Longest time out on the road

Longest time from hime? I'm not going to break any record, but I left the house on April 15th. 2010 & have seen it since!

 

Here's a little more of the new stuff. I drove back and forth coast to coast for a number of years, mostly across I-20, I-10, which is why I used that stretch for the backdrop of the story.
Miles are miles, but I always found the monotony of the long stretches of open country always got my brain into overdrive and no amount of music or CB talk seemed to help.
I was trying to capture some of that feeling in this scene.



Ricky broke through the rain by the time he reached the town of Weatherford, west of Fort Worth. The rolling hills would soon flatten out as he neared Abilene and give way to nearly flat plains. By the time he got to Odessa, trees would be replaced by oil derricks. And by the time one reached Pecos, the only word to describe the terrain was desert.
Ricky preferred to travel this stretch of Texas at night. The fierce western wind that generally blew across the western half of the state seem to subside substantially when the sun went down. It was easier on the nerves and provided a nice boost in fuel mileage.
But fuel mileage wasn't on his mind at the moment. He was just moving. The road soothed him and stimulated him. He thought about everything and nothing. He often wondered if this was destructive or therapeutic. Maybe both. Or neither. Do other drivers have these same thoughts while covering the endless ribbon of asphalt?

Ricky voted for the first and only time in a presidential election in 1980. Never one to be concerned with party alliances or politics in general, his vote for Ronald Reagan was based solely on a campaign promise. He was not alone in this. The support in the trucking community was enormous.
The presidential hopeful promised to abolish the highly unpopular fifty-five miles per hour, federally mandated speed limit. Get the government off the backs of the people and return these decisions to the states, where they rightfully belong, was the campaign mantra.
It was generally accepted by most everyone that there was no oil shortage, and the Arab oil embargo of 1973 was a farce, perpetuated for political and monetary reasons.
Now President Reagan was well into his second term, and the double nickel signs were still there. It seemed more than ludicrous out here in the desert with hundreds of thousands of acres of land with a population per square mile ratio equaled only by the Sahara Desert. Doubly frustrating with cheap fuel prices and a truck capable of nearly doubling the lawful limit.
Fortunately, the police presence was nearly as scattered as the population. On some stretches of rural interstate highway, a single officer had an assigned route of up to a hundred miles or more.
Most of those patrolmen weren't too intent on enforcing the speed limit in the wee hours between midnight and sunup, when the only vehicles roaming these barren lands were them and the truckers, both parties intent on making it through the night without a hassle. The unwritten rule was to keep it between the lines, not showing signs of intoxication or drowsiness, and keep the speed at a respectable twenty or so over the limit.

His pondering of the speed limit was interrupted by a pair of trucks approaching in the distance and a CB conversation concerning an unfaithful wife of one of the drivers. They paused long enough to inform Ricky of an overturned rig in Van Horn. Pretty nasty, they said, with the station wagon pinned underneath. He thanked them and told them he had nothing of interest to report regarding the last couple of hundred miles since he last stopped.

His fatigued mind drifted to the events in Dallas and to Luanne. He meant it when he told her "maybe one day", but he had no timetable regarding any lifestyle changes. He thought about her giving him her home number and the implications that came with it. She was about Betty's age and every bit as beautiful with her dark hair and skin made golden by the Texas sun. As alluring as the possibilities were, he had to consider the business relationship. Would it dissolve when the romance went sour? Most likely, it would, along with a long term friendship. Was it worth the risk to find out? Probably not. Had he made similar mistakes? Definitely.

While shoving aside unwanted thoughts of Darlene, with varying success, he began picking up more reports on the overturned truck in Van Horn. The stories grew with each telling, but it was certain that the interstate was closed and traffic was being detoured through town.
Seemed like a good enough excuse to find a spot to lay down his head for a while. He looked forward to the deep sleep that came from pushing himself to the point of near exhaustion. His uncle called that "honest working man's sleep".
The truck stop at Plateau was only a few miles ahead and was the last place to park before reaching Van Horn and the remnants of the earlier crash.
Plateau, Texas was aptly named, sitting upon the Edwards Plateau, exposed to the unforgiving wind and the accompanying dust. Plateau was now nothing more than an exit sign and the truck stop employees all lived in actual towns nearby. In 1911, fifteen families lived within the surrounding four hundred square miles. That was most likely the peak of the town's existence with the post office closing in 1916.
The Tex-Mex cuisine was beyond reproach Even the salsa was made right on the premises. It was here that Ricky first learned of chorizo and eggs, and had been ordering it ever since.
He parked facing east as was his custom, whenever possible, using the rising sun glaring through the windshield as nature's alarm clock. The rear of the trailer served to somewhat buffet the wind blowing in from nearly due west. He crawled into his bunk for a deep, but troubled sleep, plagued by dreams of dead dispatchers and missing girls.
#

Btw, this is three pages of a paperback novel.

 

This scene is based on real life. Although the character is fictional, the situation is not.
My first driving job in 1980 wasn't the best job in town, but with no experience, I couldn't be picky.
There was a percentage of black drivers there, many from the 60s, and a few had been there since the 50s.
They had good driving records and enough experience to drive anywhere. I later figured out that many of them felt a loyalty to a company that hired them at a time in history when no one else would.
It was a private carrier job for a cookie maker. I earned .016 cpm running single. Running team, we split .018.
I know that doesn't sound too great, but a fellow could do ok on 20k a year then.
The company has since been bought by Keebler, and they still run their own fleet.
_____________________________________________________________
#
After a lengthy slumber and a hearty breakfast, Ricky set his sights on Eloy, Arizona as his next overnight destination. It was only an eight hour drive, and from there he still had the weekend to make it to Los Angeles.
Eloy was a man made travelers oasis, just an hour east of Phoenix on Interstate 10. A half a dozen or so truck stops, large and small occupied the span of two exits. Motels were in abundance as well. As were repair shops, truck washes and plenty of guys offering to polish wheels and tanks at an affordable price.

Stopping in Road Forks, New Mexico for dinner at the Shady Grove truck stop, Ricky was pleased to find an old acquaintance sitting at the counter. Zeke was a thirty year driver, beginning his career in the fifties after surviving the Korean Conflict. He was a soft spoken man with eyes that belied wisdom and experience. He was a humble man from Albany, Georgia. His first driving job was hauling peanuts to market on mostly unpaved roads.
A black man driving a tractor trailer was a rarity in those days, especially down in south Georgia. Returning home from the war, Zeke found employment at a local peanut farm owned by Grady Wilson. A tough old bird who offered hard, hot labor for low wages. One Friday night during peak shipping season, one of Mr. Wilson’s drivers died when he drove his Buick into a hundred year old oak tree at one hundred miles per hour.
The neighbors couldn’t resist staring at the arrival of Mr. Wilson at Zeke’s house on the Saturday morning following the crash, for white folks rarely ventured on this side of the tracks.
"Mornin’ Zeke. I need a truck driver." Grady Wilson said simply when Zeke answered the knock on his front door.
"It means twice the money. I know your family could use it. Maybe buy yourself a car, so you won’t be walking to work."
Zeke was initially skeptical, thinking this to be a cruel hoax.
"But Mr. Wilson, you know I ain’t never drove no truck."
"My other drivers didn’t either until they learned." Mr. Wilson answered as he handed Zeke a key. "That fits the red Mack parked by the office. Go on up there and hook up to that empty trailer over behind the south barn. You got all weekend to practice out there in the fallow field. First thing Monday I’ll take you down to the State Patrol office and we’ll get you a license."
Without another word, Mr. Wilson got back in his Cadillac and drove away, leaving a speechless Zeke standing on his front porch staring at the key with disbelief.
Beneath his gruff exterior, Grady Wilson was a fair man, with a soft spot for veterans of any color. He knew vicious gossip would soon follow this decision, but the WWI veteran could deal with that and would challenge anyone who dared to confront him.

That was the type of story Ricky loved to hear. Stories of how it took two days to travel to the market in Miami, from Albany. A ten hour trip nowadays. Or averaging five miles per hour on a muddy trail for forty miles. When the blowhards started talking about how fast their trucks would go and how many women they had from coast to coast, he just nodded politely and inwardly tuned them out. When you started hearing the same tale ten times from ten different drivers, credibility was indeed lacking.
After a delicious meal of enchiladas and a pitcher of iced tea, Ricky scooped up the check with one hand while shaking Zeke’s hand with the other. There was a tremor in Zeke’s speech and a twitch in his left eye that wasn’t there when they last saw each other eight months earlier. He told Ricky he had suffered a mild stroke, but was determined to drive until they yanked him out of the truck. It saddened him to think of that occurring before they could ever meet again.
#

 

Been with PAM now for about 5 and a half months.

Before getting home last I was out about 13 weeks.

LOVE the stories!

 

Amazing GT, definitely keep us posted on any publishing!

 

Monday will start week number 14......plan on running until 2nd week of November then doing something we've never done shutting it down until the first of the year. We've decided to take the holidays off....okay actually be home for the holidays instead of flying in (on a jet not the truck) for a couple of days.

 

3 months...

I was totally bugo by that point...

I closed my eyes and all I saw was asphalt, white lines and yellow lines!

 

I must say GT, darn good stories. I have been sitting here for over 2 hours reading your stories. You have a great talent for story writing and should take that on full time. I compare your short stories to those like Tom Clancy writes....once you start reading, you can't put them down. Keep up the great work.

 

i must say this is an excellent read. sat here and read the whole story. Can't wait to start on shark killer!