Here’s the basics: I was traveling through Louisiana with a truck driver when I apparently got the urge to do some ziplining over a lake. I have never done this in real life, nor do I have the desire to start.

But there I was, streaking over a body of deep water even though I can’t swim to save my life—literally.

As I moved through the air, I saw several seals down below bobbing their heads. I took this as a good sign given supposed kinship with the slippery little buggers.

However, moments later I realized that while I had plenty of zip, I had no line.

I was hurtling through the air with no support when gravity decided to butt in and haul me down into the drink.

I was amazingly calm for a non-swimmer, which is all the proof you need that this was a dream.

I hit the water, but there were no seals in sight as my alleged spirit animals took this moment to make like real spirits and disappear.

Aren’t they supposed to help people in need—or at least balance them on their noses until help shows up?

No Place Like Homestead

I causally called out to a man going by in a boat who pulled me onboard and I woke up a short time later.

Now what really makes this thing especially weird is that the driver of the truck was a man named Bill, whom I knew back when I was a reporter in Pennsylvania for about five years.

Bill drove for Roadway Express, which was later acquired by Yellow Corp. I met him shortly after Hurricane Andrew blasted through South Florida on August 24, 1992.

The Category 5 storm killed 65 people in the Sunshine State, destroyed 63,000 homes and left 175,000 homeless. One million had no without power in the immediate aftermath.

The local Roadway facility had put together a truckload of supplies for those in need and Bill was going to drive it down to Homestead, Fla., one of the hardest hit cities.

My editor had offered me a chance to ride along with Bill to cover the delivery and interview former Pocono-area residents and get first-hand accounts of the storm, which were harrowing.

This was an incredible experience for me as I got to see the devastation first-hand. Trailer parks got the worst of it, and I recall seeing massive piles of twisted metal that had once been people’s homes.

I also got travel through the Deep South and spend a good amount of time with Bill who was a great guy.

But I have to ask: why did he pop up in my subconscious now after all these years? I’m sorry to say I lost contact with him shortly after I left Pennsylvania, and I haven’t thought about him or Hurricane Andrew in ages.

I suspect that the Florida memory came back because, like Ireland, it was big trip for me. And I believe Bill was a stand-in our for our tour guide Jerome, who was also a great guy.

I decided the dream was a sign that I should look up Bill. I’ve been trying to find him, but so far I’m going up empty.

I did find one article about Bill that ran in my old newspaper in 2003, nearly 11 years after our Florida sojourn, that described how he had rescued a dog from a neighbor's burning home.

“I can't believe I broke down this door and went into a burning house,” he said.

With neighbors like these, who needs a seal?