WESTSIDE — I had read of near-death experiences while in college and was skeptical of their legitimacy until last week when I had my own. I fell ill, either to a very bad cold or, more likely, to influenza itself - I knew I shouldn’t have skipped out on my flu shot last year. The result was a bug that basically knocked me out for three days.

Anyway, it seems I could do little but sleep and have wild dreams in which my whole life and more flashed be fore my eyes in a totally mixed up and conglomerated fashion. Now that I’ve come back to my senses,I’m trying to make sense of those dreams I can still remember.

I didn’t see any bright lights, but most of my dreams in some way involved truck driving across the high plains and not quite being able to ever reach my destination or make it back home again.

I suppose that aspect was realistic. Truck driving always involved trying to make some destination and come back home. The problem was, one destination led to another and another. Back home was not a high priority with my dispatchers and my hopesto get there were thwarted again and again by another load and another destination taking me farther from where I wanted to go.

But some of my dreams took me back to a time before my recollection, because the truck was a large horse-drawn wagon and we were carrying some pretty hefty black powder revolvers and rifles that were a lot bigger than anything I ever carried while a law enforcement officer in western Kansas. In fact, some of my companions were probably on wanted posters, though they were not actually guilty of any crime, of course, except for standing up against some scoundrels that had the local law on their side.

I don’t believe in reincarnation and past lives and don’t believe I’m old enough to have lived during those days - and especiallynot in that old dug-out where we were unloading and planning to stay for a while - so I’m convinced it was just a mixture of images from watching old westerns and seeing the places and guns of the Old West at a number of locations in Kansas and Nebraska.

The greatest mystery to me was one of my last dreams. After photographing a football game with snow all around in a town nearby to where I used to live, I found myself offloading a tanker trailer still filled with rinse water used to clean out my tank after pumping out a hog confinement. I won’t tell you who else was there; it would be a shock to them.

Now, I’ve hauled a lot of things - I’ve even hauled lumber to build hog confinements - but I have never hauled out that sweet-smelling fertilizer.

Anyway, I was unloading a tanker full of that less-thanpure water into a storm drain outside an old Lutheran church where a wedding just happened to be taking place and found that the German-speaking ladies preparing the food there for the reception moved the hose from the storm drain into the well with drinking water and thought it was a great prank to play on the wedding party.

Now, I have nothing against German-speaking ladies (or men, for that matter) since I grew up in a German-speaking community and my own mother used to tell me tales of pranks they played on their teachers and even on their minister.

In broken English, the ladies there, laughingly, offered me a glass of water from the well but I declined.

That’s it. I woke up and have been sane ever since.

At least my dreams now are work related - worries over covering news events, getting everything into the paper that should be there and those always-impending press deadlines.

No, I wasn’t on drugs, just sick. And I’ve come to the conclusion that the meaning of my dreams was exactly that: I was sick and a bit delirious.

Even I couldn’t have made up anything that wild!

And if I've left anything out of the paper this week that really should be in there, this column just might be reason enough for a valid excuse.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be reached by e-mail at rmoll @ nwaonline .com.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 09/15/2010