It was 2008 and the ink wasn’t dry on my college diploma, but I was ready for a new job, greater comfort, better money and any reason to put my trucking resume to rest once and for all. I’d been there, after all, and done that for the better part of thirty years, so surely I deserved a fresh beginning.
Perhaps thinking I deserved anything was my first mistake. Maybe I didn’t have an attitude of gratitude, but I’m all better now. In fact, now that I’ve lost all hope, I feel much better. But truth be told, at least best as I remember, it was truly a year of challenges.
It was the year Fidel Castro stepped down, Tiger Woods swung up, Paul Newman passed away and Jimmy Johnson passed everybody. Big winners included the Celtics, Red Wings, Phillies and Barry Soetoro. It was also the year of Britney Spears’ first of many comebacks, the first of many trials for Casey Anthony and Space X’s first success in gaining orbit with a privately funded rocket program.
Losers that year included John McCain, Lehman Brothers, Roger Federer and Republicans.
Martha Reeves, lead singer of the Vandellas, lost a million dollars of stuff in a burglary which sold at a pawn shop for four hundred dollars. It was also a change of address for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and New York State Attorney General Elliott Spitzer when both went to prison.
Then, Hurricane Ike came along and wiped out a few million fortunes all across Louisiana and Texas. One of those Texan fortunes was mine, and it was hundreds of dollars, but more about that later. First let me just remind you of something that never occurred to me at the time.
While the mid-south was getting body-slammed by Ike, the entire country was in a flaming recession and I was oblivious to it. Busy not working and resting on the saddle of my motorcycle, the days were often passed filling out crossword puzzles and job applications. It never occurred to me that something serious was afoot.
When I couldn’t find a job in my chosen profession, I finally returned to the trucking industry for employment. But now, for the first time in my driving career, I wasn’t getting a response from a single transportation outfit. Suddenly the prospect of unemployment became a dire prophecy I could no longer ignore.
Turning my attention to the large white, blue and yellow box store, while appearing more stoic than ever, I tried to fill out their application without emotion. It didn’t work, and I finally gave up after what seemed like lifetime hovering over the applicant computer. There was nothing wrong with them, now or then, but for me it was an uncontrolled freefall.
At that point, I called a previous employer in Minnesota to ask if they were hiring drivers. “Well, as you’ll recall, RC,” he said matter-of-factly, “We have 29 trucks and 19 are here in the yard with no work.”
“Okay, no worries”, I replied.
Then, he said, “Look, you done good for us when you worked here before, so I’ll just say this. If you’ll understand I can’t get you back to Texas more than monthly, we’ll have a truck with your name on it when you get here.”
They were 1,000 miles away during that phone call, but 18 hours later I was loading my gear in the cab of unit 5349. It really was a new beginning and challenge that fueled a writing career which even paid for new crayons.
Clark is a Kyle resident. After 40 years of interstate trucking, he's too old for a paper route, too young to retire and too tired to have an affair. You can reach him at [email protected].
