The Walter Mitty Blues by Robert Timmerman

Do I get the blues? I work in a factory, doing twelve-hour shifts, making radial truck tires for eighteen-wheelers. Is it snowing out today? Raining? Is the wind blowing? There's no way to tell when you're doing factory work.

Had anyone told me thirty years ago that I would still be earning a living this way, I would have told them they obviously had me confused with some other drone. Not a chance. Thirty years ago I was on the cusp of writing the Great American Novel, after which I would retire to a comfortable cabin in the mountains with my fly rod and a sedate Labrador retriever. But, of course, that was before I had decided to major in beer and tennis, instead of journalism and premed. At some point during that critical stage of my life it must have seemed like a good idea to drop out of school for a f rew months and put aside some money for a serious reentry into college. That six-month respite from school has since morphed into thirty years of relentless, mind-numbing tedium on a factory floor. One night call that decision a career error. I know I certainly do. It seems like overnight I went from"young man with potential" to "father nearing retirement." One day you're hauling a kid to his T-ball practice, and the next day some smirking jerk is handing you a gold watch and thanking you for having been such a productive "associate" for all those years.

The reality of a check-to-check existence on a factory payroll is enough to give anyone the blues. Twelve-hour shifts on concrete floors, deprived of any contact or view of the outside world, can make even the best of days seem dreary. Everyone in that environment has his or her own way of coping with the repetitous, physical work, and the stifling sense of imprisonment that production work demands.

So how do you beat it? My own escape mechanism has always been the fine art of daydreaming. If you can't actually wade out into a clear mountain stream with a fly rod in hand to spend the afternoon making lazy casts into pools beneath the rapids, a well-crafted daydream can be almost as therapeutic. I've spent countless hours on a clothing-optional beach at a Jamaican resort, all the while churning out tire after tire and rolling them to the conveyor belt. Some days, I see myself finally settling down at a quiet desk, with a good typewriter and plenty of paper, to write that Great American Novel.

I'll leave it to the physchologists to determine if thirty years in a Walter Mitty haze is healthy or delusional. All I know is that when you can't change your reality, sometimes it helps to change your perception of that reality. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I see a fat rainbow trout rising in the shallows below the spillway. no license required, and no limit.