The temperature was already 85 when we started work at 7 a.m. on the I-49 bridge over Missouri Highway 150 in Belton. Even before they took their positions among the piles of rebar, the men were sweating. Jungle-like humidity lay on us like warm, wet blankets.
Leave a CommentAuthor: Patrick Dobson
Dr. Patrick Dobson is a work in progress until his termination. In the meantime, He is a writer, scholar, postman, and college professor living in Kansas City, MO.
The University of Nebraska Press published his travel memoirs, Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer in 2015 and Seldom Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains in 2009. Canoeing the Great Plains won the 2016 High Plains Book Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. His essays and poems have been published in New Letters, daCunha, Kansas City Star, Garo, Wood Coin, and JONAHmagazine, and others.
Dobson earned a doctorate in American History and Literature at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2013. He has edited books, taught journalism, and been a union ironworker. He now teaches American History, Modern Latin American History, and Western Civilization at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS.
He looks forward to hearing from you soon.
I was living my halcyon days when I was teaching. It would end. Storms would come.
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Skyhorse released my new book, Ferment: A Memoir of Mental Illness, Redemption, and Winemaking in the Mosel, on Monday, July 27. Those of you who have ordered the book should receive it within the next few days, if you haven’t already. I appreciate your support. Every book you order for yourself or others really helps.
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I cut like a ship through oceans of spider webs. Taking up the lead on the trail, I set the pace on the rough trails littered with chert, sandstone, and flint. We hiked through sere creek beds, empty of streams at this time of year, and up through bottomlands lush with tall grasses. Mounting rocky hillsides, the trail ascended to long ridges where mature forest opened only occasionally to sky.
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You work the mail, they say, don’t let the mail work you. But that’s hard. As I walk along, day after day, 12-18 miles, depending on the mail, my mind drifts. That’s not good for a letter carrier. The job demands constant presence. When I begin to wander, I make mistakes, have to backtrack, and lose time.
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