We left at 5:30am on Saturday and made it to the Pilot in Pendleton, Kentucky for the night. As I sat at the truck stop and listened to the rumble of diesel engines under the cover of night, I realized that the job still spawned a sense of adventure and offered a freedom that few other jobs could match. Despite the angst often attached to it, this was still a job like no other.
When I got out of the Navy in 1983, I briefly held a horrible job at a chicken processing plant. I recall looking into the cabs of the trucks at the break of dawn and wondering where the driver was going next. I never thought that, over twenty years later, someone might be peering into my cab and wondering the same thing. Trucking has plenty of pitfalls, but it certainly breaks up the monotony of a regular job. On this night, I liked my job.
Week 41: Buffalo Commons
We made it to the TA in Morgan, Michigan on Sunday, and we were lucky to get there early—it was already packed and filling up quickly. As the sun went down, I watched a Lot lizard scurry from truck to truck in search of clients. Unlike the haggard appearance worn by most lizards, this young black girl would have looked more appropriate with an American Literature book under her arm on a Community College campus rather than propositioning truckers.
It was still dark the next morning when we rolled into Madison Heights. I passed right by the customer because a tree cast a shadow over the lighted sign. Fortunately, I only had to make one turn around to find the place. The customer promised to cut down the offending tree since I was not the first driver to fall victim to its shadows. After delivery, we headed to Kalamazoo, Michigan for the next load.
Kalamazoo was originally a Native American name, although its exact origin is a source of debate. The unusual name has inspired many poets, authors, and songwriters to cite it in their works.[53] My first introduction to Kalamazoo occurred at the age of six while reading Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hatches the Egg.
We waited over four hours in Kalamazoo for our load to be ready. During that time, I called the Safety Department manager, Broomhilde, to discuss my recent DOT inspection. We were supposed to get a $25 bonus for passing a DOT inspection, and I had yet to receive it.
As usual, Broomhilde was condescending and patronizing throughout the conversation. She always thought she knew what I was going to say before I said it and, consequently, often cut off my sentences and completed them for me. A word that rhymes with “ditch” entered my mind more than once, but I managed to refrain from verbally identifying her species.
After finally getting our load, we made it to a truck stop just across the Indiana state line on I-69 for the night. Gordonsville, Tennessee would be the destination for this load.
We headed out at 4am and found the interstate closed for construction around Daleville, Indiana. I lost my way on a county road detour and went all the way to Muncie before I corrected my bearings. A further delay occurred on US231 going into Tennessee from Kentucky. A multi-car accident held traffic at a standstill as I watched a bloody, unmoving body transported to a stretcher. It never got easier to view the aftermath of a crash.
In the months ahead, I would observe the aftermath of the worst traffic accident I’ve ever seen:
We sat idle on the Indianapolis bypass for over two hours as emergency personnel rushed to the scene. I could not see the site of the accident from where I sat, but its severity was apparent when a helicopter arrived to airlift crash victims. When the wreckage was cleared, I witnessed, with disbelief, the cars involved in the accident—they were barely identifiable as cars. Nothing remained of one of them except twisted metal and an untouched steering wheel that seemed to taunt motorists as they passed. Two flatbed straight trucks were required to remove the debris: one for what was left of the vehicle and another for all the pieces. It brought back somber memories of the day that changed Merlin’s life forever, and I felt like no less of a man as the recollection forced me to wipe away a tear.
Despite the detour and delay, we made it to Gordonsville on time and spent the night at a truck stop in Lebanon, Tennessee. Our next load picked up in Clarksville, Tennessee for McCook, Nebraska.
Clarksville had the distinction of having the first and only bank in the world established and operated entirely by women.[54] During World War I, women’s suffrage was becoming a major issue, and Clarksville women saw a need for banking independent of their husbands and fathers who were fighting. In response, the First Women’s Bank of Tennessee was established in 1919.[55] Although the First Trust and Savings Bank of Clarksville absorbed it in 1926, it remains a unique historical milestone.
Loading at U.S. Zinc in Clarksville was a breeze. We were loaded and gone in less than half an hour. Thanks to the expediency of the shipper, we made it all the way to Kansas City for the night.
I slept in until 8am at the Kansas City terminal and decided to make it a short day. While driving through Kansas on I-70 west, there were signs inviting me to "See live rattlesnakes," "Pet the baby pig," and "See the largest Prairie Dog in the world." As tempting as it sounded, we forged ahead and spent the night in Wakeeney, Kansas.
Wakeeney is known as “The Christmas City of the High Plains.” Since 1950, Wakeeney hosts an ornate Christmas lighting display that now includes over six thousand lights and a thirty-five foot Christmas tree in the center of town. The tree is ceremonially lit the Saturday night after Thanksgiving.[56] [57]
Wakeeney’s prosperity in the late 1800’s was primarily based on land sales. The Western Kansas World newspaper in 1886 listed about twenty firms attached to the sale of land. The following is an ad that appeared in The Western Kansas World in 1886:
LIE, STEAL, DRINK, AND SWEAR. When you lie, let it be in bed, on your claim. When you steal, let it be away from bad company. When you drink, drink moderately. When you swear, swear that your Land Agent shall be no other than McKnight and Whittsill, Land and Loans.
The delivery to McCook went fine, even though it turned out to be a lengthy live unload instead of the quick "drop and hook" I’d been expecting. We then sat in the drop yard for over an hour waiting for another load offering.
McCook, Nebraska plays host to an annual event called the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival. The seeds for the festival’s birth were planted in 1987 when Dr. Frank Popper of Rutgers University and his wife Deborah advanced a theory that the arid Great Plains would lose almost all their people within the coming quarter-century.[58] Because this area would continue to de-populate, age, and face further economic decline, the New Jersey professors asserted that the Great Plains should become a massive ecological reserve which they would call “Buffalo Commons.”
McCook and its neighbors took it personally when the Poppers implied that this part of the country should never have been settled. The dominant sentiment among southwest Nebraskans was that the Poppers should return to New Jersey and let them continue their persevering ways. McCook’s town leaders decided it was time to accentuate the positive. The tales of southwest Nebraska deserved telling, and a storytelling festival was the perfect vehicle. As a final rebuttal to the Poppers, McCook chose the name of Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival.
Despite the merit contained in many of the Poppers’ predictions, an article by Florence Williams in High Country News states that the amiable Poppers were content to ride a manure spreader in a centennial parade down the main street of Gwinner, North Dakota. Thirteen years after they first pitched their idea of turning the ailing plains into a vast Buffalo Commons, Frank Popper happily says, “We have gone from being East Coast academic Martians to being, well, almost local.”[59]
We picked up our next load in Sterling, Colorado. At the shipper, I succeeded in getting innumerable sticky burrs attached to my pants and, as a bonus, at least seven or eight flies boarded the truck for a ride back to Nebraska. The flies and the burrs tormented me for most of the way. I made an appeal to Kitty to catch the flies, but she seemed content to just play with them.
Shortly after crossing back into Nebraska on I-80, I saw a whirlwind of
tumbleweeds and debris spinning above the interstate. The cone whirled twenty to thirty feet in the air. I had never seen a dust devil before, but this was a healthy one. Like a tornado, a dust devil is a rotating updraft. Dust devils are ordinarily harmless, but they can still pack a scary wallop. While tornadoes form as an updraft attached to a wall cloud at the back of a thunderstorm, dust devils form as an updraft under sunny conditions in fair weather.
The devil whirled vigorously in the right-hand lane, and it rocked the entire truck with violent authority as I passed through it. Not only had I now seen a dust devil, I had driven smack through the middle of one!
We shut down for the evening at a truck stop in Big Springs, Nebraska. Our present load was going to Memphis, Tennessee. I called Brian and told him I was about to go searching for Elvis.
Week 42: RC Cola and Moon Pie
I finally washed my truck on Sunday in Ozora, Missouri. I almost forgot that it was actually shiny beneath all the crud. We made it to the Petro in West Memphis, Arkansas for the night. Not only was it a massive clusterfuck, they charged a ten dollar parking fee for the privilege of entering the fray. Truck stops that charge parking fees are more common in the northeast, but I try to give any of them as little business as possible.
The parking spots at the West Memphis Petro were crammed close to one another, and I almost grazed the mirror of another truck as I attempted to squeeze in. I was tempted to go inside for a meal in the restaurant after the stressful ordeal. Although Petro’s Iron Skillet is, in my opinion, the best restaurant of the major truck stop chains, I decided to forgo it because of the greedy parking fee. It was just as well. I noticed that I’d gained a few pounds, and cutting back on restaurant food seemed to be in order. Either that or I should peruse Victoria’s Secret for a bra that compliments my Trucking Ain’t For Sissies tee shirt.
I called the customer on Monday morning before going to Memphis to ask about their tricky dock. A Qualcomm message warned that three prior trucks got their trailer dollies stuck there and needed a tow truck for freedom. I saw the potential problem when I arrived. The dock angled downward and a large concrete hump separated the docking area from the street. Any attempt to pull into the street to straighten the docking maneuver presented a genuine possibility of getting the dollies lodged on the hump. The solution was to nail the dock off the 45º angle maneuver using no "pull-up." It required three attempts, but I managed to dock without hanging on the hump.
We picked up the next load in Grenada, Mississippi; a comparatively easy place in which to maneuver. Hayti, Missouri was our resting place for the night. We would deliver to Lawrence, Kansas on Wednesday.
I felt better on Tuesday after sleeping late and taking a long rest stop in Kingdom City, Missouri. While in Kingdom City, I walked over to a souvenir plaza called Nostalgiaville, USA. It offered various memorabilia, mostly from the 50’s and 60’s. After browsing for almost an hour, I walked away with a framed picture of the Beverly Hillbillies.
Afterward, we went to the Kansas City terminal to shut down for the day where I parked next to a driver yapping vigorously on his cell phone. When I returned from the restroom inside the terminal, he was still jabbering with fervor.
Kansas City was unseasonably hot, so I cranked up to cool off the truck. Once I did, the chattering driver waved for me to shut it off.
Yeah! I’m going to sit here and bake so he can yap on the cell phone!
I merely shook my head and motioned him to go elsewhere.
We arrived in Lawrence on Wednesday morning for the delivery. Downtown Lawrence’s lively atmosphere hinges on a vast assortment of restaurants, bars, galleries, shops, and music venues. Lawrence grabbed national attention in the early 1980’s because of the television movie, The Day After. The movie depicted what would happen to average Americans if the United States came under nuclear attack.
Lawrence suffered another fictional nuclear disaster in 2006 when a nuclear blast destroyed the city in the television series, Jericho. In reality, however, the city of Lawrence has an extensive tunnel system beneath Massachusetts Street and the University of Kansas designed as a nuclear attack shelter.[60]
Once again, I had to back into the customer’s dock off the street in the midst of heavy traffic. Under the circumstances, it went well this time. I went to a small coffee shop in the downtown area to kill time as the truck was unloaded. When I returned, I sat and watched many well-dressed business people pass in front of the truck with tightly gripped leather briefcases in tow and expressions of urgency on their faces. Most of them paid me no mind, but a few offered a confused gaze as if they observed an alien. I rested contently on the assumption that their idea of success and happiness might be different from mine. Of the handful of wealthy and "successful" people I’ve known, most were every bit as dysfunctional as the rest of us and in some cases, even more so. I was learning to measure success in terms of personal fulfillment and happiness rather than in material gain. A grin crept across my face with the knowledge that I would not trade places with any of them for…well, a million bucks!
After Lawrence, we picked up the next load on the Kansas side of Kansas City to deliver to Decatur, Alabama with a stop-off in Huntsville. This run would give me the opportunity for a 34-hour restart at home.
The billboards for Ann’s Bra Shop on I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis always gave me a chuckle.
“Bra problems?” they unfailingly inquired.
When we got to the Flying J in Warrenton, Missouri, I saw that one of my trailer door latches had popped loose. Under no circumstances is a driver ever supposed to break the seal on a loaded trailer, but I could not continue this run with my trailer door in this condition. In my experience, 90% of customers never check the seal—they just tell the driver to remove it. Most companies who actually do monitor the seals, like Starbucks, use a bolt seal that requires bolt cutters to remove.
I called dispatch for advice, and they told me I’d either have to continue with the door ajar or return all the way to Kansas to have it resealed. Neither option was acceptable. I made a bold decision to break the seal, open the door, correct the problem, and reseal it with a generic company seal. When I arrived in Huntsville, I explained the entire situation to the customer. They actually thanked me for taking the initiative and not delaying their shipment. My decision was a risky one, but it worked out nicely this time—the customer was happy, and that’s all my company needed to know.
On the way home to Scottsboro, I was caught in a forty-five minute backup on I-24 around Bell Buckle, Tennessee. This oddly named city hosts the annual RC Cola and Moon Pie festival. These two Southern classics became a popular treat among mine workers in the early 1900’s. The RC Cola and Moon Pie combination gained popularity as "the working man’s lunch", and took its place as a Southern tradition.
No one really knows what inspired the marriage between Royal Crown Cola and Moon Pie, but by the late 1950’s, the combination was highly popular throughout the South. RC Cola was less expensive that its competitors and Moon Pies were significantly larger than they are today. Consequently, you could buy the two for about a dime and enjoy a sugar-filled extravaganza.[61]
The stop-off delivery in Huntsville went fine, but I was not so fortunate in Decatur. Decatur, Alabama is home to one of the Meow Mix production facilities, and a sign reading, "Decatur: Home of Meow Mix" can be seen atop a building from the Tennessee River bridge. Decatur is also home to the first wave pool ever built in the United States at the Point Mallard Aquatic Center.[62]
My directions to Home Depot in Decatur were lacking, and I had to turn around in a residential area where a low-hanging branch broke off my radio antenna. I stopped at a convenience store to ask a local woman for directions, but the updated instructions lacked clarity as well. I finally pulled into a shopping center and luckily, saw a city police officer sitting there. He did one better than providing accurate directions—he gave me a police escort to Home Depot! Unlike the beer-bellied Georgia DOT office
r who almost had an orgasm giving me a ticket, this officer helped to restore my faith that all cops weren’t assholes. While it’s true that some cops take advantage of truckers being an easy target, it’s nice to know there are others who are genuinely good people.
I got back to Scottsboro after midnight for a glorious thirty-four hours at home. We would go back out on Sunday for two more weeks and then, hopefully, come back home for three or four days.
Detour: The Lonely Road
The aroma of a truck stop restaurant is curiously comforting. The smell of greasy breakfast food and stale cigarettes blends perfectly with the lively conversation of truckers. An overweight woman sits on a counter stool exchanging profanely-riddled diatribe with a man in a flannel shirt and a CAT baseball cap. A balding man with flush cheeks listens intently as he lights up a third or fourth Marlboro, awaiting the next opportunity to heave a mighty guffaw. Teasing insults flow as smoothly as genuine kindness among truckers, and most are grateful for a few moments of story swapping and interaction among peers.
Loneliness is, often, the immediate response to what makes life as a trucker difficult. While a scenario similar to the previous one can still be found in truck stops, they are becoming increasingly rare.
Truck stops were once the hub of a trucker’s business and social network. In the days before cell phones and Qualcomms, truckers contacted dispatch on a pay phone in the driver’s lounge or simply hung out until it was time to go down the road again. In this environment, business contacts were made, stories were shared, and friendships were developed.
Spirit of the Road Page 17