The Hazel Project

Hello everyone,

Today is my Brother Phil’s Birthday. I thought he’d get a kick out of this story.

Last night when I was driving home from Culver City, I had turned on the radio to get a traffic report. Well, that and the Coast to Coast line up for the night.

Usually the 10 freeway going toward downtown is pretty clear;l until I get to downtown. It’s a real bottle neck there. Navigating L.A. traffic kinda requires a Forest Gump approach. You never know what you’re gonna get and need to take it as it comes. What you can count on, is somewhere there being ’slow and go’, or a ’sig alert’. Sig alerts mean there’s a wreck and traffic is backed up heavily.

About 10:30 PM, I was revving the VW in 3rd gear to a whopiping 63mph. I lost track of my gear shifting because I was trying to figure out why Pat Boone was the guest on Coast to Coast.

Then it came time for the traffic report.

And as always, there was a crash. Apparently, there was an overturned box truck. That’s kinda normal I’m figuring out. What was different this time was traffic backed up because the box truck had dumped it’s contents all over the Freeway.

At first I thought “what’s a box truck?” then the announcer said,

“That’s right folks an overturned box truck dumped Frozen Pigs all over the freeway!”

I’m contemplating; “I guess they call it a box truck cause it’s easier to say than refrigerator.”

FROZEN PIGS?

I began to laugh at this just because I was glad to be far away from the frozen pigs. Think of all the car body damage that would do!

Then I felt bad for laughing thinking of all the fellow motorists on that freeway. I envisioned lots of swerving, honking and expletives. All trying to dodge frozen pigs while going 80 miles an hour.

When Phil and I were kids we watched a lot of “WKRP in Cincinatti.”

Although a very different scenario, it had that WKRP vibe. Remember when Arthur Carlson threw Turkey’s out of a helicopter at a Cincinatti Grocery store as a Thanksgiving promotion? Needless to say it was a disaster.

Very close to “God in the machine.” At least from the perspective of innocent people being pummeled by Pigs or Turkey’s.

“…as God as my witness I thought turkey’s could fly.”

-Arthur Calrson

Thanks for checking in.

Stephen A. Thomas

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 1:57 pm and is filed under on the path, posts & stories . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.