“PTSD productions, like my own private movie studio spooling and gearing up, assembling a battalion, preparing for a calculated offensive.” Memories of a dump truck tire blowout on I-265 in Louisville will haunt me forever. This isn’t a story for your morning coffee. It’s not even a story I wanted to write. But after what I saw on the Gene Snyder, I couldn’t stay silent.
Tires (The Wind Section, But Reimagined)
Whirlwind Whistle, a friction-born woodwind symphony. Tires create the breathy hum of the road’s own lungs.
- Clarinet: Smooth highway treads.
- Flute: Low-profile tires singing on fresh asphalt.
- Oboe: Worn truck tires howling on cold concrete.
- Whirlwind whistle: That’s your pan flute of progress—a million tiny whispers blending into a highway hymn.
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
This isn’t a coffee story. It’s not a story I want to tell during the aroma of morning brew. And here I am—awake, remembering and living to tell it.
My son and I witnessed a traumatic event yesterday, dump truck tire blowout on I-265 in Louisville. We weren’t involved. I was riding shotgun in his fancy Jeep Cherokee. Prouda that young man I am, I am honored to be his dad! We were traveling westbound on I-265—the Gene Snyder—just about to pass mile marker 14, approaching the Smyrna Road exit in Louisville, KY.
My eyes scanned to the left, toward oncoming traffic divided by seasoned green grass. Nothing strange about it—just how I naturally observe the world. Then, like perfect clockwork, they fixed on a dump truck. And that’s when it happened.
The front passenger side tire blew. The truck lost control. It veered, collided with the embankment, and began to roll. Its load of brown dirt exploded from the back—balls and trails of it shooting out like a thousand fragmented dust comets, or the burst of an airborne firework display. It was chaos in motion. Then gravity took hold. The truck slammed down, inverted—landing directly on the cab. Right where the driver was. It was surreal, looked like a stunt scene created for The Fall Guy movie or something.
There is no light way of seeing that kind of heaviness. It didn’t just crash. It crashed down hard with massive weight. That’s what my mind keeps replaying. And the hardest part? It keeps wanting to place itself inside the skull of the driver, trying to see it through his eyes.
PTSD Productions and the Morning After
If a truck falls onto the interstate and there’s fast-moving chaos and the midday interstate orchestra all around, does it still make a sound?
Seven seconds.
Seven. (pause)
That’s how fast it all happened—from flat to flip to flop. Now I feel like I’m watching it unfold on a loop. PTSD productions. Like my own private movie studio spooling the film in HD. The anxiety hasn’t arrived yet, but I can feel it—gearing up, assembling its battalion, preparing for a calculated offensive.
The Blue Tick
This morning, I woke up from a dream. In it, I saw a blue tick sticking straight off of skin looking like an ostensorium, or monstrance as modernity calls it. As I gradually woke up, I was still mentally removing the tick—carefully extracting it and using a rubber-tipped syringe to suck out any vomit or poison it may have left behind.
I told my wife. She pulled up some search engine images of The Tick—the superhero. I’d heard of him once or twice, but never really looked into it. The mind makes strange connections.
A Memory That Hit Too Close
The Tire Blowout We Lived Through
What makes this all heavier is that my lady and I have experienced a front tire blowout ourselves—not too long ago. She was driving. We were going about 70 mph. Daytime. Dry. No traffic, thank goodness. I was in the sleeper, laying on our bed playing on my phone. The moment of that bang, I moved quickly to the passenger seat and strapped in.
In hindsight, she conducted the situation skillfully and masterfully like a surgeon. She brought the truck safely to the shoulder. She told me how she locked her hands and arms around the wheel and kept the truck steady while it slowed to a natural stop on the shoulder. I wasn’t at the wheel. I was just there—watching, assessing, reacting. So now, that memory merges with the one I saw yesterday.
The same start, same sound, a different outcome. That’s the worst part of all this. It didn’t happen to us—but my mind saw how easily it could have. The brain doesn’t care that we weren’t involved. It only cares that we could have been.
This morning, as I lay in my sleeper bunk writing this, our truck engine rumbled alive. The same way it did for that dump truck driver yesterday.
