03.13.2013 Narrating A Life Written On The Road: Jigsaw Puzzler

Why Aren't You Writing?

03.13.2013 Narrating A Life Written On The Road: Jigsaw Puzzler

Having never been further than a few hundred miles from home before I took up truck-driving, my experience with cultural and social mores outside of my narrow world was abbreviated, to say the least. Like many of my colleagues, I was a sexual intellectual – a f***ing know-it-all. Despite my ninth-grade education I read voraciously, quickly picked up skills as needed, evidence of my brilliant mind. From my lofty pinnacle of wisdom I looked down on lesser mortals with all the arrogance of the truly ignorant.

Although the dawning awareness that wisdom was not confined to books developed slowly, there were incidents in my life that completely flummoxed me. One in particular remains vivid in my memory. And all these years later, I'm uncertain whether these folks actually knew better and were having a good laugh at my expense, or really believed what they told me.

I was invited to a family gathering, either a holiday, birthday or some such get-together at a homestead somewhere in the Midwest. The dining room table was covered in homemade foods, a rare treat. Various relatives were introduced, whose faces, names and relationships I promptly forgot, as I noshed on delicacies handed down through generations of European immigrants. Furnishings that probably arrived by Conestoga wagons – the original ones – filled the house, which was also several generations old. China, silver, quilts, doilies, a treasure trove of heirlooms.

Few modern pieces intruded on the museum quality of the place, and a small folding table erected in a corner caught my eye. Smaller than a card table, larger than a TV tray table, it held jigsaw puzzle pieces. A partial outline of 2 sides had been started, lots of loose pieces in the center with the box upright against the wall to display the resulting picture. Anyone was welcome to contribute to the 500-piece project.

Except that there were nowhere near 500 pieces on that tiny table.

When I asked where the rest of the pieces were, the answer left me speechless:

“Oh, we didn't have room for all of them, so we only put out half at a time.”