As I sat there on the side of the highway, my entire past, present, and future were all rolled up into one little ball. The ball wasn’t even round; it was the same rectangle shape as my mind after the trailer had come unhooked.

Both Ed and I had traveled the same route once or twice a week for, well, forever with loads of livestock on the way to the sale barn. The same bridge was crossed each and every time, and the same bumpy railroad crossing was slowed down for well ahead of time. I had cussed the coin toss and grumbled all the way to the stockyards that morning, as there were a million other things to do besides haul a load of stinky hogs to market.

In my neat-and-tidy little world, I should have seen that the boards were a bit “off” at the crossing, but I suppose my thoughts were on things an hour or two ahead.

Where was the cautionary orange cone or flag to jump out and yell, “Emily, you’re about to die!”?

I knew I was in trouble when the nose of the trailer wasn’t where it was supposed to be when I looked in the rearview mirror. The worst part came when the safety chains did their job and safely secured the pickup to the trailer that was headed to the ditch in a big hurry. Coming to a stop and staring face-to-face with a cattail, I about reached out and smooched it for my being alive and in one piece. It took about a half-hour before I stopped shaking enough to dial Ed and let him know his helpful wife had hauled her last load of livestock… ever!

I wish I could say that “last ever” thing about hauling straw, but somehow I get conned into it each year. I’ve decided it would be a great idea for Ed to haul out a few orange cones to the field prior to my arrival. Boy, would that save some time and cussing. I’m a follower, and the tracks led right through the drainage part of the field. Now, if a few orange cones would have been placed along the real muddy parts, I wouldn’t have buried the pickup and 40-foot trailer loaded with straw. Ed would have been able to talk the next day as his voice wouldn’t have been raised at all, and my right ankle would have felt just fine instead of making me limp along because I had hit a rabbit hole while hightailing it away from the pulling-out session.

Not all of my orange-cone incidents have been miserable beyond repair, though.

Driver’s ed class was a riot, as the kid I was partnered up with hadn’t seen the front seat of a vehicle, much less the driver’s side, his entire life. I had my hand on the door handle for a quick getaway the entire six weeks of behind-the-wheel training. It’s one thing to take out an entire parking lot of orange cones in one lesson, but that kid took out the stop sign, the fenced-in garbage area, and a corner of the school!

I almost volunteered to bring him home and set him loose in a stubble field for some practice but kept my mouth shut after the fire truck incident.

Talk about the wrong way on the right side of the road! Just a few days ago, the orange cones were doubled and tripled up in a construction area I was inching through on the way to pick up a load of feed. From up in my pickup, I could see far enough ahead to tell that it would be a while before our line got the go-ahead of “slow” instead of “stop.” You haven’t been anywhere in the world as bad as Minnesota on a true hot and humid day, and the flag men must have been feeling it big-time. The tar trucks were layering the smelly goop on one side of the street while the line of “slow” cars was passing on the other. My line of “stop” was waiting patiently as the oncoming traffic headed through. From my higher-up vantage point, I could see the disaster before it hit. The heat must have gotten the best of our flag man, as he swiveled his “red means stop” around to an “orange means slow.” Wow, talk about a big bunch of square-dancing cars that put the La Brea tar pits of Los Angeles to shame!

This little Mustang started spinning out and got hung up on the curb. Instead of stopping, the guy stepped on it and plastered the whole row of cars behind him with hot, sticky tar. The goof behind me, driving a pint-sized Volkswagen, should have seen the passing cars all splattered with tar, but oh, no, he starts honking at me to “move along.” At first, I thought I’d “move along” right towards him with a tire iron, but a better thought came to mind: I’d have him drive the pickup home to Ed with a nice covering of tar on the side.

The semi driver behind the little honker must have had a boring cross-country trip, as I could see he was laughing at the whole mess, making his foot slip off the clutch and the truck hop forwards right onto Honker’s bumper. By rights, it probably could have been the same kid, now grown up, that had given me all the chuckles in driver’s training.

Getting himself jarred loose from the semi, Honker drove right under and around my back bumper, coming to a sliding stop directly under the open spout of the tar truck ahead of us! One awesome new tourist attraction added to the map…