I’ve been neglecting my blogging duties.
Not to worry, it’s not from some sense of apathy or ennui. Far, far from it. It’s been a busy couple of day, chilluns, so let’s have Uncow Doyce tell you about it. Part One:
Dad was in town on Friday (technically, Thursday as well, but he got in really late). Some of you might notice that I mention Dad coming into town, but never Jo (Mom). My folks are not estranged, and Mom is healthy. Dad travels, so he has the opportunity to visit far more often.
Specifically, Dad drives a semi-truck. This is not what he always did: if you’ve been paying attention for the last couple months, you’ll know that for most of my life, he owned his own farm and did… well, about as well as you can at it (which is to say the farm hemmoraged money at a slightly slower rate than most). I grew up on a farm, so did he, and I never expected that to really change for my folks.
About two or three years ago, Dad finally decided, at 48, that farming just wasn’t a viable livlihood for most people — most of the people who owned farms around ours when I lived there had moved away, gone bankrupt, or were working for a larger corporate farm entity. Dad didn’t want any of that, so he sold off most of the land, all of the machinery, paid off his farming debts, and bought a rig.
He figured this was something he could do well — he’s an excellent driver, obviously used to being his own boss, and if NOTHING else, driving back and forth, up and down fields for 12 hours a day in a tractor makes the 8 hour drives every day in the truck seem like a breeze.
Digression: Farmers are the Terminators of road-trips, people. I once did a drive to Oregon from South Dakota. I slept 4 hours on the way out, so the trip took 40 hours, but I wanted to get home more quickly on the way back, and did it all in a straight 36 hour run. Solo. Completely alone. And I am a pansy compared to Dad. Anyway.
So, at 48, Dad started a new career, working as a contract driver for a SD based company, spending 3 or 4 weeks on the road, then a week or two home with Mom doing stuff around the homestead, then back out again.
If anyone wants to make white-trash jokes about my Dad driving a truck, well step right up — I am so unspeakably proud of him for being able to let go of the life he knows SO WELL and leap headlong into the unknown that it just hurts my chest sometimes.
Things have fluctuated for the last couple years, and I’ve helped as much as he’d let me, but mostly it’s been good, and the deal he’s got with his company now means that he doesn’t have to worry about getting ‘good’ loads — he gets paid the same no matter what happens, which means he can come through Denver even more — Denver doesn’t manufacture stuff much, thus, you can get good trips into town, but crappy paying ones out… so before this, he didn’t stay in town much.
Anyway, he was in town for the first time since the new arrangement, and the first time since the new house.
The highlights:
He really seemed impressed with the new house (horrified at the cost of houses out here, but very impressed, nonetheless.
His most recent cool load was out of Cali, carrying a Cobra attack helicopter with a shark’s head painted around the machine gun mounting up to Montana for a repainting — he is getting me pictures that I’m going to scan in. People stopped at rest stops and weigh stations to take pictures. One weigh station kept him on the scale for 5 minutes, backing up the trucks behind him 15 deep so they could get a picture. Pretty funny.
The load he picked up in Denver was valve parts for oil wells — he’s taking them down to Houston (delivered them today, actually), and they are going to be shipped off to Russia (part of the increased oil production effort over there). Some of the stuff he hauls, and the stories behind it really show how much the country is intertwined in trade. It’s amazing.
Honestly, I find the information he has about shipping schedules and where different things go, who gets them, and who’s shipping things someplace else to be fascinating. I can listen for hours. People who say that truckers act like they own the interstates should take heed — some of the men and women out there are jackasses, but generally, these are people more intrinsicly in touch with the heartbeat pulse of the country than any of us, even we elite bloggers :P
And he just handles it all — the paperwork, the driving in weird cities, backing down alleyways in the middle of downtown with a 50 foot long flatbed — he just does it like it’s no big thing.
I love it when he comes to town.
