Long-Haul Hitching, Like Royals

Please empty your minds of electronics and be ready to imagine a highway adventure before GPS, before cell phones. Once upon some years ago, the Gallants, a young couple from Maine, were headed home from Chicago . . .

The wife, Sara – that’s me – had just taken the wheel and was enjoying the first dark coolness after a hot Midwestern day. My husband, Tom, had just tipped the passenger’s seat back, taking his turn to rest. The Ohio Turnpike ticket still in hand, I could see the lights of the toll booth in the rearview mirror. At just that relaxed moment, our Volkswagen gagged metallically and veered for the ditch.

An acquaintance had offered us the VW as (for him) a last alternative to junking it – and (for us) the only way a debt he owed Tom would likely be paid. The offer had hit Tom in his soft spot for old foreign cars.  Now the slightly refurbished VW would pay off yet another debt.  The cheery couple who towed the VW off the turnpike accepted the remains of the car in lieu of payment. It had taken us to our big meeting – a drive climaxed by the torture of driving the multi-lane concrete cow paths that then served as freeways around Chicago – and perhaps owed us nothing more. But home was more than 1,000 miles away.

We piled our luggage on the shoulder of the highway. I perched on a suitcase while Tom anxiously scanned the toll booth traffic, looking for a Greyhound bus. Evening passed, then night drew in. Stars appeared, as they always do. Fragrance from blooming trees countered somewhat the fumes from exhaust pipes. I was beginning to speculate on how to rearrange the mound of possessions into a campsite, when we noticed a change in the flow of traffic.

The blip-blip rhythm of cars crossing the slow-down washboards before the toll booth became a booming blip, blip-blip – space – blip-blip of 18-wheelers moving out now that the day had cooled. Eyeing those big trucks and noting the dearth of buses, Tom thought we might as well give hitching a try. Turnpike workers, having let Tom phone for a tow, now let him have a paper plate and a marker to make a sign pleading, “Maine”.

Many trucks pulled through, but no one stopped for hitchhikers. For two hours, we contemplated the night, the coldly gleaming variety of rigs, and the social implications of contemporary hitch-hiking. Surely, I thought, there must be an air of respectability about these two people beside the road. I wanted to shout, “He’s the president of the Parent-Teachers’ Club, and I’m a Girl Scout leader!”

How little we knew of the subculture we were trying to enter with a thumb and a pie-plate sign. Finally, a cab door opened inviting us into the truckers’ world. A chortling voice called out from the dark of a particularly large van, “If you don’t mind going 85 in front of 80,000 pounds of Idaho potatoes, you can climb in.” How choosy would YOU be, close to midnight and that far from home? 

Tom would have had first dibs on the bunk, but that’s where the driver stowed me. I sat practically wilted from relief at finally getting a ride, but my moment’s relaxation ended when the smiling cherub threw his rig into first gear. The thrust of the engine sucked my stomach into my spine. With every shift of the gears, the forces of physics pushed again.  By the time the rig reached full speed, I was sitting upright in the bunk, clutching my abdomen to hold it in place. 

As the cab jolted or swayed in all directions, the driver did what he could to make his guests comfortable. Even his confession of taking speed to keep his mind awake so he could get home to Buffalo in one haul was, we supposed, intended to be reassuring. He further explained that his arm stretched out the window was catching the wind that would cool down his chemically-spiked body heat.

The driver then pointed out the pillows and quilt in his bunk, and some cardboard I could pull over the air vent which had lost its cover. Not much use, since I could not reach it beyond our bag of dirty laundry and the VW auto parts Tom had saved.  With my husband falling over from weariness, it became obvious that my responsibility to family and society was to keep this sweet but unbalanced trucker actually, and not just chemically, awake.

After a few wildly foreshortened miles on the Ohio Turnpike, the driver amended the promised 85 mph to 75. That reduction allowed the truck to subside a bit. “Dear ‘smokies’ of the Ohio State Police force,” I breathed silently.  “Thank you for being out tonight in sufficient force to cool this trucker’s heels.” Even so, the bouncing of the cab caused my breath to come in and out in jerks. Conversation so necessary, I was convinced, had never been so obstructed.

Toward dawn, we pulled into a truck stop. All motion ceased but the vibration of the idling engine. Having failed to find us a further ride using his CB, the driver padded off in an effort to locate another willing driver headed east. Tom and I slumped instantly into sleep, only to be awakened first by a somewhat embarrassed boy who had climbed a step ladder to wash the windshield, then by a small rapping on the door. Tom looked down into the whisker-prickly, upturned face of a . . . cowboy? No, this was our escort to Syracuse. Not the hippie he looked, but an arch conservative – just the kind of man you’d trust to drive you atop a load of industrial chemicals.

Our new quarters were as plush as red faux leather ever could be. I settled down full-length on the bunk, despite the jouncing that surely was coming. How pleasant to find instead that a better-made truck, loaded within the legal limit and averaging no more than 15 mph above the other legal limit, can actually let a hitchhiker sleep – provided the hitchhiker finds an angle at which the bones contain the body.

I put my hand under the pillow to remove a hard lump, only to find my fingers wrapped around a pistol. Startled, I tuned into the conversation the other side of the zippered curtain. Eavesdroppers get theirs. I learned that I was sharing the bunk with the rolled up hide of a rattlesnake the gentleman driver was bringing back to New York as a memento of a confrontation at a roadside rest area in Texas. The pistol had decided that issue. So that’s why the cab was decked with deodorizers, and why the driver occasionally grimaced his way through a cigarette – to mask the odor of uncured leather belt.

The trucker was quiet, but everything he did say helped us understand his world. Our first escort had been flamboyant in his use of the CB to stir up controversy with and about passing traffic. Driver #2 was strictly business, the business of keeping tabs on the smokies. At Syracuse he bought his guests an excellent breakfast. Away from the responsibilities of the road, his shyness rolled back a bit. He spoke of his family, currently three generations of long-distance drivers who seldom crossed paths but kept in touch. Packed on top of his official load were four chrome bumpers for his relatives’ pick-up trucks. 

Guarding a load, or even an empty truck, creates apron strings even more confining than a stay-at-home parent’s. He explained that a trucker’s salary, when divided by actual hours, becomes minimum wage. Diesel fumes wipe out their sense of smell. They see many people, but know few. But they really do say, “Keep on truckin’”, and mean it. 

Syracuse truck stop looked like the dead end for hitching on a Sunday morning. In that era, trucks were stalled outside the Massachusetts border until midnight, because of prevailing commercial blue laws. A big factor in the decision to abandon the VW had been the necessity for Tom to appear Monday morning at his new job. The kindly driver offered to drive us to the bus station downtown, far out of his way, but we asked him to make one more tour of the parked trucks first.

Sure enough, he found Earle and Ron, two gentlemen of Tacoma headed for the regional fruit market near Boston with a load of Washington State cherries. Refrigerator trucks could slip past the blue laws, and Earle promised his riders they would be in Chelsea by six. 

Because of the more crowded cab, our gear was thrown into the huge cooler with the cherries, and Tom and I crouched cross-legged in the bunk.  We felt like royalty, though, receiving every courtesy of the road. With a slower ride, we finally could open and eat the fried chicken, rolls, and fruit we had bought way back in Indiana. I somewhat hesitantly set out our box of supermarket cherries on the engine cover between the front seats. Earle finally ate some but at the next rest stop Ron opened a crate of fresh cherries and poured them into my grocery bag. I kept it to myself that I couldn’t taste the difference.

Tom could barely manage to read the Syracuse paper, but the stack of paperbacks in the corner of the bunk showed that Ron and Earle had learned to coordinate their eyes, the printed page, and the bouncing bunk.

Earle helped watch for smokies, signaling other drivers when to slow down, but he also cooperated by warning the police of the location of disabled cars and reporting a speeding car. The time passed in pleasant conversation. The only rub came with Earle’s turn to rest, when Tom was moved to the passenger’s seat and I had to sit sidesaddle on the engine, bracing myself as nonchalantly as possible while admiring the photos of Ron’s children, acknowledging the bitterness of the family life that had departed with his estranged wife, popping bing cherries, and trying not to appear uncomfortable.

All the drivers made extra stops, knowing how rough trucking is on the uninitiated. Gathering back at the truck, we would often find the driver had bought us cans of soda or some other treat. The truckers’ code wouldn’t allow riders to reciprocate. We paid our way by being good company, making this trip distinctly different from their last cross-country haul.

Truckers climb the shiny side surfaces of their cabs with flair, swinging upward with a zig-zag motion. We found that each truck had a different pattern of hand and foot holds. We would master one only to be presented with a new one. I was still in my full-skirted, prairie-style dress from the meeting, which made me appreciate the times I could scramble for the door, high over head, without an audience.

We rolled into Chelsea, Massachusetts, at 6 p.m., as promised. The spell of companionship broke, popping truckers and travelers back into their own worlds. The truckers’ chivalry held out right to the end, though, with offers to pay our way to Maine if they couldn’t find us a ride at that time on Sunday. Then somewhat sheepishly Ron and Earle headed for the bar with the dancing girls painted in the window.

Tom and I, however, caught a cab to South Station in Boston. After dinner in Chinatown and a walk through the big-city gleam of a rainy evening, we planned to catch the 10 o’clock bus to Portland, Maine. Our bodies yearned for the cushioned ride, the reclining seats with headrests, the roomy space, the footrests. Oh, these would be well worth the price. But times had changed. Bus amenities had shrunk. We were stashed elbow to elbow, knee to knee. The headrest was too short for Tom’s 6’2” frame. Since there were few passengers, he was able to move up a row, and with two seats apiece we managed to begin the naps we had been longing for. We arrived home a few hours earlier than planned, and Tom was at work by 8 a.m. Monday.

The story of our return trip from Chicago spread around our village, eliciting horror and commiseration. How hard it was for Tom and me to convince our neighbors that we would not change even one detail. Now carless and nearly cashless, we felt rich in camaraderie and adventure. The unexpected immersion in the subculture of the road had given us a new orientation toward highway travel, and an increased appreciation for the deep comforts of the passenger car.      

                  

© Sara M. Barnacle, 2011