01.31.2013 Narrating a Life Written On The Road: Medford, OR

01.31.2013

It was the cook who saved me, a tiny woman no bigger than a 12 year old, when I landed gasping at the back door of the 24-hour restaurant at dusk, the screen propped open by the giant fan to cool the kitchen during that hot summer in Medford. A young man in a filthy apron arose from his chair next to a small round bar table, setting his unfinished cigarette in the ashtray as the cook turned from her chopping to face me, the knife she held made larger by her small frame. I stared from her to the busboy and back again, my chest heaving as I pointed behind me and tried to work words into my ragged panting.

Some details are a bit hazy now but I recall they sat me down at their break table, the cook heading for the back door to avenge me. My eyes grew wider at that prospect and I indicated by nodding and shaking my head in response to their questions that the police should be called instead.

While I regained my breath and awaited the arrival of the police, I saw that the 2 chairs against the wall separated by the table which served as their break area had the cash register in view so they could keep an eye on things out front as they smoked between orders. They returned to their work, casting glances my way until the cops arrived by the front door at the cash register.

The officer quizzed me about the attack, barely concealed disbelief in his face as he methodically covered the minimum number of questions necessary to appear concerned about the incident when a movement beyond his shoulder at the cash register caught my eye.

And there he was – the attacker I had fled, walking right into the restaurant and seating himself at the counter. I began hyperventilating, eyes saucers, as the officer turned to find the object of my hysteria.

I insisted the cops turn his backpack upside down to search for the weapon, though none was found. And when they told me no charges would be filed because his version proclaimed his innocence, I erupted in caustic threats and derogatory innuendos. Whereupon they offered to jail me instead.

My witness was a night worker at the McDonald's, a janitor doing the floors in the dining area in clear view of my windshield, my clipboard resting on the steering wheel as a desk for catching up my logbook. With the interior light above my left ear as my lamp, the gathering darkness outside hid the approach of the ragged transient who startled me by opening the passenger door and climbing right in, asking me if I was headed South or some such thing. I responded with an astonished “What are you doing in my truck?” He lunged across the cab, grabbed a handful of hair and began banging my head against the steering wheel.

Recounting the tale later, I was met with all manner of advice on the measures I “shoulda” taken. At such close quarters, most of those suggestions wouldn't work anyway but most people were re-creating the story in their own minds to resemble a Clint Eastwood movie or Chuck Norris maybe.

My left leg was wedged between the door and the seat, one of my more creative fidgets, preventing me from being pulled across the doghouse or into the bunk. I got my left hand tangled up in the airhorn pull, a convenient handhold that alerted the janitor at McDonald's who watched the incident unfold. Where was my right hand?

I have come to recognize several instances in my life where God has spoken to me. Like Charleton Heston. I heard it plainly. Now, I didn't actually believe in God at that time, or in anything outside of my five senses for longer than anyone should admit. Over time, I identified 3 distinct experiences of this Voice, all benevolent, simple statements of truth. I didn't recall for many years that I heard that Voice earlier, before I developed an awareness of a Great Spirit, by whatever name you use. It happened in that truck.

Because a cabover Kenworth floor reaches somewhere above eye level for me, anything I want to reach inside is wedged between the door and the left-side base of the airride seat. Further in, and I can't reach it from the ground. This is where the cab jack handle resides, a 24” hunk of iron pipe with a bicycle handgrip on it.

Except that just now, for reasons I cannot recall, it was resting upright against the bunk frame and the doghouse, within easy reach of my right hand.

Although I didn't attribute it at the time, I recall the deliberate grasp as I wrapped my hand tightly around the comforting rubber grip, the tiny voice of Reason saying “You can't hit him over the head with a lead pipe! That's only in movies!” And the deep Voice filled my head, said simply, “Him or me!”

It amazes me how one can weigh options, calculate and judge, theorize almost calmly while Time seems to race or drag, only later marveling at the process. My grip firm on the cab jack, I raised it knowing I would have only one chance. I swung. He grabbed. I released the fading airhorn pull with my left hand and dropped it to the door handle, the flat spring-loaded pull-out style, my left leg popped the door open.

I bailed out, the cab jack and a handful of my hair his only trophy, made a perfect paratrooper landing, arose from my crouch and headed for The Light, the sanctuary of the diner kitchen.

01.26.2013 Narrating A Life Written On The Road: Wide-Open Wyoming - Becoming Mortal

01.26.2013

It was a 1980 KW conventional, special order, one of those new walk-in sleepers. 430 Detroit, respectable but not a genuine powerhouse. 355 rears, though, and that wasn't the clincher. Spicer resurrected the two-box transmission Browning made popular years earlier. A 6 X 4, not progressive. That gave it a reach beyond the numbers on the speedometer, and herein lies the prelude to my mortality.

A flashy rig like this one attracts competition, those who want to see what's under the hood. But it's a truck, you know, not a Maserati. Still, there's a lot of geography to put into your rear-view mirror in Wyoming, and one could grow old waiting behind the speed limit imposed by the Feds in the 1970's. 

So late one night, after pinning the speedometer needle against the peg at the end of the gauge, I left the fellow in the adjoining lane dropping back further and further, as I explored the limits of the last 2 gears. 

The Interstate gradually climbs the rolling hills of the Continental Divide, yawning 2 or 3 miles wide between crests. Collecting speed on the downslope, the rig alternately shuddered and smoothed out, the rhythm developing into a routine. Radio delta range ebbed as the headlights in my mirrors shrank to pinholes in the black night. Bottoming out, then sweeping up the next rise, I began to relax and marvel at the sheer velocity of this machine. That's when it happened.

Not abruptly, but more like a tiny voice at the back of my consciousness, suggested that nothing, absolutely nothing on this rig was designed to go this fast. 

Every truck driver's worst nightmare is blowing out a steering tire. It's the single most vulnerable component on a moving truck, the mere thought of it guaranteed to bring a strong man to his knees. 

That small voice kept at me, reasoning, reminding, as I was slowly compelled to recognize the logical outcome of such an event. And I did not want to go out under a load of of "garbage," slang for produce (given its perishability). 

Ever so gradually I let up on the accelerator, just as gently downshifted, once, twice, three times, four, until I was crawling along at about half peak speed, hovering just over the original 70 mph speed limit from before the oil wars. 

The engine ground on monotonously, mile after tedious mile, giving no indication of any overtaxing demand on the drive train, no newly-developed shuddering, wobbling or unusual noise, nothing unusual at all. My hands rested gently on the wheel, sheer will overcoming the desire to clamp onto it with a grip only death could loosen. My teeth clenched, I broke into a clammy sweat as mile upon mile of rolling landscape unfurled before me. 

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Years later, I approached nearly the same speed, my riding buddy and I making the 2-day Lawman 1000 race along the Fraser River in British Columbia on our Hondas. Not actually a race, but he was the one motorcyclist I trusted enough to ride right on his flank - or he on mine, both of us trusting one another implicitly even in the triple-digit range. 

Coming up on a piece of highway which stretched before us for miles, he passed me, his monstrous new Valkyrie V-6 1200cc rocketing by. But the original Valkyrie had only 4 gears, while my '77 Magna had 6. 

It took me probably a minute or two to catch him as the power rise on the Magna kicked in well after 4000 RPMs. Dropping down a couple gears put the little 700cc into redline territory, where I began to gain on him.  

Just as I drew even with him, handlebar to handlebar, I backed off the throttle, and fell back in behind him. We rode thus for the remainder of the trip, drifting across the finish line ahead of the pack. The ride home was made tersely, and when Monday rolled around, he showed up at the house on his brand new Nighthawk, a 1700cc race-worthy, barely street-legal missile. 

Recalling that epiphany in Wyoming long ago, I determined immediately that those days were in my rearview mirror, to be revisited here and nowhere else.

01.26.2013 Narrating A Life Written On The Road: You Picked A Fine Time to Leave Me, Loose Wheel

01.26.2013

Concrete lasts longer than asphalt, doesn't develop the ruts blacktop is prone to, especially in the warmer climes like California. Over time the concrete develops its own personality. Newly installed slabs enjoy the buffering action of expansion strips, designed to absorb the shock of moving from one slab to the next. But these are the weak link. Heavy traffic, erosion, heaving, weather conditions, all combine to break down the smooth cruise appreciated on long trips.

This jarring causes and masks a plethora of equipment failures. Spend enough time with a machine and you get a feel for it you can't measure in gauges and dials.

Somewhere south of the Cottonwood coops, I narrowed down a disconcerting shudder in the front end to a specific range of speed, around 50-60 MPH. But it disappeared at lower or higher speeds. I had already run the truck through the tire shop, breaking down and removing the tires from the rims to check for interior damage, like nail hole plugs, splits or any breach, having lost caps to rust in the steel belts. Nobody puts anything but the best tires on the steering axle. Remembering, too, a lowly tire shop sweeper who had submerged an entire tire-and-wheel in the water tank checking for leaks, after I stopped every 100 miles or so to air up a persistent leaky soldier, and uncovering the tiniest, almost imperceptible column of air bubbles escaping from a crack in the rim invisible when halted, but which opened up under the pressure of road, load and speed.

Earlier rigs had no brakes on the front axles, riding on the arguable principle that maintaining steering in a braking emergency could allow the driver to take evasive action impossible with locked wheels. Rolling wheels can steer. During the 1970's changes in the industry pushed for brake requirements for front axles, as enormous force and weight was transferred to them during such emergencies. So manufactures heeded the trend, installing them on rigs in advance of regulatory changes. Such was the case on this rig.

When the front brake system needed expensive repairs, the company opted for simply removing the whole front axle system. But a spacer of some sort was needed to compensate for the thickness of the brake drum between the hub and the wheel. A cutting torch carved a donut-like spacer from the worn drums. Mission accomplished.

No one connected that act with the shudder I complained of until I finally pulled off the road onto the shoulder on the connector between Cottonwood and Vacaville. Once more, I ran my hand across the dusty surface of the rim, feeling for any flaw I might have missed in a dozen earlier inspections. I Windexed the wheel and rim again, the solution evaporating in the summer heat quickly, when I saw it.

I sprayed the rim repeatedly, then traced the drips to a nearly invisible line, a hairline crack that almost entirely encircled the rim, and which precisely matched the circumference of the home made brake drum spacer bolted in place behind it. Only about 2 inches of uncracked rim remained intact.

My knees buckled. I sat down in the weeds with a thud, remaining there until I felt confident I would not faint. My emotions ran the gamut.

My radio saved me a long hot walk to the nearest shop. I dropped the trailer right there on the shoulder, pulled ahead just enough to allow another company driver to come along and hook it, and awaited the tow truck sent by a passing driver. I called in, stated the what, where and why, along with a callback number, and hung up on the “Why didn't you...”

I just wasn't up to defending my miraculous salvation to Troglodytes.