You know, might be a little odd but I always figured the man who told me wisdom is nothing more than the ability to put the problem of the moment up against the rolodex of life learning and experience and come up with an answer was right on the money. Sometimes the wisest answer is I don't know, but I have a good idea where to look for the answer.
Funny thing, over my lifetime I've met a whole lot of people both educated and uneducated, and that sure don't mean they got a fancy piece of paper hanging in a frame on the wall. Just last week the doctor fellow from over to the University showed up to tell me I sharpened his mower blades wrong cause they cut bad. He's always talking on how he has 2 doctor degrees and well you know the kind. I look at them blades and it didn't take a minute to know what his problem was, he put em on the mower upside down. I show them to Harrison and he grabs a marker and writes Deck Side and Grass Side on them and hands em back to superdoctor and shows him the way to the door.
Another time I hauled a transformer into Boston, probably the 20th one I hauled there, and all the bigwigs from the power company show up at the staging point where I gotta wait for the cops to let me get going into the city wearing their expensive suits and new hardhats to get their picture took. The fellow who headed the rigging crew for years had retired and all them geniuses hired this little fellow who had more degrees than a compass to replace him. He was a nice enough man, but he did talk kind of like a 33rpm record being played at 45rpm, and had what looked like about 2 rolls of toilet paper wrapped around his head with a hardhat on top of the pile. Now, I'm just a dumb trucker to all them educated folks, so I sit there in my cab enjoying my coffee and minding my own business. Next thing I know the little man with the toilet paper head sits himself a ladder right there next to my door and climbs up. Sure as I'm sitting here the man asks me "are you the driver of this truck?" Now what can I say to a question like that? No I just sit here holding the steering wheel so he won't get cold hands when he shows up. Well, I just took another sip and told him I was, and he goes to doing that funny sounding talking most of what I could understand was how he had everything ready and I was going to follow his instructions to the letter for maximum efficiency. I just sat there not even letting it run in one ear, let alone out the other.
Now I already delivered 5 loads there to the same spot this one is going, and Mr Toiletpaper has it in his highly educated head I can't do it with number 6 cause some book he has says so. What he didn't read is I just might know a trick or 7 that ain't in the book, and regardless what he thinks unless some Boston cop changes my route I'm following it. We finally get going all of 5 miles an hour cause I'm 94 feet long with 17 sets of tires on the ground, and Mr Toiletpaper has hisself all hunkered down in the back of a breadtruck with all his blueprints and such on his drawing table in there, and looking out the door at me. Fine by me, just remember don't stop quick. Next thing he's jumpin around in back of his truck wavin his arms like there's a fire in there, and the bread truck turns into some parking lot where there is one of them mobil platform contraptions and about 10 trucks full of riggers waiting with a 100 ton crane. That fool jumps out the back of a moving truck and comes running at my rig, so I gotta play organplayer on 4 spikes and lock her up without jackknifing.
Turns out Mr Know It All was planning to spend a lot of extra dollars to move the transformer off my trailer onto the platform thing and then drive that to the powerhouse. I was ready to beat him to a pulp for making me stop like that, and dang near did hadn't been for one of the riggers stopping me. I told the cops they better take him and put him in one of their cars cause if they didn't I'd squish him if he pulled that crap again. Best part was he did it in front of all the big executives, and they was wondering if his brain might be roasting under all that headgear. The cops stuffed him in a car and we got back rolling right past the platform. Fool never even gave a thought to the fact I would have gone right through that pavement if I pulled in there. 2 hours later I backed that transformer right where the crane operator wanted her, and everybody went to unbinding it for the pick.
I heard Mr Toiletpaperhead got out of the copcar and stuffed right back in his breadtruck office by a bunch of pretty mad executives who were mad enough to send him back where he came from.
Now I ani't mentioning any names here, but it do seem to me there are a couple kinds of educated folks. You got them who went to some school, paid their money and went on about life accomplishing things, and you got them who just gotta tell everybody how they went to this school and that and had these grades and got this degree and that who can't get a blade on a dang lawnmower right side up. Personally I don't much care for the second group. They strikr me as a little more than arrogant, and in need of a swift kick to get their brain unlocked if that can be done. I ain't yet met one in the second group that didn't have a dented up car cause they can't hardly drive.
