“Smokes & Boots”

A lovely little story from “Puss & Boots” to “Smokes & Boots;” only in NYC folks!

Life is full of challenges that along the way generates countless personal moments of self-refection, and some are inconsequential and others are revelations; but all of it part of a big test.  God isn’t planning out our days for us and setting us up with a certain person or circumstance.  If we travel with the Holy Spirit whatever does come up will be something we can deal with the way God wills us to in serving Him.

I had to shift gears in more ways than one in life and literally between gigs or even changing career paths to maintain my life, paying all the bills and saving for the future, I found that commercial driving filled in many gaps.  Throughout my life I’ve driven commercially over a million miles and thank God without being in an accident or worse. How I negotiated that 18 wheeler through all conditions, snow storms, highway grid lock, thinking ahead at all times as to the four wheelers all around and what stunts they might try to pull to get past or around the big truck made for a very dicey and stressful situation.  On top of all the driving I had to be in all kinds of environments, from Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan to various rail yards like Croxton in New Jersey to International Airports like Logan, Bradley, Newark, Manchester and JFK, or on the waterfront of several key fishing port locations up and down the North East Coast.  Any of these locations could be on the schedule at any time of day or night so when most people were sleeping I might be hooking up double trailers or a 53 foot one in a dark roughneck part of the city or during regular business hours when the streets are full of people and their cars they congest the streets with.  I met more kinds of people and in more varied environments than one can shake a stick at, and sure I saw humanity and sometimes fleeting human connections in our travels while in passing one another when stopped at one of these varied locales having short interactions in our travels; but there was nothing better than being back home in my place where I belong and where I’m loved and needed. Out of necessity I was all over the map but does God want me for some other reason to be bopping all over like that to find connections, I think not!  The man-made world is in a sense from the perspective of a single person a chaotic place; and so focus on one’s own particular life and close family or significant relations is enough to deal with and I see meeting strangers as that just meeting strangers.

I had plenty of opportunity to meet new people in these working circumstances and even my personal travels but to me looking back its all like passing ships in the night and inconsequential.  As I’ve stated many times to many people, I’ve found my greater insights and purpose to my life when alone and depending on nothing more than my own abilities and the paramount guidance of God Almighty’s Holy Spirit that watched over me and indeed protected me.  I’ve studied acting and did a bit here and there so I’m fully cognizant of the idea of taking risks.  Doing so on a stage or in front of a camera can be helpful in creating a visceral characterization but as far as taking real risks with my life, I prefer to pass on that.  Unnecessary risk can become habit forming and we know this by the numbers of adrenaline freaks or junkies in the world! I see our individual lives as so precious to God who gave them to us that we should not take unnecessary risks with them and flaunt them in such a way as to be caviler with them.  Am I guilty of doing so, damn straight, I confess I did some pretty stupid things with my life over the years when not thinking the way I am now.  One little mishap or miscalculation and I wouldn’t be writing this now, that’s how dangerous it was at the time!  I was on a fine line of doing something for whatever reason on the one hand and sheer stupidity or foolishness on the other.  I thank God again that I made it through all the things I did to be able to share now with others, “that you are always better off keeping things in order of priority and your purpose for living in the first place;” the important mission to not fail the test.  I tend to see Monks and Nuns as being closer to serving God more accurately daily by a humble and meeker style of living and serving with focused mission and more restraint and not freewheeling the way many people do actually live in this time and age of pleasing self!  I don’t see risk if not absolutely necessary or even fully appropriate as being anything positive at all. “Common sense and practicality rule!”
Lawrence

PS I know I point out harsh reality here and in quite a few things I say or write about, because I know firsthand just how much danger and evil lurks around any given corner, and not that one should be paranoid but in this world today foolishness abounds and I attempt to counter that mind-set.

“Thank you for sharing that. yeah, Thank you Jesus that you were kept safe on the roadx”

Oh good! I’m glad you liked my little short story (autobiographical vignette).  Yea, plenty more where that came from, I sure stretched my envelope of protected space or comfort zone in my driving travels in my car cross country through 46 states, staying for long periods in about a dozen.  Talk about NYC I thought you might like my connection to Fulton Fish Market, now there’s a place that I met some characters during ungodly hours of the night.  Nefarious from the first looksie!

There was this time I had a hell of an experience taking a train into NYC during the wee hours of the morning arriving in town wearing my cowboy boots as I jumped off at Penn Station and decided to walk street-side on to my destination via 7th avenue in the wee hours when a group of bad hombres almost got the drop on me, I felt like I was in some surreal scene of the French Connection giving them the slip on the subway with some good faking body language that said I might be the heat!  I got away from them by fractions, and sure was good I did; because I know they weren’t gonna discuss Jesus or different parts of the hood with me, no matter how well-spoken or genuine I was!  Yeah, I got AWAY!

I say they wanted those brand new cowboy boots I was wearing, Whaddaya Think?

Or maybe, they just really had to know what I was doing walking around the Big Apple at 3am alone wearing new cowboy boots!  Hey what can I say I do lots of things alone. Maybe they figured I was related to the Marlboro Man and they wanted free smokes!  Oh well, these are questions for inquiring minds that we’ll probably never know the answers to; or will we?

Yes, thank Jesus I’m alive and kicking still!

Lawrence Morra
Amen

“Free smokes 😂”

Don’t forget the Marlboro Man Boots, sorta like the hood version of “Puss and Boots;” “Smokes and Boots,” great deal when you can get it!!! OMG only in NYC!  Hahahahaha! See I can laugh about it because it went the right way for me, at least in that little way, hehehehe!  But oh the things that could have been, I mean good things!  I shoulda done stuck it out!  Not my neck mind you; but maybe my personality?  And, I don’t mean with those bad hombres; but the people with the opportunities!  I guess I was a boy with the wanderlust!  A Rambling Man!  I talk up a powerful storm let me tell ya!

Lawrence Morra

PS Ya know folks I should count myself blessed and lucky I did all that and made it out alive in one piece!  The thing that doesn’t sit well with me is that I got through the gauntlet many a time being no worse the wear in spite of it all but then later life; the nefarious bastards stabbed me in the back!  I think they were so damn jealous!

Alive and Kicking You SOB’S.  One of my Hero’s “Papillon,” Steve McQueen!  He was a Marlboro Man!  He made it off “Devils Island” the only one to do it!

Author: Lawrence Morra

Have worked in creative and news visual media as a photographer or cameraman and this POV has given me a better insight or view of the world. The Cameraman's POV. His Perspective on many things. All content on this site is copyrighted© by Lawrence Morra/Zero Lift-Off. All rights reserved. Email: lmor3@aol.com View all posts by Lawrence Morra