03.19.2013 - Narrating A Life Written On The Road – Longshoring

Coming of age in the 70's, I grew up overlooking the shipping lanes in Puget Sound. This view afforded me a working understanding of transportation and international commerce when Japanese technology was surpassing the United States in quality, price and sheer volume. Trade was high.

College was never an option for me. I dropped out of high school before I finished 10^th grade with above-average intelligence and below-average grades because, according to my report cards, I never “applied” myself. I just didn't believe in the school system. Even a high school diploma wouldn't assure me anything more than minimum wage, so I saw no reason to hack away for 3 more years. By the time I was 18 years old, with the Women's Movement gaining ground, I recognized that men would not work so cheaply and the answer to my future lay in blue-collar.

My very first 40-hour-a-week job was a summer position acquired through the state employment office at the tender age of 16 years old. Building on that foundation, I analyzed and imitated the traits necessary to work in the trades – rising early, taking breakfast at 4 AM at a local roadhouse frequented by drivers, longshoremen and operating engineers – crane operators. Flannel shirts and Levi button-fronts, tiny leather-palm work gloves and black lace-up boots in boys size 4 topped off with a signature hickory-stripe railroad cap completed my ensemble.

Although I got my first blue-collar job when I hit 18, I didn't longshore until I was fired from my job at 21 years old. I returned once again to the state unemployment office where I discovered an interesting phenomenon. Hours before the office opened, men would pull up, get out and set a hard hat down in a line next to the door beneath the awning, and return about an hour-and-a-half before scheduled hours. Another man would emerge in shirt sleeves from the nearly dark office, and all the hard hat owners would line up expectantly to accept job slips, retrieve their hard hats and drive off into the predawn dark. I learned that they were “extras,” taking day jobs from the local longshoreman’s hall.

So I got a hard hat.

Follow along as my adventure unfolds.

03.14.2013 Narrating A Life Written On The Road: Hauling Ore

One of the most wretched jobs I ever had involved a broker based out of Westboro, MA. He had a truck or two, and a contract to haul huge bags of iron-rich ore in giant poly bags in dry vans from East St. Louis to Groton, CT where a big name in vitamins would extract the mineral from the sediment. Typically, each morning I was scheduled to pick up in Illinois or deliver in Connecticut, a trip of around 1,100 miles or so. Interspersed were longer trips to points to the West Coast, those 3-day ultra-marathons which rendered solo drivers comatose for 24 hours following.

The grueling pace was but one factor in making this possibly the worst job ever. Besides the 62-MPH top-out speed and lack of any radio, I found cardboard lined the interior, stuffed along the back wall of the sleeper, the front and door kick panels on both the passenger and driver sides. Removing all the paper revealed the original reason for its existence: frigid winter air whistled through the gaps in the aging cab, twisted and no longer airtight. Raising and lowering the cabover confirmed it didn't settle into the saddles without leverage. An underpowered 2-stroke 6-V Silver 92 Detroit combined with a heater that was no match for a winter in the Midwest and Northeast. That the truck topped out at 62 miles an hour guaranteed I would never make good enough time to grab more than 4-5 hours sleep. The rubber was a medley of rags and radials of varying outside diameters, featuring the spectrum of brands available for split-rims and most near their legal wear limit which cost me the precious little sleep available as I was blowing tires and caps regularly.

Since my first truck had taught me that axles out of alignment quickly ruined tires, I was up on rubber specs. Around the fourth or fifth tire I reported blown, I got a frustrated complaint about “the new set of matched tires” and the suspicion that I was trying to pull a fast one on the boss. That was my second clue something was amiss. First was a dispatcher turning the truck around within 12 miles of the office, preventing me from picking up a paycheck.

On a long trip from Los Angeles to Wyoming, empty per dispatch, the Jimmy failed to work hard enough in the -40 degree weather conditions throughout the Rockies to generate enough heat to keep frost from forming inside, compelling me to scrape the inside of the windshield frequently. Windchill factors plummeted to around -70, cars grew scarce and truckers gelled at the pump as they fueled. Running a 50/50 mix of antifreeze to water, tripling the usual dose of Power Service and adding it prior to fueling kept me on the road long after even the State Patrol in Idaho disappeared.

Buttoning up the winter-front didn't keep the radiator from overheating, the contents a green Slurpee consistency surrounding the clutch fan silhouette. Limping into an indie shop outside Pocatello, I luxuriated in the warmth of the tiny office while the radiator thawed and the truck dropped filthy icicles onto the garage floor. I left the owner/mechanic behind his closed door to break the news to my boss and get authorization for repairs. Within a few minutes, the mechanic was gesturing for me to return, holding a finger to his lips as he quietly opened the door for me, indicating I should listen to the call on speakerphone. He re-framed his question: “Do you mean, is this overheating due to driver neglect?” he asked aloud.

“That's what I asked,” replied the disembodied voice, 2300 miles distant.

“Listen,” replied the mechanic, looking right into my eyes and shaking his head, “It's 40-below out here, the windchill puts it around 70-below. Even fire trucks and ambulances aren't running. Nothing has moved for hours. The driver didn't do anything wrong. Frankly I'm amazed your driver got this far in these conditions. It's just freezing!”

To which the far-away voice pleaded:”Can't you pin it on the driver somehow?”

The rest of that conversation was moot. The mechanic ventured his opinion. “It's none of my business,” he exclaimed, “but you need a new boss!”

I holed up in a tiny ancient motel, turned the heat up, drained the hot water tank in the shower and caught up on some badly needed sleep.

Back on the road, I consulted my fellow truck drivers via CB radio for my best case scenario to escape this job without stranding myself in the wilderness – in other words, how to drive to my next job. One recommended I hold onto whatever paperwork I still retained in exchange for my over-due pay.

No dice. Either the previous driver was creative enough to sell his matched set of new tires and wheels (as if anyone would spend good money on that wreck of a truck) to recoup some of his losses, or they never existed. The truck died in Fort Smith Arkansas a day or so following my ultimatum to pay up or else, saving me headache over the broker calling the authorities on me as a truck thief.

They probably hadn't paid a driver in eons.  

03.13.2013 Narrating A Life Written On The Road: Jigsaw Puzzler

Why Aren't You Writing?

03.13.2013 Narrating A Life Written On The Road: Jigsaw Puzzler

Having never been further than a few hundred miles from home before I took up truck-driving, my experience with cultural and social mores outside of my narrow world was abbreviated, to say the least. Like many of my colleagues, I was a sexual intellectual – a f***ing know-it-all. Despite my ninth-grade education I read voraciously, quickly picked up skills as needed, evidence of my brilliant mind. From my lofty pinnacle of wisdom I looked down on lesser mortals with all the arrogance of the truly ignorant.

Although the dawning awareness that wisdom was not confined to books developed slowly, there were incidents in my life that completely flummoxed me. One in particular remains vivid in my memory. And all these years later, I'm uncertain whether these folks actually knew better and were having a good laugh at my expense, or really believed what they told me.

I was invited to a family gathering, either a holiday, birthday or some such get-together at a homestead somewhere in the Midwest. The dining room table was covered in homemade foods, a rare treat. Various relatives were introduced, whose faces, names and relationships I promptly forgot, as I noshed on delicacies handed down through generations of European immigrants. Furnishings that probably arrived by Conestoga wagons – the original ones – filled the house, which was also several generations old. China, silver, quilts, doilies, a treasure trove of heirlooms.

Few modern pieces intruded on the museum quality of the place, and a small folding table erected in a corner caught my eye. Smaller than a card table, larger than a TV tray table, it held jigsaw puzzle pieces. A partial outline of 2 sides had been started, lots of loose pieces in the center with the box upright against the wall to display the resulting picture. Anyone was welcome to contribute to the 500-piece project.

Except that there were nowhere near 500 pieces on that tiny table.

When I asked where the rest of the pieces were, the answer left me speechless:

“Oh, we didn't have room for all of them, so we only put out half at a time.”

03.10.2013 Narrating A Life Written On The Road: Cross Country Soap

Running for a meat hauler out of St. Paul kept me bouncing mostly between NYC and the Twin Cities, with rare trips South to Texas and the Midwest. My beau pushed paper from Wisconsin mills to NYC and points East also, and we would meet up occasionally as our paths crossed. One particular truck stop attracted many of my fellow meat haulers, including Carl, who was sweet on a waitress there.

Carl and my own beau worked together years earlier, had stayed in touch over time - as much as any over-the-road driver could maintain any social life in those pre-Facebook days. The three of us were gathered for coffee with several other drivers, discussing our next loads and destinations. The waitress topped off our coffees, asked conversationally about our destinations. Half a dozen of us were headed back to the Twin Cities to pick up loads bound for Texas, whereupon she stage-whispered to me, “Keep an eye on Carl for me!” Then she winked conspiratorially as she left.

A few days later, we were empty outside Dallas – Fort Worth, awaiting dispatch to our next destination. Company policy was to pay room charges beginning the second night, incentive for dispatchers to keep trucks loaded, and keep truckers from finding their own loads. Second day, everyone checked in at the local motel where all the meat haulers awaited dispatch.

The heart of Texas gets their fair share of winter weather, with drifting snow and temperatures either side of zero. Heading out to warm up the rig following next morning's dispatch, I noticed Carl's truck already running. I knocked on his room door, and he let me inside where it was warm while he finished with the hairdryer. I watched the weather forecast on the muted TV. The phone rang.

Trucker motels don't always attract the Knights of the Road. In fact, some rather unsavory characters traveled the highways in the days before reciprocity between agencies eliminated multiple drivers licenses and tracked felons a bit better. Trucker motels weren't the place to stop with your family, if you get my point. So the motel maids would call the room next door as they worked to ensure that the room was empty before arriving to clean.

I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Who is THIS?!” demanded the Anglo voice at the other end.

I introduced myself, asked who I was addressing.

“This is his WIFE! Where's CARL?!” she demanded.

“Oh, I didn't know he had a wife,” I said, remembering the waitress. “He's drying his hair. I'll get him for you.”

Carl put down the hairdryer, and I left the room so he could speak privately to his wife. As several of us were headed to the packing plant some 250 miles distant, we traveled in a herd in case of breakdown on a remote stretch.

Carl finished up and off we went.

A week or two later, I crossed paths with my beau, and he told me a tale.

Now, I thrived on Agatha Christie mysteries, Clive Cussler novels and assorted other works of fiction. Of absolutely no interest to me were romances or TV soaps. I never read supermarket tabloids or celebrity rags, just wasn't interested in non-fiction outside the occasional biography. But many people adore soap operas.

My beau, traveling between Wisconsin and the East Coast on his regular runs stopped for coffee at that truck stop, where Carl's waitress poured coffee and filled him in on her version of the conversation between us. According to her, “that little b****” answered the phone in Carl's room, obviously after a wild night with Carl, and that waitress was going to get even by propositioning one of Carl's friends.

My beau turned her down (he said), but the next chapter featured her victory in this endeavor. Carl, for his part, felt that the score was NOT even (at least, not where I was concerned) and set out to even things up with one of her coworkers, in yet another installment of this drama.

Last I heard, they were still writing that tale, somewhere between scoring more points against each other and make-up encounters. To no one's surprise, I decided to take my coffee elsewhere, to avoid spit in my cup.