Hardest Run

 Into my trucking years, I remember my hardest run from West Glacier, Montana to Winona, Minnesota and home to Cedar Falls. I left West Glacier on a Thursday morning, say around 8 o'clock with a load of lumber, I delivered in Winona Friday afternoon sometime before 5 in the afternoon and was home, sitting in a bar sipping a beer, at 8 o'clock Friday night. Total miles around 1,500. I did stop and slept a couple hours (maybe 4).

My First Car

 It was Spring or Summer of 1975. I was 18 years old. I remember my first car was a 1966 Chevy Impala station wagon. Really. It's what I wanted. It was a kind of a  tan color like sand, with a white roof. I paid $600 for it plus I paid a local artist $200 to air-brush paint a desert scene on the side windows. It was 2 speed automatic on the tree and I cut off the shifter handle and replaced it with a Budweiser tap handle. With the mag wheels I put on it, it looked pretty decent. The factory radio was AM only so I bought an AM-FM radio with an 8 track player and mounted it inside the glove box so it wasn't visible to thieves. That didn't help though. While I was at the Cattle Congress (it's like a carnival) someone broke the wing vent, unlocked the door, pried the glove box door open and  ripped it out. It was a good car though. It took me and my friend Marty to LA and San Diego and back to Cedar Falls. Though the rear main seal failed on the way out there so we spent most our time there replacing it. A couple years later I traded it for my brother's 2-door olds cutlass. Rusty with torn up seats but still a good runner.

They Call Them "Accidents" For a Reason

 Somewhere, sometime, for some unknown reason, the subject of motor vehicle accidents came up and this person I was talking to profoundly explained why they are called accidents. "Otherwise they would be called "On Purposes", he explained. That analogy has stuck with me ever since.

So as a truck driver with close to 2.5 million accident-free miles, I have seen my share of accidents. Mostly after the fact, in the clean up stage, and a few times in circumstances as such, that I was unable to assist with aid in any way. 

I do remember being first upon a single motor vehicle accident early one morning, The morning sun was just breaking way to the darkness. The driver of a car some ways ahead of me, apparently fell asleep and drove into the ditch rolling several times. We were in far western Nebraska on I-80 just miles from eastern Wyoming border. I pulled onto the shoulder of the road, grabbed by blanket, and sprinted to the crash scene. The morning air was chilly explains why I thought to grab a blanket. Arriving at the scene, I found the 2 occupants conscience and in shock. One was just sitting there on the side of the ditch, just staring. He had what appeared to be a miner cut on his forehead that was dripping blood. The other was nearby and screaming in pain. Looking closer, I could see his nose was nearly ripped off his face and his right arm was bent and broken in such a way I could not describe it. I did my best to get him to lie down and be still so I could cover him up with the blanket. By this time, another truck driver had stopped and was assisting keeping the 2 victims calm and warm. Out in the middle of nowhere and long before cell phones, we hoped help would come soon. And it did. Within minutes, a state trooper arrived and a paramedic unit soon after. I reported to the trooper what I was told by the person with a cut head, that he was a hitchhiker and they had been driving all night and he assumed the driver fell asleep because the next thing he remembers was sitting in the ditch watching a cloud of dust settle on the crashed car in the ditch.

No. I left my blanket and never got it back.

Swim Lessons

I remember as a small child of 7 or 8 years old taking swimming lessons at the municipal pool. There were certain steps or skills that had to be learned before being allowed to pass through to the rank of those being allowed to swim in the deep end of the pool. First step, I remember, was holding your breath under water for 10 seconds. Piece of cake. The instructor directed me to go to the next group. So I moved to the group right next to us for the second step which was face floating for 10 seconds. Again, easy peasey. Again, the instructor told me to move on to the next group for back floats. My heart sank. Tried and try as I did, I couldn't master the back float. After several attempts, the instructor told me to go to the end of the line and keep practicing. Time was running out and swim lessons would be ending soon. When the instructor was busy with a different student, I slipped over to the next group, which was dog-paddling. Since nobody was keeping track of who was passing the various skills and who belong to which group, it was naturally assumed by the next instructor that I had passed the back float and was ready for dog-paddle, which I already knew and easily passed on to the next group before swim lessons ended for the day.

I'm a fairly competent swimmer nowadays and feel very comfortable and able to swim a great distant. I was even on the diving team in high school - though not very good at that. But, I still cannot back float.

School Bus Hotel

 

I remember I was about 18 years old, hitchhiking, and found myself in this tiny little town in northern Missouri, where it was the home base for a traveling county fair/carnival that I came to know of the summer before, but that's another story. So, I came to this town looking to get hired by the carnival and travel with them for the summer. I needed a place to sleep for the night and I'm walking down this street downtown. There's a line of little kids waiting to get into the movie theater. I asked one of the kids if there is a motel in town or someplace I can sleep. He said no but I could sleep in their clubhouse which was an old, converted school bus. One of them broke away from the line and led me to old, converted he showed me this his old school bus in the back yard. He assured me his parents wouldn't mind me sleeping there. A couple hours later the kid and several of his friends came back from the movie and thought I might be hungry for something to eat. They all chipped in and got me popcorn, a candy bar, and a cup of soda pop. I'm thinking that's pretty cool of these kids to do this. And their dad comes out a little bit later and kind of checks with me and says his kids told him some guy is sleeping out here and just wanted to see what's going on. I explained to him that I hitchhiked here, and I was going to go to work for the carnival the next day and there's no other place to sleep. He said it's cool. So, I slept there and got up the next morning and changed my mind. Turned around and hitchhiked home again.