The Streets Sure Are Slick: Sunday Scribblings #163 Disconnect

Looking north down Kellogg's Main Street without snow and ice in the 1950's

(If you are new to my blog, my hometown is Kellogg, Idaho.)

About 4:00 this morning my Springer Spaniel, Snug, jumped off the bed, his nails whooshing across the hardwood floor, and began to head butt the bedroom door.

Sometimes he eats breakfast this early. I submitted, fed him, let him out, grabbed the morning paper, and came back to bed. Snug soon joined me and we both fell back asleep.

Within seconds, I dreamed.

I was uptown in Kellogg. It was Monday. The grounds at St. Rita's Roman Catholic church had been expanded, and I helped plant new trees in the winter ground, joking that it was a good thing Father King was on vacation or else the money to do this would never get spent.

Landscaping parishioners included my good friend Timothy Patrick O'Reilly and in my dream we hadn't seen each other since high school and we smiled broadly and couldn't figure out how to shake hands with each other: High five? Give each other skin? Traditional shake? Drug brotherhood peace shake? We mimed them all and laughed and laughed.

I had parked my little Jonathan apple colored 1993 Honda Civic on Main Street in front of the old Masonic Hall. I tried to get out, but I got stuck in a small berm by the sidewalk. I gunned the engine, extracted myself and started going backwards, downhill, down the slick ice of Main Street.

My car moved slowly, but out of control. I slid past the old Liberty Theater and Joe and Henry's and Ford Hoback's variety store and tried to steer out of my backward slide but I just kept sliding past Sass's Jewelery, Patano's Apparel, and then toward the intersection of McKinley and Main.

Just north of this intersection rests the Shoshone Funeral Home and giant broad shouldered pot-bellied mountain men with Z Z Top beards dressed in church clothes were making their way across Main Street, on their way to a funeral.

I couldn't stop the car. I hit one, two, several of them and could only see their purple and swollen and enraged faces, first through the driver's window, and then in my rear view mirror.

My Honda came to a stop near the Shoshone Funeral Home. I got out of my car and no one seemed the least concerned about what had happened. I wondered if anyone had called 911, but I was met with contented, indifferent faces, the faces of people about to attend a funeral.

Suddenly, a police officer appeared. It was Dana Bisaro. He was freaked out.

I asked, "Do I have anything to be worried about?"

"Worried about? Those guys up there have you scoped, man!"

I looked back toward the intersection of Main and McKinley.

At least three of the giant bearded mountain men in church clothes were armed with .338 Winchester Magnum rifles and had me in the cross hairs of their 2-8x Burris Signature scopes.

I shook myself awake.

I can't make sense of this dream.

It came from inside me.

I feel completely disconnected from it.

To read more Sunday Scribblings on the topic "disconnect", go here.