Car to Truck

Pick Up Truck



April 28, 2005

We're heading to North Florida in the Saturn, going to Old Town to pick up a big rig. It's sitting in someone's yard, in a cul-de-sac at the end of a curvy dirt road. How it got there, I don't know.

But I can say, it's going to Oklahoma. And taking my man Walter with it.

He's been home for over a year with a shoulder injury, unable to work. He blew his shoulder out moving the axles on a trailer. The tendon running over his shoulder blade got "impingement syndrome." The injury and inflammation and scar tissue make the hole where the tendon passes through too small. They go in and cut away bone or something from three different directions to enlarge the opening again.

That hurts.

But he's finally better now, and was even able to do some rehab work on the house. Not better enough, maybe, because he's certainly paying the price for doing that. It hurts.

The good news is, he also wasn't able to finish the phone line we'd need to get me off his laptop and back onto the house computer.

End result? The laptop is mine. Mine all mine. For now.

So I sit here riding down the road blogging from a laptop plugged into a 300-watt cigarette lighter converter. It gives us all the power we want - two electrical sockets - and the battery won't run down, so long as there's gas in the car. I'm writing in email offline.

Blogging from a moving car.

I look up from time to time, don't want to miss the sights on this road trip. I have to remember to look up. I'm not an experienced shotgun blogger.

We're on the Florida Turnpike at a toll plaza now. I can't see the elderly toll worker's face from my seat. I call out, You see this? I'm writing on a computer in a car. I never thought I would see the day.

He says nothing in return.

At the last pit stop, someone had a huge black long-haired dog near the entrance, red bandana around its neck. It looked a bit like a straight-haired Newfoundland, with the head of a chow. A Newfoundland-Chow mix? what would you call that, a NewFoundChow? a ChowFoundLand?

We make good time. The directions are full of landmarks like, Then go over the Suwannee River and pretty soon you come to a red light, and there's a Citgo on one corner and a BP on the other...That truck really was as advertised, down a curvy dirt road. Walter had to back it out. He did good.

The woman says, Here's how it got there:

Her husband worked for the same trucking company as Walter. Husband got pissed off at company over getting too few miles (meaning less pay), and what he viewed as an inflexible layover policy: after a delivery in the middle of nowhere, he waited for a new load for 30 hours. To add insult, they wouldn't let him drive down the road a few miles to a different truck stop which had the benefit of showers. The wife was outraged. From Sunday to Wednesday not one single shower!!!

And she didn't even have to smell him.

So, good old boy he looks to be, he told them, I quit. I'm going home. You want your truck back, come and get it.

We got it.

One of the landmark gas stations had a few truck parking spaces out back, and we meet up there.

Walter notifies the trucking company. He waits for instructions and loads his things from the Saturn to the rig. I make us each a PBJ.

Feels like a last supper.

He's supposed to pick up some trailers, they'll be loaded on the flatbed. No! Changed their minds. He'll deadhead, drive with the flatbed but no load back to Oklahoma. Even better. Same pay, less hassle, quicker ride, get the next job faster, so a bigger paycheck.

And now he's gone. And me, I feel lonesome and blue.

Heading home, alone.