Ghosts of truckstops past.

Before the interstate bypass was completed, you had to drive through Gallup. There were a few stop lights to get through. If you caught a red light, you might be stuck there 30 minutes as the locals would walk slowly across in a long line. They continued even though their light was red. You would sound your air horn, cuss them out, they had nothing better to do than delay the truckers

 

The trucking Bozo's son owns it now trying to make it like it was....

 

Sweet !

 

I recall Gallup well. The Population that lives there are all or mostly Native American. I myself have no problems with them but unfortunately we learned to skip Gallup as a provisoning etc because we were outsiders by race and not welcome there. Shrugs. There is always either Kingman or Armarillo.

 

There's several that closed in my area (Washington) for better or worse:
-@Poor mothertrucker already mentioned the one in Federal Way, I think it was a Flying J.
-there was an armpit of a stop in Tumwater, I think it was called the Restover.
-and then there was the Hawk's Prairie Truck stop, I remember they served a ton of food for a fairly reasonable price (don't quote me on that, I was a teenager the last time I was there).

 

I don't remember the name of the truck stop in Federal Way but that was before it became a flying J. It had a huge dirt lot, bar, restaurant and motel with $10 over night for truckers. Many times drivers would get out the BBQ, drink beer, play guitars and sing till wee hours. No fights, no problems and we cleaned up before we left. Goodtimes there.

 

Remember the Outpost in Victorville Ca. Or the old Betts big T on 27 Chiefland fl.
Or the Maverick and Huskey TS Las Vegas.

 

Bett T's restaurant is still open but no truckstop exists. The wife and I eat there quite often. They have some pictures hanging up of old trucks back in the day when it was a truckstop. You can still see where the counter was even though they have removed it.

 

Yeah man, this was commonplace back in the day. I recall loading melons for the BH north down around Immokalee, around this time too. We'd go right to the farm and have to wait for a day or two while they picked the melons and brought them in. You see, it would rain every afternoon, and you couldn't load the melons wet, so it would take time for them to dry out and to get them loaded.

Anyway, a bunch of us, who had never met one another before then, would get together. One guy would volunteer to BT to town and load up on beef and beer, another had the grill & charcoal, while another had the guitar. Needless to say, we'd have a real hoot into the wee hours. Those were some of the good times remembered in truckin.....

 

Saw 2 naked girls riding around on the roof of a CO KW there one night,proudly showing off there wares to everybody as the truck slowly idled around the lot.Remember the bar,used to have membership card deal there,was a wild place.Used to load up at the aluminum plant in Rockwall.