Dream pickup truck Version III

The dream opens with me planning to fly to Boston. I step outside the airport’s passenger loading area, expecting to board a plane, but instead, I find my mom’s old blue 1991 Ford pickup truck parked there. I realize it couldn’t possibly get me to Boston, yet somehow, I’ve already arrived at my destination.

The scene shifts to my parents’ farm, with its familiar pasture, barnyard, and a long gravel driveway lined with crepe myrtles, stretching several hundred yards. I’ve invited a few friends from a new club, but a massive crowd shows up—people from all over, some as far away as Boston—far more than I expected. As they arrive, I’m rushing to herd my three dogs and the cows back into the barnyard, closing the gate. The dogs are eagerly trying to reach the food the guests brought, which is why I’m hurrying to secure them and the cattle away from the overwhelming group.

The guests spill into the pasture across from my mom’s screened porch and line up along the long driveway, leaning against a 120-year-old barbed wire fence with creosote-treated posts that runs parallel to the gravel drive. The creosote has long since dried up, leaving the posts brittle and fragile. I can see them bending and cracking under the weight of the crowd, so I urgently ask everyone to get off the fence, warning that it might break.

Inside my mom’s den, I try to talk with one guest, a pilot, about his work, but I can’t make sense of the plane he flies for a living. Back outside, I’m busy ensuring everyone’s having a good time, but my dad, woken from his nap, and my mom, in the kitchen, are upset because I didn’t warn them about the crowd. I had no idea so many would come.

After the crowd has left, I walk along the fence and notice what appear to be valuable packages left where everyone was standing, scattered along the barbed wire and creosote posts. On the other side of the fence, across the pasture where my dad’s mom and dad’s home—my grandparents’ old estate—once stood, there’s no one else around, but new structures are going up, unfinished but under construction.

That’s where the dream ends. 

Steadman playing in the flag football game August 13th, 2021

Steadman Shealy 1979