Tell Me Again How You Feel...

Just Once Could I Win

Rewind back to the Rawlins period where I was stuck. I made it to the customer by Friday night. There was nothing said at the time to me as I was under the impression that they would take the freight on Saturday. Not so. Nor could any of the weekend morons actually do anything on my behalf. Like, perhaps letting me drop the load in Denver and allow some other driver coming off of home time to haul it in to get an empty. Lord knows I have had to do that a number of times. I ended up waiting on until Monday at seven am. I went in and gave them my paperwork. He said that I could back into a door but I am not a priority because I was late. They took seven hours to get me unloaded. After I got my paperwork, I went to the bathroom and emptied all the contents of all the cleaning supplies on the floor and left. Neatness was not exactly my priority and I did feel better. The bathroom is sure to be clean after scrubbing several gallons of hand soap off the floor...6 to be exact. I am still chuckling about that and it was 2 days ago. A lesser man would have resorted to grafitti, but, not me. I am freaking creative. Having only one thousand miles for the last eight days makes a guy creative. I am so creative. Well, I have another wonderful run with 500 or so miles and 2 days to get there. I might be so creative that I take a crap on their counter...who knows? Dedication:p

The Rawlins Mess Revisited...

Seems that I have been there before. You pull into a truck stop, get out, look around, and you think to yourself that perhaps you remember this. You rack your brain trying to associate your current mind picture with the pictures of trucker dump past. Was it the scenery? Did some idiot say something on the CB that has been said many times before?

I was working for Crete Carriers. I was slogging my way through the snow and ice and decided that I would do myself some good to pull in and get some rest. I pulled in and was relieved to see some parking spots available to me. I slipped right in and went in for a shower and something to eat. I was feeling great when I went to bed that night. I woke up when the daylight made it necessary along with the indian alarm clock (that means that I had to pee). I looked outside and it looked as though the trucks were dropped from overhead flying aircraft. There were trucks everywhere, not to mention, the snow piled up on my hood blocking at least 15 inches of my forward view. I was stuck and could not move as there were too many trucks parked catawampus for me to get out. I figured that I would walk in and have some breakfast and read the paper. There was no paper available, so I made due with a trucker magazine. Breakfast was good and someone walked in and I overheard them saying that the highway was closed to the west due to a wreck. The harsh reality had set in right there that I would not be moving anywhere soon along with my unintentional compadres in the parking lot. Soon the wind became a major factor with the blowing snow making the other trucks into silouhettes on the dimming daylight.

Fast forward to today. I was coming east and making great time, when the CB blasted on about an accident at the 206 mile marker just shy of Rawlins. While I was happily running over the occasional ice patch at 60 mph, there were some schedule and mentally challenged drivers doing 75 mph on by me. Sure enough, there was a 4 or 5 truck crash involving some of the fast movers who were ill prepared to handle the conditions as they changed. It really is the same old story that happens over and over again. People that have high assumptions about their driving abilities meet adventure and danger on the highway.

Here is my opinion on driving ability:

1. I am only a good driver if I am driving safely. Safe means taking into account all road conditions and using all reasonable information available to me. It also applies to my ability to operate that vehicle with enough sleep and a good attitude for driving.

2. Ice is ice and ice is slippery. Use all the trucker wives tales you want. If you are on ice there are things for the most part that you can use to make yourself safe. You can slow down, steer mildly and brake like there is an eggshell on the pedal that you do not want to break. The one thing that is often ignored is the pull over and park in a safe place option. Sometimes you just need to give the salt truck a chance to help make it safer for you.

3. Hot freight and pressure from the dispatcher equals death or injury. Not that we don't need a little prodding now and again, but, when you have a dispatcher telling you to get over that mountain when they are sitting behind a warm desk and are not putting their livlihood on the line by proceeding into certain danger, I just tell them to back the hell off. Hot freight cools off awful quick when that truck is on its side in the ditch.

4. Courtesy goes along way when you are in bad weather. Signal your intentions. Let the other driver know when he is by you by dimming your headlights briefly. Do not be one of those knuckleheads that flashes with the brights. And speaking of lights...use them, even if it is only raining in the daytime. That visibility goes along way as well.

5. Don't speed. Any accident situation can be recreated as a mathmatical problem. The weight of the vehicle, road condition, visibility, road contour and speed all add up together to establish the findings when there is an accident. There are many more factors to consider as well. There are data bases of information that law enforcement uses to establish the speed part of the equasion in an accident re-creation. Don't let the speed of your vehicle take you into the accident too fast. Speed is the part of the potential accident that all to often, the driver chooses to his dismay.

6. Drive within your limits and the limits of the law. When there is an accident, the first thing that happens besides all the usual things like removing the vehicles and treating the injured, is the contacting of the company and getting information on where and when the truck was running. There are many ways for this to occur. The most common is the Quaalcomm but there are also fuel and other receipts with their date and time stamping. This is all compared to what you as the driver "said" on your logbook. In bad weather, it is wise to have those times and places match your logbook as best as possible. Do not expect your company to go to bat for you or the dispatcher that prodded you to stand up in your defense should there be an accident. You will know full well the view from under the bus as you will be thrown there quickly. The company line universally will be that the company does not condone or recommend drivers to drive in an unsafe manner or when the weather is dangerous.

7. Common sense...when the weather is bad, there is no time to screw around. Keep off the phone and CB. Keep the stereo volume low as the CB can warn you of what is ahead. Avoid running side by side on icy roads. Do your best to increase your following distance. If the trucks are driving badly around you, back out of it and let them go on. Do not keep yourself in a dangerous situation...get out of it by being proactive to danger instead of being reactive. If you have to react with a panic stop, chances are that you are not noticing what is ahead of you and that you are too late.

8. Drive ahead. I know, you are going ahead or forward...but actually look forward. Way forward. Those brake lights at 300 feet will not give you enough time to react. Better to be able to see those brakes go on at 1/2 mile and have the time to stop with control.

9. Leave the Jake brake off or use the lower settings if you need to slow down. The Jake brake will behave like your regular brakes on your drive tires. So will sudden or abrupt down shifts.

10. Keep the cruise control off. That cruise control does not know that it is snowing outside. It will simply try to accelerate to keep the truck up to its set speed. If that happens at the wrong time, you will get the chance to test your supertrucker skills at handling a spinout at 60 mph. Not what I call fun I can tell you.

11. Keep your eyes on the 4 wheeled vehicles. The people driving cars and pickups are not professional drivers and no matter where they live, they do not drive anything near 140,000 miles per year in adverse conditions. There are many situations going on in cars. Distracting children, bad drivers, poor maintance, bad tires just to list a few. These things will affect the way they drive and for the most part, passing a truck on an icy road scares the hell out of them.

12. Do not tailgate. Do not tailgate. Do not tailgate...

I am sure that there are many more things that come to mind but I only have so much time to write. Be safe out there and if you look in the mirror and see a complete idiot, please stay the hell out of a big truck. The roads are dangerous enough as it is. Dedication :)

Skank Attack in Albuquerque

I don't know what it is about this Flying J. One time I was here and I was talking to my wife on the phone with the window open. There was this nice breeze and it was a good day. Then to my dismay this ugly, ice pick groomed, toothless lot lizard skank jumps right up on my step and with my wife on the phone, proceeds to ask me what I would like to do tonight and did I want someone to talk to. Boy, that was a great one to pull with my wife on the phone. Anyway, I am sure it was the same one that woke me up today. Only, this time it was at 4:53 am. The hour did not change either my answer to her or her looks. Either it was the same one or they have a cloning factory producing them. Time for a new model. But, I tell you what, if you happen to have an absolutely poppin', smokin', awesome looking hooker approach you and ask you for a date, Tell her that you do not have a corsage and walk away because good looking truck stop hookers are either completely bonkers or they are the Police. Either way, you are asking for it.

I was driving merrily across I-40 yesterday and noticed as the day for my driving was about over that really, nothing happened. I saw no wrecks, nothing of notice. That is almost strange. I heard about some interesting stuff on the news. None of it within eyes view of my windshield. That is awesome. When something big is going on and hits national news just as you drive by it. Yesterday, some drivers got to see the smoke and evacuation of the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas. It is right next to the I15 freeway and I am sure that the commotion was grand. I just hope no one lost their lives.

The Three Burritos:

When I was in first grade we lived on 3802 Grand Avenue in Pomona, CA. My mom had divorced my father and ended up where she clearly did not want to be. Back at home under the aegis of my Grandfather. She hastily sought escape and latched on to the first sorry suspect to fall under her gaze, his name was Ron.

Ron was a tall lanky loser that liked beer and Mopars and racing Mopars. He had a job at Dub Minton's garage in Pomona and made a not so respectable wage of 65 bucks a week. The apartment was also 65 bucks per month. Since my mother was rather insincere and had difficulty with the truth, I was never able to extract the exact terms of their arrangement aside from the fact that she did not love him, but somehow managed to go to Las Vegas and marry him. My grandfather did not really like him and that should have been a sign. My brother and I did not like him either, as he really liked to be a father in no other way but discipline and the belt.

Here was the arrangement as I saw it. My mom did not work but we were to be fed somehow. So my mom would feed me and my brother oatmeal, cornmeal mush and any other crap that she would call food, but me and my brother would just call it crap. Somehow there was enough money for Ron to be able to eat to his liking. We were not getting enough to eat and yet we had to endure the cooking of porterhouse steaks for Ron and Mom while we had as I described earlier as "crap". All I remember is that I was hungry all the time. Breakfast could be eaten but only if I did not pack a lunch. A teacher discovered that I had no lunch and I repeated my mothers words verbatim to her. That was changed to I could eat lunch but no breakfast because of my big mouth.

Their was plenty of money also left over for Ron to campaign 4 different cars in his racing endeavors. Funny thing though...he never won much money driving those purpose built 10 second cars. He won a pot of money off of our daily driver 1966 Polara with a 383 in bracket racing. He could have saved one heck of a lot of money by just racing that. There was also money for Ron to sit in the front yard and bench race and drink beer with his friends. We were expected to play and act happy and we made horseshoes with the beer cans and kicked them around. You could get a good horseshoe out of a can in those days as they were made of steel and once they bent, they stayed on your feet for awhile.

During this time, my mother started acting strange. You never knew what you were going to end up with at the end of the school day. One day, I came in from first grade and my mom grabbed me by the hair and pulled me into the wall face first. I asked her what was wrong as I cried. She replied, "you took 2 extra fig newtons in your lunch." That was it. I mean I just can't imagine being so mean that you would deny your own child 2 cookies. The problem was, I had no idea what she was talking about. I hadn't even seen those cookies and yet, I was getting smacked around. I was grounded and sent to my room. When my brother came home from the babysitter (yes, that is right). He got the same treatment in much the same fashion.

During that time, Ron regained custody of his children from his prior marriage to Carol, who was now married to Sonny. Me and my brother got to meet Ronnie and Lori and we all moved into one bedroom at that place. It was always really clear to me and my brother that these kids of his were to be favored over us. At Christmas one year I got a car and it was already broken. Ronnie got his car and it was a 1968 Shelby Mustang with a battery powered clear working engine. Most of the memorable gifts that my brother and I received came from my grandparents. Not much in money, but things we needed...actually, they gave to me and my brother year around. I am sure glad we had them or life would have actually been worse than it was already.

Also during this time, my mother would leave all of us kids outside. Oftentimes, from 8 am to 9 or 10 pm. If we had to pee, we had to pee outside. She did not want us in her house as we were dirty and we would mess up her ready for Good Housekeeping home. There were times when Ron would come home with friends and drink beer in the driveway while us kids were bathed under cold water with the hose in the driveway because we were "dirty", much too dirty for her house. It was also during this time that the Burrito incident occurred. It started on a Saturday morning. We were sent out to play as usual. When I went in to use the bathroom later in the morning, the door was locked. No answer at all. Soon others had to use the bathroom and knocked and pounded on the door to get in to no avail. We went without lunch that day and we went without supper. It was cooling down quick at around 1030 pm when my mom opened the door and said "if you wanted to come in, why didn't you just ask?". We were directed to bed straight away. We were hungry and dirty from playing in the dirt all day. Bed.

The next morning, Ron was not at home and I got up to see if there was something to eat. I had gotten used to getting dressed if only to go to the bathroom in case there was a commotion, I could have a quick escape. My mother would seldom ever venture outside to chase us and that was well known. My mom got up and intercepted me before I could grab some food and I was outdoors with a shove. The others were woke up and sent outside to "play". We were all grumbling about being hungry so I went up to the door and knocked and said that I was hungry and that I needed something to eat. My mom said that she would make us some burritos and that we had to be good in order to get them. In fact she said that the one who was the most well behaved would receive something special. We stayed away from the house and did not bother mom once as we were really hungry and needed something to eat. It had been 2 days since our dog Maggie had anything to eat either as we were out of food for her as well or it was in the house, I can't remember. Anyway, the door finally opened at 6 pm and my mom comes out with an old Pup 'n' Taco bag with three bean burritos in it. She proclaims that we were not good and as a result we had just better get into the car and right now. We did as she told us. As we were waiting for her to get to the car, she opened the burritos in front of us and fed them to Maggie. The other kids started crying, but I refused. I was too angry. There had to be someone that could do something about this. We were taken to Gwen and Fred's house to visit. The whole time, even though I said I was hungry, no food. Honestly, I can't remember when we finally got to eat. I know we went at least 2 days without food though.

That is not the worst part of the story however. The worst part is that this whole thing, the starvation and abuse happened 75 feet from Ron's mothers house. It was a three apartment flat we lived in. The the doors were 30 feet apart. We were in the back apartment, Ron's mother was in the front. Her name was Grandma May and she did not do shit for us children. She was home the whole time, her curtains were open and she saw us there. When we went to her house, we told her that mom had locked us out and that we were hungry and she told us that she was ill and did not want any guests. The funny thing is that two of us children were her blood relation grandchildren and she turned them away hungry and filthy as well. She was too good to deal with children that were dirty and hungry.

Perhaps that is not the worst part of the story. Maybe it was the fact that years later I confronted my mother about this when I had 2 children of my own and had made sure that my kids wanted for nothing. I never left them alone in the elements with no food or concern for their safety. The question I asked was "what was going through your mind when you had your children unfed for 2 days and locked outdoors and your children were knocking on the door asking for your help as a parent, as an adult?" Her reply was really interesting. She said that she knew alot of things that were unpleasant happened and for the most part, it was Rons fault. Unwilling to let her off the hook, I countered with how could you do such a thing to your children? She replied, and I remember this to this very day. She said, "look, just don't let the same thing happen to your kids if you feel it was so bad, OK?

Her name is Avelie Mirron McIntyre, age 67 but her licence may read Lee M. McIntyre or Becker for a last name. Her birthday is February 21st and she is too regal to answer my calls. She hasn't answered one for over a year now. She either resides with her daughter (my half sister Lisa) who has 4 children from 4 different fathers and a drug rap sheet a mile long. The city they lived in last was La Verne, CA or it might be San Dimas or Pomona. 5 foot 5 inches tall, auburn died hair cut in a bob and she worked for the local bus service in Pomona. If you see her or if you know her, ask her if she would like to have a burrito. But she will have to wait a long time for it. Dedication :)

Anyone wanting to pass this along may do so as I think that stories like this happen every day.

Pearl Jamb

I am in Pearl, MS. I have showered, shaved, shat and ate and now I have something to say which to some may resemble shat but the heck with you, what do you know anyway? I am on my way to Sparks, NV and am really happy to be going back into the snow. I miss chains I tell you... Really.

This Flying J is a nice on the outside but dumpy on the inside example of a truck stop. The shower was not cleaned, the fuel island was dirty and there were islands cordoned off rather than being fixed. The salad bar was full of good food that was hard to eat when I had to sort through plates to find a clean one. The coffee tasted like Comet. It was not a good experience. About the only thing that could happen in this place that would make it worse is for someone to pull their pants down in the TV lounge and take a dump on the carpet. If that were to happen, I would have to say that it is a day and I must be going. There are homeless drifter types everywhere and I just think that with the amount of money that Flying J makes here that they could police the area a bit and keep some order. I got asked which direction I was going by a couple guys that were drinking beer in the open in the morning...I replied which way you headed? I love to confuse a drifter by making him use brain cells in the morning...He said west, I asked is Atlanta west?, and walked off while his microprocessor went into overload. It was a good thing he didn't follow as I had my what is a worm that produces fabric and how many electrons does a nitrogen atom have at the ready. Potential Jeopardy contestants are not in this parking lot. Thank God. Dedication:P

Sometimes it is Not What You Say...

Sometimes I look around and simply see normal things and in my own twisted way, find humor in it. Other times I see twisted things and since I am rather twisted in my own way, I still see great humor in what is there. I just wonder how this would change the term military intelligence. Get the hell away, they are throwing...splat!

Taint Sucky It's Kain Tucky

I am writing my latest load of crap from the back seat of a 1974 AMC Gremlin with my trusty bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill in my right hand while trying to figure out how best to lobby for the best selection to be played on the cassette player. After all, the stupid Loverboy tape has been played 4 frigging times already. How many times can you listen to You Take Me To The Top? Enough already.

Really, I am at my corporate office that usually produces my best work and as I seldom make any entries while I am at my home 20...you can assume that I am where I belong. Anyway, I stopped in and visited a good friend. A friend that has been in the view from way back in high school. It is funny, how few of these people really are there for you after this long. There are some that I have kept in touch with somehow. This guy has been there for me all along as well as his cool parents. The things we did are the stuff of legend. Or at least the stuff that appears legendary after enough beer. I am not sure, but none the less, it was a cool time. It is funny that I remember it so clearly with fondness because, I also remember being somewhat bored quite a bit of the time. I remember wanting more but, who knows what we really want. I guess I was just bored of that darned place and wanted something different. There were drinking contests, party fests, dates, races and fights that seemed to put a wrinkle in the normal part of our lives. There was the time that my friend told the car next to us that his tail light was out and the guy got violent and somehow the hatchet that belonged to my grandfather ended up embedded in the guys windshield as he tried to hit my friend with his car. He did not stop to return the hatchet. We were fun people that would fight at the drop of a hat. The fighting was just a way of changing the scenery a bit. We were all bored.

We all want something different that is why I joined the Navy. Different? You bet. High paying? No way. I was driving to work while in the Navy. The ship was stationed at Pier 28 in San Francisco on the Embarcadero. I was driving from Vallejo every morning and had quite a few variations of the view of the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge every single morning. All I could think about on the way to work was whether the traffic was going to allow me to get to work on time and agonizing about the fact that I needed to get my car into the shop before it broke down. I was too busy to enjoy one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

I was just this morning talking to my friend about this place at Mt. Baldy that we would park and stand outside smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. The elevation was about 5,000 feet with the City of Pomona far below. The mountains come together and form a "V" and at the bottom of the v is the Valley. The lights were beautiful and the mountain air without all the smog from below was refreshing. Beer tasted better and the conversation was always lively. The highway patrol would occasionally sneak into the little turnoff and try to catch us doing something or other. That is why we would stand outside of the cars. Upon first sight of the Chippy's, we would jettison our bottles down the mountainside and stand there looking innocent as though we were perhaps waiting on the train or a bus. It was an accepted game at the time and to not throw away your bottle was in some way disrespectful and crossing the line. You see, the police officers of old really did not want to have to bust you. But they would bust the dim-witted or the stupid.

I asked my friend if he truly missed Pomona. He replied that he did but that it had changed a lot and you really can't go back to that. I guess he is right. You can't ever go back home again. It is not there. Dedication :/