Yesterday when I was driving to work, traffic was slow for no apparent reason, as it often is. I'm listening to "Ladder of Years," my all time favorite book, on audio tape, so traffic jams don't bother me too much. I just listen to my book and wait it out. I don't like being late to work, but what can you do? It doesn't help to stress out about it.

As I got further on, the source of the slowdown appeared--there was a pile of some kind of books scattered all across the highway. Books were lying everywhere; some of them were flying around in the strong breeze, and separated pages were flying up and clinging to truck grills and car windshields. I couldn't tell what they were, they all looked the same, with pale blue soft covers--probably some kind of custom-printed handbooks, I would guess. The pages I could see looked like they were covered with closely printed columns of numbers, like a book of statistics of some sort.

I wanted to stop the car and get out and find out what they were, and I wondered how things like that get cleaned up, i.e., who has the responsibility for taking care of it.

Then I was past the snowdrift of paper, and I forgot about it, until, several miles further one, there was another spill of the same books, and I started thinking about what had happened. Had the door of a truck fallen open while the truck was on the highway, and a pile of books fell out unnoticed, but then things were cool for a few miles until a jog in the road--something--caused another pile of books to topple over? It was intriguing, and it reminded me of another drive to work a few weeks ago, when I found myself behind a truck carrying stacks of orange traffic cones.

The stacks weren't actually stacks, that is, they weren't standing upright, but were lying on their sides in a truck with no rear panel. As the truck drove along, the cones were obviously loosening from their stacks, and the outcome was obvious: an eventual scattering of cones across the highway. I watched for my opportunity and moved into another lane as quickly as I could, noticing that other drivers were doing the same. I watched in my rear view mirror for awhile, but I never saw them fall.

I always wonder what happens in cases like that. Obviously, the book guy didn't know (or didn't care) that he'd lost his cargo, or there wouldn't have been a second pile of books. I would assume that the traffic cone guy would notice if he lost the cones, but if the possibility had occurred to him, wouldn't he have secured them? Or maybe he figured he would be safe, that he was only driving a little way and could get away with it.

I just always wonder. Did the book truck driver get to his destination, go back and open the truck, and have no idea what happened to his cargo? Seems unlikely, but that must be what happened.

This morning, there were still a few books along the highway, the ones that hadn't blown away. I wonder if people found them in their front yards and in their driveways, and wondered where they came from?