A day in the life

My first 90-degree day for the year.

In South Carolina it's all flowers and full spring greenery. Pretty driving.

I could have been in a better mood for it. My satcom had flaked out while I was sitting in the terminal waiting for my load assignment. By the time I'd figured out it wasn't sending or receiving messages and wasn't telling me anything was wrong, it was too late to get to the shipper. And the shipper and my employer didn't get together quite soon enough to let me know the wouldn't load me late. So I was harried as I drove down here and disappointed when I arrived.

And hot. Let's not forget hot.

There weren't any pay phones within walking distance of the only truck stop in the area. That's getting more and more common. But a nice fellow at the Waffle House down the street loaned me his cell, so my wife knows I'm alive.

Kind of embarrassing. I mentioned that I didn't have money for a cell phone contract. He thought I meant I didn't have money at all, and offered to buy me a meal. Turned out he was a trucker himself, home for a few days and knew what it was like to be days from home with no cash.

Free food is good, but false pretenses do something to the taste. So I corrected the impression. He still insisted on buying me a cup of coffee. And he and his wife and I talked awhile. Trucker stuff, you know—which companies are worth driving for, lousy roads we have known, the latest brilliant ideas in motor vehicle regulation, etc.

At one point he said something about how we should just stop driving for a week, and let the country see what they were risking. I said I doubted it would ever happen—if the independent truckers were able to act collectively to that extent, they'd already be in a union. The lack of organizers is one of the things they like about this job, I opined.

Deep stuff. You know.

At length his wife took the car home, he bobtailed his tractor behind her, and I walked back up the hill to my overly-warm truck. The truck stop didn't have a place to sit inside, so I went to bed nice and early and tried to read myself to sleep. Didn't work.

So I wrote this. Now let's try it again.