“You a driver?” she asked.
“No,” I answered.
I knew why she asked. It was my hat. Jimbo has a black ball cap that says “Roadway” on it. I used to move castings in from Mexico on an almost-daily basis and the sales representative for the truck line we used gave me the cap one year at Christmas time. I’ve had the hat for a long time and it looks well worn. There’s an area on the right-hand side of the bill and another on the left-hand side that the black is dark gray from me taking it off and putting it on. The one on the right is more noticeable because I use my right hand primarily. However, I have the ability to do it with my left hand, too, when I am carrying something.
It isn’t the first time this has happened. Once, at a casino, a guy came up to me and said good morning.
“You drive for Roadway? Me too. Ain’t seen you around.”
I told him the story and said something like, “thanks for the business,” and wandered off past the slot machines.
My ex-father-in-law was a driver, and he told me the only way you could tell the difference between a truck driver and a cowboy was their footwear. Cowboys wore the boots; truck drivers wore sneakers. He wore boots, but it was legitimate. He ran a herd of cattle north and east of Lawrence, when he wasn’t on the road.
I have to admit, though, I have seen a lot of drivers wearing cowboy boots. Maybe they swung both ways. I don’t know.
What I do know, though, is that I have wandered off of where I was originally going. That happens more often now that I am getting older. Let’s get back on subject.
I was in Wal-Mart last Sunday morning.
A little shopping hint: If one needs to pick up some of the everyday items we all need to get through life—the kind of stuff that Wal-Mart sells—and one has no interest in fighting the crowds at ones local Wal-Mart, a good time to do ones shopping is seven in the morning on Sunday. The crowds are really thin at that time of the morning. There are probably a hundred people in the store, but they all work there, stocking shelves. If one can avoid getting run over by some teenager pushing or pulling a pallet jack, one can get in and out in a hurry. And, there will be some old man or woman to welcome you when you come in and tell you to have a nice day when you leave.
Anyway, last Sunday I had made my shopping choices and was checking out in the express line when the lady scanning my purchases asked me if I drove a truck. Although I was tempted to say yes, I gave her the real actual synopsis. Almost immediately, it occurred to me that she probably had a brother-in-law or a distant relative who drove and probably had a beat-up hat like mine, and my story about being a supply-chain manager and having had a regular move from Mexico may have gone over her head. It didn’t. She caught it and threw it right back.
“I’m a freight broker,” she said.
About that time I was signing my credit card receipt, so I didn’t immediately respond. I guess she anticipated my next question, so she answered it without my having to ask.
“Cost of diesel, there aren’t a lot of loads out there.”
In my present job, I move a lot of sheet metal on flatbeds and we use freight brokers frequently, so I asked her the name of the company for which she worked, and made a mental note.
I put my receipt in my pocket, pushed my cart toward the exit and responded, “you, too,” when the lady at the exit told me to have a nice day.
There is something eerie about that morning that keeps wandering through my mind. It is a story about how good it was last century and about how far we have fallen. It’s the story of Robert Rubin and Bill Clinton and their strong dollar policy. It’s how their strong dollar brought the price of a barrel of crude to less than $12 and how Friday it topped $118. It’s how the Euro was worth $.75 back then and now it exceeds $1.50.
It’s a story about how our worst two problems as a country back then were so radically different than they are today. First, that we couldn’t find enough workers to fill all the jobs that went begging for someone to fill them. Second, that our budget surplus was on the verge of creating a situation that could only be resolved by eliminating income taxes.
I guess our current administration solved those problems and a third problem, too. That problem was that their OPEC member buddies weren’t making enough money.
As a man who is getting some years on him, I guess it is natural to lament the good old days. Those good old days sort of passed by me when I was looking forward to something up the line a ways that I anticipated would be the good old days.
Hell, there’ll be good times coming down the road, I used to think when I was a kid. Then, when I was an adult, I would look back at those summer mornings of my childhood when I was first waking up and I could hear the doves calling outside my window. I would think back to those warm summer evenings when daylight hung on long after dinnertime, until almost bedtime, before it grudgingly gave way to darkness. Those were the days when the last school year was a distant memory and the one coming up seemed so far away. Those were the days when responsibility and homework assignments and the school day didn’t even enter the mind. I would recall those days when I had matriculated through school and was working and remember them as the good old days.
I remember working two jobs and struggling to get along when my son was an infant and thinking there would be better days. Later, I looked back to when my child was growing up and the time we spent together and thought those were the good old days.
Now, I look back to when we were partying like it was 1999 and I think those were the best days. I hope to God I never look back at the Bush and Cheney years and think these were the good old days. I hope I never think back on the huge budget deficits we have in the first decade of the twenty-first century and think we had it good. I hope I never look back at when gas was as cheap as $3.50 a gallon and tell stories about how good we had it. I hope I never look back at the war, the recession and the dope problem we have at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and remember them as good times.
But, most of all, I hope I never tell grandchildren the “good times” story of the lady who was the freight broker whom the government’s policies gave the opportunity to run the checkout line at Wal-Mart when the freight business dried up.
I hope I have a better story than that.
At least, that’s today’s view from here in Jimbo’s world.
No comments:
Post a Comment