Another Railroad Days

Last year, I practically missed the whole thing, holed up in our house as I was and not getting out a whole lot. This year, I was a doordash driver and have a whole different perspective.

From a doordash perspective, it was pretty wild. Restaurants had trouble with the doordash orders, as if being backed up on real customers they just didn't have the attention to handle orders coming at them from another direction. Even places that usually had it together were taking too long. One, Pizze Ranch, didn't even start the pizza until I got there to reminnd them. It was like they had new workers, and all the people who usually know what they are doing were out doing something else. But the worst of all, on Friday night, was Smokin' Willie's, which had moved. I got over to the new place, downtown, and lines were out the door and onto the sidewalk. They just told me, no door dash, fuhgeddaboutit. But I got an order there the following day, and this time they said yes in front, but the guy in back apparently refused. They'd told Door Dash to pause and not take orders while they moved, but somehow the system was taking orders. Maybe the guy in back, who makes all that fantastic barbeque, didn't care what the system did. He said no door dash and he meant it.

All weekend the fair downtown, apparently drunk people around, unusual business, lots of out-of-town license plates, unusual energy in the town.

Anyway a weekend of lost orders, stacked orders, crazy orders, very busy. Lots of business. Toward the end a couple of things rattled me. The first was on a country highway outside of Knoxville going to Gilson to deliver a McDonald's. There was a car and a truck behind me and I knew my cutoff to the left was coming up so I slowed down and put my signal on to turn left. But the truck, way in back, chose that time to pass. I think he was drunk or he would have seen I was turning. Fortunately though I saw him and just didn't turn until he was past.

Next was a little black boy on a bicycle who shot out in front of me as a woman was passing me on Main Street. She was actually much closer to hitting him than I was, since she had about a foot or two on me when it happened. But she missed him by only a matter of inches. Scary.

The last thing, late at night, pitch black out, you come up from the south on Seminary and there are two sets of railroad tracks crossing the road in different directions. First was fine, second had red lights. I slowed down and looked both ways for a train, saw nothing, just the red lights. I figured the tracks would cross the road normally and I just didn't see anything, so I crossed.

The train was close, going slowly, but coming at me from the front, like from downtown. He laid into his horn. He didn't like me crossing like that, right in front of him, and he let me know it. OK fair enough. I hadn't seen him. I was lucky. His wailing angry horn filled up the night and I went home. That was Railroad Days, Galesburg's festival.