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I rented a 26-foot long U-Haul and attached a trailer on which I placed my brand new 2002 Red Mustang GT, making this set up more than 30 feet in length. My two dogs sat beside me looking out the front window with eager eyes. They had no idea where they were going. I imagined they thought we were going to the store for a pack of cigarettes or maybe to return a rented video and we’d be right back home. Except for that instant I didn’t have a home. Our home was the U-Haul because that’s where everything I owned was. Packed tight and with not much thought. Tight so it wouldn’t shift.
On the day of my departure I was finished worrying to the point of tears that I wouldn’t be able to handle the rig. I come from a family of truck drivers, starting with my great-grandfather, and before him I’m going to guess that his father drove a covered wagon. To reveal to my family that I was scared stiff to drive from New York to California in a $1300.00 rental truck towing a $30,000.00 car would have been pointless. They’d offer me more sympathy if I told them I lost a really good pair of dress socks.
I was in Pennsylvania when I figured out my gas mileage–a mere 8 miles to the gallon. At first I thought the gage was broke as I saw it literally move down toward the letter E. At fill-ups that cost anywhere from 25.00 to 50.00 I quickly calculated that gas was going to cost about 800 bucks. That didn’t include hotels, food, or the cartons of cigarettes I would need to buy to calm my jack-knifing fears. The price of gas on the east coast-before the St. Louis Arch, was ranging from $1.49 to $1.61. As I drove further west, it was up to a $1.79 a gallon and my final fill-up in the small California town called Gorman was $1.83.
The dogs thought the first night at the motel was cool–especially when they discovered they could simply jump in and out through a screened window. They continued to jump in and out of the window until the hotel manager asked me if the mutts were mine.
“Nope. But they’re awfully friendly, aren’t they?” I said hoping they wouldn’t run up to me as if I were their owner.
“They’re running around the building–circling it,” he said.
It was a small motel, of fifteen rooms or so, that anyone could easily circle.
“I might have to call a dog catcher.” He added.
I shrugged, to pretend I didn’t care, and despite the heat and the weak air conditioner I kept them in the room and closed the window. It was hard to sleep that night with the two of them panting furiously and drinking from the toilet all night. Water provided in the plastic ice bucket just wasn’t cutting it for them.
The next morning they refused to get in the cab. No yelling, no gentle words of encouragement nor any granola bar in the world would get them in that truck. I had to pick them up, place them on the seat, and quickly slam the door.
One of them began to have a panic attack. I could tell from the way she was trying to climb up on the dashboard. The other one tried to get into the nonexistent back seat, and when both discovered there was no way out decided to try what the other one had tried. Over and over again. In the mean time while they were clawing at the insides of the cab like a mouse stuck in a box, I tried to drink coffee, light cigarettes and keep water in a bowl for them that they kept spilling because of their frantic circle dance. I contemplated administering them either a codeine or Valium but I am stingy about the first and didn’t have enough of the second.
For the remainder of the trip this was their behavior, and there was nothing I could do about it. While they were a huge concern, there were other problems I had to deal with–namely, that I could never get into a situation where I would have to back the U-Haul up. I learned this somewhere in Texas when the motel I had already checked into did not have truck parking. Having found my own truck space, I discovered the only way to get into it was to back up. After several tries I found my rig shaped like an L, blocking the main entrance to Route 40 West. Some enterprising small cars were able to go around me but when the larger vehicles began to line up I knew I would have to ask for help. There was a couple who had been watching my ordeal and my question as to why they hadn’t already helped was answered when I discovered one of them didn’t even know where he was. Alzheimer’s for sure. Even the healthy-brained partner simply could not see the dilemma I was causing. Early Alzheimer’s. Soon I began knocking on motel doors and found a man willing to help. He verbally gave me directions that I either did not understand or were wrong. It seemed that all who I sought for help were either addle-brained or addle-brained. I took to more random knocking until I found a bed-ragged truck driver who was more than happy to provide clear instructions. I believe truck drivers could park a rig in their sleep, something that I lacked due to my two canines and their bad behavior.
By that time I knew the tone of my travel was set: bad dogs, no sleep, and absolutely no backing up. There was also the problem of bad food while on the road. How do the long-haul truck drivers stand it? When I see a big belly or a fat bottom on a driver, I now know it’s not caused by excessive drinking or even lack of exercise. It’s caused by all the deep fried, high fat crap that’s called food at every truck stop from New York to California. These truck joints fry everything from potatoes to tomatoes. If I already had my fried meal for the day then there was the option of frozen burritos, over loaded pre-made ham sandwiches or sloppy tacos. Every stop had its row of burger and pizza joints, and this was a huge problem–all I wanted was a piece of fruit and a salad. At one of the truck stops, when I asked if it were possible to get just a salad, the worker rolled her eyes and said, “We don’t have them here.” Feeling like Jack Nicholson in that famous movie I ordered a triple taco with no meat. The thought of salad dressing never occurred to me. Another time I ordered a piece of fried chicken, and then inquired if there were any fresh vegetables I could have as a side dish. The worker pointed to thick sliced potato wedges–you guessed it, battered about an inch thick with breading and, of course, deeply fried. Truck drivers should band together and demand something fresh, broiled or baked. As for driving farther down the road in search of a supermarket, forget it...I could barely maneuver truck stop parking lots and the idea of mingling with suburban shoppers brought me body sweats.
By the third day I realized that I hadn’t had a face to face conversation with another person. This was a cause of concern since I am usually a very social person. The one call to my family, filled with lies about how great the dogs were and how wonderful I was handling the rig, began to fill me with guilt and concern that I had lost my capacity for honesty, as well as my ability to hold my end of a conversation.
To remedy that I decided that I would strike up a conversation with a gentleman standing next to me in line at a busy truck stop. He was staring at the fried items under glass with a dazed look in his eyes.
“Boy those roads in Oklahoma on 40 West were awful, like continual speed bumps,” I ventured.
“Yup,” he said, glancing at me then back to the oil glistened food. “I take ‘em all the time. They’re pretty bad.”
That was that. Apparently we both had lost our social skills. It was then I began to talk seriously to the dogs.
I began the fourth and final day with great hope. I enjoyed the landscape of Western Arizona and even honked my horn at the Welcome to California sign. At the agricultural stop I discovered that my load had shifted, because I could not entirely open the back door to show my load. My furniture had slammed up against it causing a jam. The inspector peeked in and I convinced him that I did scrub, with good soap, all of my lawn furniture before I packed, it so there was no way I could be giving the dreaded gypsy moth a ride west, but, even as I write this, I find tiny webs and white clumps of god knows what in the crevices of my plastic lawn chairs and worry that I will affect the entire farming industry of California.
I was in the Mojave Desert when the air conditioner stopped working. It was the dogs, highly sensitive to their small environment, who noticed it first. Their panting became quicker, they lapped up the water in record time, and finally I took notice when the cab became a snowstorm as they began to shed their fur literally in clumps. Frantically I tried every switch on the dash to no relief. Defeated, I was forced to open the windows and we were blasted with air that felt as if someone was holding a gigantic blow-drier set on high, in my face. There was no relief, and I decided no use, in stopping or trying to get it fixed...I was almost home.
Six hours later (it should have taken me three) the mountain climbing that my rig had to take was too much and my speed was often reduced to as low as five miles per hour, for hours at a time. I finally–almost made it. Three doors from my new home the trailer hitch became embedded in an exceptionally high speed bump and I could not move. We happily hopped out and walked the final yards.
Sure, I walked some of the way but it was one hell of a ride. Four days of my life that I will never forget.
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