OldTroubador's blog post - The Apple

Those who know me know that my daughter Katelyn is the apple of my eye. She is bright and beautiful. She loves to fish almost as much as I do. She is a writer of no small talent and is developing into a pretty good artist with a pencil. And her enjoyment of chicken fried steak and classic country music is second only to mine. She is also very wise, and seems to understand. better than most, her daddy's love for the highway. She also has an incredibly quick sense of humor.
There is a story about a driver from another trucking company (So What I Failed Training) who, while following his GPS, drove 6.7 miles down a single lane dirt road in West Virginia and got hung up on a stump. The towing company that came in took photos, then called a couple of bulldozers to come in and clear two acres of land so the tow truck could swing past the rig and a)lift the tractor off the stump and b)have enough room to turn over a hundred feet of tow rig/tractor/trailer around and drag him back to the highway. I told Katelyn this story and sent her the pictures. A few weeks later, we all were sitting at a red light after a day of fishing. All of a sudden, she cried out, “We're DOOMED I tell you DOOMED, DOOMED, DOOMED!!!”. Her mother and I looked at her and asked what she was going on about. She just pointed at a Swift truck and grinned.
She carries her iPod with her everywhere. We all pulled up in front of a store one day and it made some kind of chirping noise. I asked what that was, and she said it was the tone to say that her iPod was receiving a WiFi signal. Later in the day, it made the same noise and in a sing-song voice, I said, “We have WiFi”. Immediately, she clasped her hands together and said, “Praise the Lord!!!”.
As you can well imagine, these two phrases soon became part of our lexicon. As her mother would drive us around, on my weekends off, many times we would come up on a truck from Swift. One of us would exclaim, “We're DOOMED, DOOMED I tell you”. And after getting around the truck, safely, the other would shout, “Praise the Lord!!!”
About a month and a half ago, a driver from another trucking company was following his GPS as he drove through a city park in Milwaukee, WI. He damaged a few trees and benches and light posts before crossing, or attempting to cross, a pedestrian bridge. Needless to say, he got wedged in. I told her this story and she said, “Daddy, you mean I have ANOTHER trucking company to worry about??? I better start making a list.”
One night, we were on the phone shortly after I parked at a truck stop. I was on a small rant about guys not being able to park (the lot was only 1/3 full at the time) and other acts of lunacy I had seen or heard lately. I asked, rhetorically, “What goes through the minds of these folks? I mean, really now, what is going through their heads??!?!?” Without skipping a beat, she answered, “Elevator music Daddy. Ain't nothing but elevator music.”
But the best of them all is as follows. We had spent a weekend fishing this summer. Saturday we were wading in the Gulf of Mexico for a day and on Sunday, we waded a bay for a while. The second day was not productive, so I suggested we go up on a pier and finish drowning our dead bait there; she agreed. As we gathered our gear and walked to the pier, I started to bellyache about how sore I was: “You know, young 'un, not too many years ago, I could work a 70-hour week, leave the office at 5pm on Friday, come to the pier, fish all night, head to the beach, fish all day, drive home two hours, clean fish and gear, take a shower, sleep a few hours, get up on Sunday and do all me weekend chores. Now look at me, I can barely handle a couple half days of fishing.” She stopped and said, “Well, Daddy, you are a little older now. Matter of fact, before long, you're going to need a Boy Scout to help you cross the street.”
I'm laughing out loud as I write this. God I love that girl of mine. She surely is the apple of my eye. And for sure, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.