"BREAKER ONE-NINE..."

When I was a kid (oh, say 10 years old, or so) I wanted to be a truck driver. My grandparents lived in a tiny little West Texas town called Ozona.  I used to spend summers there, and I would always walk from my grandparents shack (not kidding) to the mini-mart, or to my Uncle Cleophas' meat market. Yes, his name was actually Cleophas (although spell-checker keeps wanting me to insert the word Cellophane instead).  

In order to get to the meat market or the mini-mart (or the Dairy King, or the grocery store, or Village Drug for that matter - yes, the Village Drug that had an actually soda fountain where you could get the best cherry-limeades on the planet), I had to walk right by a big welding shop that had a large dirt parking lot where big rigs would always park overnight, engines running.  

I loved the sound the trucks made, and I love the smell of diesel fuel, and I was absolutely certain that I wanted to be a truck driver.  My father had escaped Ozona by way of WWII. Coming home from the war he went to college under the GI Bill and got his bachelors, his masters and was a few odd hours away from his doctorate when he got tired of going to school.  Imagine his surprise when the product of his personal baby-boom in 1960 announced at ten years old, "I want to be a truck driver.  You know, big rigs and such".  

When I was 12, living in Colorado, Kenworth came to dinner.  An actual over-the-road, owner-operator moved into our neighborhood, three doors down Kit Carson Drive.  I was ecstatic. My father...somewhat less so.  Brothers Bobby and Sammy Salter and their dad and mom and baby sister moved all the way to Colorado from Georgia.  I couldn't believe my fortune.  It was as if the truck gods were smiling at me saying, "Here is the shining path to enlightenment, behind the wheel of a Kenworth cabover".  I got to hang out with them and climb all over their dads truck, crawling through the sleeper compartment, sitting in the trampoline-like seat, left hand on the hula-hoop size steering wheel, right hand on the 13-speed shifter.  It was cool.  

My dad clearly didn't "get it".  He told me I wasn't born to drive a truck.  Add to the long list of ways I tried to prove him wrong: my years in the construction business addicted to the smell of diesel fuel, the roar of a Caterpillar engine, the squeaking of steel tracks on a bulldozer, and the camaraderie of hard scrabble men who elevated cussing to a high art.  

There's nothing ignoble about driving a truck or operating heavy equipment for a living.  But (like in so many other instances), I probably should have listened to my father.  I'm pretty sure he had my best interest at heart.  Like my heavenly Father, he tried to keep me from going down a road where it would be too hard to do a u-turn.  I made the u-turn eventually, but not before I took out a half dozen mailboxes, and several yard gnomes.  

I'm getting better at listening.  The yard gnomes are relieved to hear that. Keep truckin'.