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drove a big rig truck for 53 years. I’ve delivered loads in every state in continental USA and one trip to Alaska in 1974 where an egg cost 4 bucks and I blew up 8 tires (never went back there again). I laugh at people who say they’ve driven a million miles.

When I first started driving there were very few black drivers. There could have been more except many of them wouldn’t show up for work or stole the loads and companies wouldn’t hire them. Those that did make it knew their place and followed the rules. Sometimes they could even be friends, but one thing I saw was that if other blacks were around, the black friend would turn on their white buddy. We had a phrase for that which no one uses anymore, even though it’s still true. Well, I use it when the shoe fits but that’s probably because of the way I was raised.

I grew up in Alabama in a big family of I guess you’d say rednecks. One uncle owned a 3,000-acre farm and had sharecroppers work some of the land. My relatives and I worked the fields alongside the blacks picking cotton and peanuts and clipping melons. I was just a kid doing the work of a man and I have to say the black men and women worked hard. If they didn’t, they got sent home with no pay.

There was a time when two black guys were threatening me with a knife. I was only 10 or 11 and small. My uncle who always carried a shotgun put a load of rock salt in their butts and that ended that. He told me never to trust blacks especially if they are in a group. That advice stayed with me the rest of my life although I was always willing to let a man show me his worth, then take it from there.

I’ve seen a lot of things out on the road. One time I was hauling boxed meat (sirloin steaks and such) which is a very expensive load value wise and insurance wise. I was exhausted when I pulled into the Tomahawk truck stop in Albuquerque and ready to get in the bunk for a good sleep. I backed the refrigerated trailer up against a cyclone fence to keep anyone from breaking into it. I hadn’t been asleep long when another trucker called on the CB to say I had company.

I went to the back of the trailer with my pistol to find two blacks had backed a pickup to the fence and cut through it, broke the seals on the load and were throwing boxes into the truck bed. I showed them the pistol and told them put all the boxes back. When they finished I told them to get inside and I locked the doors and went back to sleep. I called the cops when I woke up and had some coffee. I can say for a fact that a black man can turn blue.

I’ve seen places so bad I don’t think regular folks can even imagine what goes on there. One of the worst is a steel mill in south Chicago that is like a jungle in hell. The trucks have to park outside the company’s fence so the drivers are under constant attack from drug crazy panhandlers and crackhead whores. There’s gunfire all the time. You take your life in your hands trying to get something to eat at the greasy spoons around there.

I was dozing at the wheel of my truck with the window half down when a damn zombie jumped on the running board and reached in. Now I was in Vietnam and anyone who knows me never comes up on me with no warning. I reacted with a knife I keep in the pocket of the door. The zombie I guess was a methed up lot lizard who ran off bleeding from the neck. I’m sorry it went down that way but the word went out about a crazy white boy and no one ever messed with my truck again.

By the time I retired from trucking there were a lot more black drivers and they can be aggressive and don’t follow the rules. Lots of time they will just walk up to the head of a line and cut in like they own the place. I never tolerate that and get in their face and tell them to take their black ass to the end of the line and wait their turn like everyone else. Usually I was the only white guy that would do it. I yell at other white guys about putting up with crap like that. In my opinion a black guy by himself is a coward running a bluff. And most of them are not good fighters. Well, I was a juvenile delinquent too. The choice was jail or a program where I learned to box. But every man should know some self defense I think. Blacks in a group are a different story. They’re still not good fighters more like animals. A group of white guys could handle that but the only time I’ve seen it is bikers.

I quit trucking when I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I have lived quite awhile past what the doctors said I would. I have many good memories of trucking. Knew a lot of good men and we helped each other out with difficult and dangerous things. But I can longer do the physically demanding work and the profession has changed too much. I think the trucking industry would like to replace drivers with robots. Ha ha, I don’t think they’ll be making any robots like me.