A Trucker's Tale by Ed Miller

Author:Ed Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Apollo Publishers
Published: 2019-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

Part Four

Characters

Frank

Frank was a WMTS guy I’d met before I went full-time. He had a lot of driving years under his belt and when we met he was WMTS’s mechanic, road service person, and forklift operator. Like Obie, he was a very capable jack-of-all-trades. What he lacked in formal education was eclipsed by his intelligent application of common sense. There was no mechanical problem he couldn’t solve. He approached each issue, studied it, and then resolved it.

And Frank never shied away from any job that had to be done. Back when I was in college and working for WMTS, I had fueled up at the Baltimore terminal late one very cold and windy winter night and driven up I-95 North about thirty miles, on my way to somewhere in New England. Just as I was passing the Maryland House rest stop in Aberdeen, Maryland, my truck’s main radiator hose blew out, and most of the antifreeze was lost. I contacted Frank and he said he would help me as soon as he could get there. Luckily, I had both a blanket and the military poncho liner I had traded for in Vietnam, so I stayed tolerably warm in my bunk if I didn’t move around too much.

I had to get out of the bunk when Frank arrived, because those were the days that the entire tractor cab had to be jacked up and tilted over in order to access the motor. I was so damned cold that I sat in Frank’s pickup truck most of the time, but Frank braved the cold and masterfully installed a new radiator hose and filled it with antifreeze, even while his hands were frozen stiff. When he was finished, he started my tractor, left it running so it would warm up before I headed north again, and then got into his pickup truck. He sat there and shivered for a long time, never saying a word about how cold it was outside. Watching him was a lesson in perseverance.

Shortly after I began working in the Baltimore terminal, we had an extremely busy day that kept us at work until after eight o’clock that night. When we finished, Frank and I decided to grab a beer and a pizza before heading home in opposite directions. We rendezvoused at a country music bar, which Frank referred to as his “shit-kicker hangout,” and several beers loosened our tongues as we talked about our personal lives.

When I learned Frank was on his second marriage, I asked what had caused his divorce. He gave a sigh and a half-smile and said it was because he had contracted the “seenus disease.”

“You mean sinus disease?” I asked.

“No, I was in the back seat of my car with this ’ol gal, and my wife SEEN US. I don’t know how she found me, way off down a dirt road, but let me tell you, it scared the hell out of me when she banged on the rear window. I got my pants on, stepped out of the car, and asked her what she wanted.

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