Mommy Was a Truckdriver

"How did a little girl like you end up driving a semi coast to coast?" I was asked that question more than once in the year and a half I drove. And a lot of times since. The answer is very simple...someone said I couldn’t do it. One should never tell me I can’t do something, or that something is impossible.   There's only been one man in my life who could tell me what to do.    One of my recent bosses keeps complaining, "why won't you ever obey me!?"   My reply is "it's not something in my job description."

Would I drive truck again? Not anymore in this lifetime! I can’t imagine pulling myself up into a truck three or four times a day, thundering down the road for miles and miles at a time, and getting home once every six weeks or so. Then there’s the loading and unloading. Fortunately I didn’t have to do that a lot, since the company I drove for supplied us with money to pay others to do the heavy lifting. But do I regret having done it? No. It was a sort of perpetual vacation with pay. I didn’t mind driving, and I met lots of people. I had lots of adventures, and I was probably a bit foolhardy.   My favorite truckdriving "uniform" was short-shorts and cowboy boots.

I began thinking of it again when I was talking to my son about driving West in a rental truck with all of his belongings. I was envisioning the trip through Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. I’ve done it in two days with a co-driver, but I didn’t want him to try to get there that fast and furious.

I had the good fortune to have a wonderful co-driver. He was a good friend, and the relationship was fun until he asked me to marry him. That ruined everything. I think my answer was, "I want to drive truck John, not keep house!" Actually, I was 33 years old at the time, and driving soon became "old". Every day around supper time we’d drive down the road and we could see into the backs of houses, and see families sitting around their dinner tables. One day I realized I did want children of my own, even if I didn’t really want to get married. In fact, I sometimes said I wanted a dozen! Then I realized it wasn’t going to happen so long as I was on that particular adventure! Once again, John was a really nice guy, but not the man I wanted to marry. I’m afraid I hurt John’s feelings. I’ve done that a number of times in my life.

Driving across country was fun, and since then I’ve thought it might be fun to have a nice motor home ( a tin tipi ) that I could drive across country in the summer, hitting all of the pow wows, camping out and visiting with my Indian friends. It’s lovely to fall asleep at night with the comforting sound of the Native American drum.