Trucking, a word described in the dictionary as; (a vehicle use to or a way of hauling loads, for exchange or bartering). Now, why in the world would a nice looking, educated, married, grandmother, decide to leave the stable and comforts of her life? Adventuring into an unknown world of male dominated, huge, oily and smoke smelling, road hogging, pieces of machines, with only one purpose. To get to their destination on time with the load they are carrying, then just to turn around and grab another time sensitive trailer of cargo, and do it all over again. You might say to yourself, she’s lost her mind or she’s not thinking clearly in her older age, or she’s bored looking for adventure.
Yes, some of that might be true but what would have caused that woman to even consider “trucking” as a validation of her possible insanity or boredom or even an avenue for adventure? Well, I did just that, and I heard some of those things about me, all the way through truck driving school, finding my first job, and even after I was doing it all on my own with my “big car”, and I love it.
When did I first even notice trucks? I suppose that would be when I was a young girl on the farm in Nebraska, watering the newly planted trees that would one day block the view of the highway to the house that stood there, and ran beside that spread of corn and wheat growing land. The vision of those big rigs passing by me as I stood with a green water hose in my hand, pulling my arm up and down to see if the drivers of those trucks would honk at me, are still very real in my mind. My father however was not so thrilled with my posing, telling me that kind of behavior wasn’t acceptable for a little girl, that it could give unwarranted ideas to the men in their work vehicles, distracting them. I heeded his demands when I was in his sights, but I have to admit, daddy I did it anyways when you weren’t around. Sorry.
I was curious about them, they were all different, not just in color or the shape of the tractor but what the tractors carried behind them. Some had big rectangle boxes, some had no boxes but carried large and small items on a flat trailer. Some of the trailers carried big items and the trailers were in the shapes of a flat floor with a step up towards the tractor. Some pulled huge tanks that I assumed carried liquids or powders but had no way of verifying my assumption. I was familiar with large farm equipment that was used on the farm but road trucks were different to me. They were going somewhere, delivering something and I wanted to know about them. I wanted to experience what it would be like to take a trip across the country in one of those big things. I wanted to know about those drivers and how they lived out on the roads.
The years passed for me, college, careers, two marriages, children, different houses and even different states flooded the many wrinkled lines of life now exposed in the palms my hands. Now, it was time to add a new life line, a long ago tucked away adventure into the world of those big trucks that once honked at me on highway eighty-one.
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