My stint with Willie had cleaned up my financial difficulties, and my Jan Plan on the economics of long-haul truckers received a passing grade. Whatever else it said, that report contained a nugget of truth: A young man with no prospects, no connections, and no money could launch himself by becoming a driver for a van line. For Willie, work was an enforced savings plan, which would finance his future acquisition of the entire moving industry. Willie was a renegade with a hot temper, and he knew he’d never make it in the traditional workforce. I too had decided, for similar reasons, that I’d be self-employed for life and I’d need a nest egg. Most important of all, becoming a long-haul driver would free me from the callow existence I had fashioned at Colby College.
My parents came up to Maine that May to bring some of my stuff down to Connecticut for the summer vacation. I hosted a cocktail party and invited a group of friends and professors to meet them. My father, who had never attended college and therefore had rigid ideas as to what college life should be like, heartily approved. I can see him standing next to the little bar setup I’d made (I even hired a bartender for the occasion, thanks to my flush bank account), chatting amiably with our East German exchange professor. My father stood there smoking his pipe and sipping his scotch, no doubt thinking that an informal exchange of ideas with a real Communist over Johnnie Walker fit perfectly within his fixed ideal of a liberal arts college social. He and my mother schmoozed the profs and my friends. I wanted them to have a particularly good time because very soon we were going to have the big talk.
The next morning, after croquet and mimosas on the quad, I suggested to my parents we take a stroll. The three of us walked around the campus and I finally introduced the topic that had been on my mind since returning to Maine from my road trip with Willie.
“I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
“What’s that?” asked my father.
“Well, the good news is I’ve got a high-paying job working for myself where I can put some money away for whatever future I might have. The bad news is that I’m not planning to come back here and finish my degree.”
“Surely this job, whatever it is,” said my father, “will be available a year from now. We’ve seen what you’ve done here; you have nice friends and seem to have established some friendships with your professors. Your grades have really improved, and, well, you seem to have built quite a comfortable life here.”
“Well, that’s right. In a way it’s too comfortable.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m ready to get on with things. You’re seeing the best of what goes on here. You’re not seeing, and I don’t want you to see, the other side. I’m wasting a lot of time and a lot of your money, and I think I’ve taken everything this place can offer me.”
“Well, one thing this place can offer you is a college degree, if you finish.”
“Yes, that’s true. If I finish. The thing is. . . another year here might finish me first.”
“In what way?”
“Well, you saw the bar setup, you saw my long-haired friends. I didn’t want to get into this, but I’m smoking a lot of pot. In addition to that, my professors are leaving, my friends are all graduating . . . If I stay here, it’s going to be miserable.”
“It’s only another year. It will go by so fast,” my mother chimed in.
“To you maybe it will. To me it won’t.”
“What’s this job you mentioned?” My father changed the subject.
“Well, I talked to John Callahan, and he told me he had a truck available. He said when I come home later this month he’ll have one of the guys teach me how to drive it. After some practice I’ll take the tractor-trailer test and get my commercial driver’s license. John told me that North American is desperate for drivers, so he’ll lease me the truck and contract me to North American into their long-haul fleet. I’ll be making almost a hundred grand a year.”
There was a long pause while we all pretended to take in the vista of the forest blanketing the hills of Central Maine.
“You want to become a truck driver?”
“Well, yes. For now.”
“And you want to quit college after you’ve completed three years . . . to become a truck driver?”
“That’s right.”
“I think you should finish your degree,” my father snapped. “After that you can do whatever you want.”
“Actually,” I said evenly, “I can do whatever I want right now.”
“Not under my roof you can’t.”
“Jack,” cut in my mother, “Jack, let’s talk about this later.” My mother had come in as peacemaker, and my father wanted to escalate. This was opposite their traditional roles.
They went off back to the motel in town. I was relatively sanguine. Things might have gone much worse.
They put my stuff in their car and returned to Connecticut.
We never did talk about it in any real way ever again.
I finished my junior year with the best grades I’d ever gotten and moved into the basement at the family house in Cos Cob. I spent the early summer working local for Callahan’s. After work, instead of drinking beer under the tree, I’d hook up the old International Harvester tractor to a 35-foot trailer and head up to St. Catherine’s parking lot. There I’d set out traffic cones and practice backing up the trailer, parking, and shifting gears. I got my CDL in late June of 1980, and on July 2, I called up my first dispatcher and got my first move: 22,000 pounds, a full load, from Mount Holly, New Jersey, to Asheville, North Carolina. I went home and told my parents I’d be hitting the road the next morning. That night my father came down to the basement. In his hand he had some papers.
“Since you appear to be set on this course of action, an action which you are aware I strongly disagree with, I thought we might finalize some financial arrangements.”
“Sure,” I said.
“This first page is the tuition we’ve paid to Colby for the past three years, which we’d like you to pay back. The next page is the rent you owe us for the past three summers. The third page is the rent you’ll pay if you want to continue occupying these premises.”
I stared at him in disbelief. Then my incredulity turned to anger. I shouted at him, “You fucking asshole!”
“Don’t use that language in my house.”
“I won’t use anything in your goddamn house.”
I packed up my clothes and went down to Callahan’s. At least I’d have free storage.
That night I slept in the sleeper of the gleaming new Astro 95 that John Callahan had just bought for me. I was up early and crossed the George Washington Bridge in the dawn’s early light. I could just make out the profile of the Tappan Zee Bridge upriver. Bridges, ha! It’d been a rough few months of bridges, crossing some and burning some, but everything had been reduced to simplicity. I was free.
My parents and I didn’t speak for two years.
I was a long-haul trucker now.
Chapter 3
TENDERFOOT
The first rule of truck driving is: Don’t let anyone ever tell you what to do with your truck. I failed my first test of this precept early on and never failed again.