The Pancreas Truck

I tread lightly on the pancreas issue...Dave had pancreatitis and didn’t particularly enjoy it. He was what you call sick. And not that kind of sick. Oh, no, I feel a divergence coming on. I can’t fight it – I have to follow it…ah, I just figured out how to tie them both in – buckle up and give me a little latitude. When I was in high school I had a girlfriend named Jeri. Jeri was a All-American and NCAA Title-winning gymnast. Have you seen gymnast’s bodies? I have. They are great. She actually had a body exactly like Shawn Johnson. I picked this picture to illustrate the legs – those extremely powerful legs. About 10 years ago Jeri was inducted into the ASU Hall of Fame for Gymnastics. So, we were driving near the place where I worked – a small meat locker/butcher shop owned by my dad’s friend Bill. I should set aside a day and blog nothing but that. Anyway, as we drove by I proudly pointed out where I worked and commented that it was the “…baddest place to work,” to which she replied, “…you don’t like it?” So the ‘sick’ comment above (frequently used by my daughters when describing something great) spawned that. I digress. Anyway, back to the pancreas. At that very same meat locker business they owned a powder/baby/sky/oxidized/light blue truck. The braking system on this truck was suspect – only functional when you had plenty of road and plenty of patience to eventually stop. This truck was called the pancreas truck. It was used for other functions and deliveries occasionally but its main function was to make a 20-30 mile trip to various meat processing plants around the greater Phoenix area to pick up cow pancreas glands harvested from the day’s meat source to be processed and used as medicine – insulin to be specific – for diabetics. Twice a week we would make a pancreas run. This was not, however, a trivial task. I remember distinctly the first time I went with Dennis on the pancreas run. Somewhere in the middle of Phoenix, we went through a light and there was a vehicle stopped just after the intersection awaiting other cars so they could turn left. Remember the part about the brakes? Well, looking out the front windshield of the pancreas truck was much like a dream sequence of a violent ride – kinda blurred (probably from the goo transferred from our hands after handling pancreas) and very surreal. I remember Dennis telling me that there was no way to stop and then he just veered left into the middle suicide lane and kept going as if he had planned it. Thinking back on it, I really wonder how we survived those trips. I can tell you that if we had gotten in an accident it would not have hurt the pancreas truck at all. Just hose the blood off the dashboard and move on. No sense worrying about that. I think an accident would not have reduced the resale value of the truck, either. The rotting bovine pieces took care of that. Sort of a sweet, pungent, sour, decaying smell that resembles what a tyrannosaurus’s breath must have smelled like because he didn’t have the dental formula kibble available to him for good oral hygene. Much like the choices you have for soup and sauces at a Chinese restaurant. I think we should have died a few times but then again looking back on my life, there are MANY times when dying was a possibility. I hate death.