I wake up and my pillow is full of slobber, man, I hate that!  Forming a mental picture of my head on this pillow and my tongue hanging outside my mouth, sort of like those old blood hounds in the movie, Cool Hand Luke, and it just strikes me as revolting.

Deftly reaching up with my left hand, I wipe my face in a masculine manner (meaning with a bare hand because I do not have a handkerchief handy) and quickly look around (to see if anyone observes me doing this repulsive thing I have unconsciously done) and I quickly sit up in bed.  What is it that triggers a dream such as this?  Where you are prone to consume your own pillow.

Only in the mind of man, does something as bizarre as this occur.

Reaching out as if I almost in a state of disbelief, I touch the pillow and it is soaked to the bone as my grandmother used to exclaim.  What about the dream?  I am thinking hard, and I remember some people, a plate full of honey-covered brisket (if there is such a thing?) and vaguely, some off-color conversation, a handful of good-looking beautiful, robust, round shaped women.

I am mystified, “a plate full of honey-covered brisket?”

Coming from a long line of finger lickin’ chicken eaters kind of people (Donnie, don’t let the dawg get into them bones!), honey soaked brisket seems awfully foreign to me.  Meat and tators in our neck of the woods, flies in the butter, no brisket anything in this part of “Ameri-Kuh” as George Dubya used to say.

Same with touch football games and well manicured lawns, why I dream of these things, truly escapes me at the moment. I live in Oklahoma, where a large percentage of the population actually believes that wrestling on television is real, and in the southeastern corner of the state, the idea of gun control is to “hold it with both hands Earl.”  Where your first born child has three names … Billy Raye Littler.  Where people generally say, “Whadya mean you got a bus?  Did-ja mean a reel bus?  You mean like one of them Greyhound things, Oakridge Boys star buses, one of them?  Well, I’ll be.”

So you can readily understand why dreams of idyllic New England and front yards full of leaves of many colors, touch football just do not resonate with my country soul. Sweaters tied loosely around the neck and women with names like Buffy and Tiffany just do not register, nor induce slobber.

The absolute worst dream I ever had was the first night I spent in my Eagle in Alabama.  Our bus has an overhead mirrored ceiling that runs the entire length of the coach.  The first night I ever slept in it was in a rest area in Good Hope, Alabama (just a tad north of Birmingham) where I woke up abruptly and looked up for a moment “and actually thought I was being attacked by a naked skydiver!”

Now that … that … was a scary dream, but I digress, we are talking about this dream, sorry

In my latest dream, Big Jim lites up a cigarette and everyone in the waiting room at the tireshop is horrified, this must be a terrible thing, but I fail to see where it would induce slobber on the pillow.  Now if it were a beautifully painted up Detroit or Big Cam 600 Cummings, with chrome plated rocker covers and un-rusted exhaust pipes, steam cleaned and shining brightly, that would be a different story altogether.  Fresh paint on the body of the beast, new Armor-all on all the hoses, no grease … Ah, the dreams of man.  This would be enough to induce slobber or at best, provide that deer in the headlight look on most men.

Unfortunately most dreams are not of that pleasant nature.

Not that long ago, the wife, in the middle of the night, shook me awake rather violently.  I was, to say the least, rather startled and I might add, a bit confused.  I did not smell smoke, I did not hear the thunder, the wind was not howling, nor did I see any lightning.  In other words, all around me seemed, despite her apparent sense of urgency, rather normal for four in the morning.

I said to her, “What?  What?

What in the name of GOD ALMIGHTY is wrong woman!”

She said to me, “I have a dream.  We are in Wikiup, Arizona, in our bus, you drive off and leave me there!  Why do you do that?”  I sigh, a sigh I have learned to do almost habitually over the years, and I say to her, “This?  For this I am shook into a rather strange version of reality at this time of the morning?  You had a dream and I left you in Arizona?”

She looks at me, very much relieved and says, “Yes, yes that is it.  You drive off and leave me!”

At that point in time, I slowly lower my head onto my pillow (which has not been slobbered on here lately) and I mutter under my breath just loud enough to be heard, “go back to sleep woman, I will drive back and pick you up.”

“Life isn’t about how you survive the storm, but how you dance in the rain…”

You can travel east and west, but in the end, well, y’know the rest, dontcha?

(As my friend Bernice would put it … Life Is Good)

OOO

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