Phils Strange & Unusual Stuff

Phil-March-2005 ..................................... My past is full of wonderful memories, but I believe with all my heart, that the best is yet to come!
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Newfoundland Winter

"DAM!!!"

TRUE STORY - WHEN I WAS TRUCKING

LONG HAUL BODIES

It happened about 10 years ago.I went to K.C. Kansas and picked up a load of swinging beef. It was pre-loaded,and the reefer was running and maintaining 37 degrees F.I backed my KW under it, hooked up all the lines and cranked the dolly legs up,checked the seal to make sure the cargo was intact since loading,checked the lighting and trailer brakes,and went to the pay phone to call dispatch. I knew I had to deliver this load to a small town in Vermont, and I just wanted to verify everything and get the exact on time delivery hour and date,and correct weight, in case I had to slide the tandums.

To my surprise,I had TWO stops in the small town in the Green Mountains of Vermont, one for the beef, and one at a funeral home there! There were two coffins loaded and locked in at the very end of the 53 ft trailer!!!I was told that two brothers had been killed in an accident on I-70...and that the funeral home had embalmed them, and placed them in the cheapest caskets they had, and that the union boss over me at my local had approved the transfer because a Senator in Vermont had asked for his help in getting the boys home, and the company had agreed. The parents were very poor, had no insurance,and obviously, no hope. Well, I had no choice, but it was something I was very glad to do. The funeral home in Vermont was providing a free service, and burial plots, I was told.

I also was told that these two boys,(twins), had recently graduated from high school, and were trying to get to Denver where they had been promised jobs in construction by the State of Colorado, through an employment agency in Vermont.

It is a strange story, and as I clipped eastward on I-70, Merle Haggard blasting through my stereo system "I was like a snowball that's rolling toward hell"! I had an uneasy feeling of dread, kinda like a lump in my throat and wanting to cry, but could'nt. God I remember that forlorn feeling to this day.

I will tell you what happened after I made those deliveries in Vermont.The trip was uneventfull regardless of my feelings of something not quite right. I did think about those two caskets back there in my donkey though, and wondered about those two kids, with so much life ahead of them, what their dreams were, what they looked like in life, are we taking the same route home that they took to their destiny? Normal thoughts, curious thoughts. Old Willie Nelson pounding my speakers with "Pancho was a bandit boy, wore his gun outside his pants............for all the honest world to see." On I go, white lines blurring into solid miles.

I drove 10 and slept 8 24/7 and got there in fairly good time, found the little town, and the funeral home, got those two caskets off, got directions to the meat processing plant, went there and was told to back in and call my dispatcher, old Vern, who would give delivery directions like this: "Take this load to California"....Where in California? I would ask. " Oh it's out there somewhere on 99...find it, quit bothering me!" "Well Vern," I would tell him, "if you could drive you wouldn't have to sit there bored heh,heh!" Anyhoo, he faxed a manifest for a trailer for me to pick up at a staging area in New Hampshire, not far away, so I dropped the meat reefer, and bobtailed over to the staging yard. I won't tell you about the weather. Truckers never discuss weather, they just keep moving. Each mile is an addition to payday, so we go and go. We are famous for knowing every address in America, and for getting the job done, no matter what the weather. By the way I did find out that the boys names were Billy and Bobby. I didn't need to know more than that. I didn't want to know more than that.

Now to the ghost deal. This part of the story didn't happen until about six months after those deliveries in Vermont were made. I remember the donkey I hitched to in New Hampshire was a load of veneer which I delivered to a bonded dealer in Miami, for shipment overseas.

I had all but forgotton the incident when about six months later I found myself on I-70 once again headed into K.C. K., this time approaching from the west headed to Independence, Mo. Eastbound. As I approached the outskirts of the city it was just getting dark, and the glare from the lights prisimed through the windshield, making me squint a little. All of a sudden out of the glare I saw a figure in my headlights, right in the middle of my lane! I eased down on the trolly valve...(using the donkey's brakes instead of mine on the tractor, old Indian trick to save your tractor brakes, ). I slipped into 8th then 7th, and 6th rapidly, and dropped the jake brake momentarily, which brought me down to about 30mph almost instantly.

I saw what looked like a person holding up one hand, palm forward, and the other sleeve was armless! I then kind of paniced and locked everything up, but it appeared that I had passed over the figure, so I veered to the berm and shut everything down popped on the four ways, grabbed my big old six cell and leaped out of the cab, ran to the front of the tractor dropped to my knees and shined the light the length of the unit. All kinds of things flashed through my mind, had I killed someone?, and what were they doing standing in the roadway? Man, i'm in trouble now. I walked around the whole unit stopping every few feet and shining the light under the trailer. The tires were clean. They hadn't struck anything, not even a deer, or dog.

As I rounded the unit and was walking up the passenger side, which was parallel with some train tracks and woods not too far off, I saw the figure down in the weeds, this time holding both arms in the air, and I still couldn't make out if it was man or animal, but I was plenty peed by this time, so I ran in the direction of the figure,and all of a sudden I tripped on something. Damn, down I went, and when I looked up and got my bearings, all I could see was the woods, the tracks, and my rig sitting up there on the side of the road.

I reached down to grab something to help me stand up, and a piece of wood came up in my hand. a little piece of white painted wood. I flliped the flashlight on it, and in blue letters I saw the names "Billy and Bobby" scrawled on there in kind of a crude print, but very legible, with their last name too, which I can't mention, and which I had not known until that monent. I scratched around now in a frenzy, and came up with some old sun faded plastic flowers, and another piece of white painted wood, slightly longer than the one that had the names on it. I realized that this must have been a roadside memorial someone had placed there, a cross, and that this must have been the site of the crash that had killed the two boys from Vermont!!!!

My mind is really racing now, and all of a sudden I felt a chill come over me, and I was very cold, like in the winter time, but hell, this is July! I felt a squeeze on my right shoulder, and then almost instantly, I was sweating again, and everything seemed normal. Now I have to (in order to think that I am sound of mind)...think that this is just a big fat coincidence.I went up to my tractor, got a hammer and nails and put the little cross back together, went down, found the exact spot where I had kicked it down, and drove it back into the ground. I went up, put my tools away, sat down on the berm, and was trying to reason this whole thing out when a full grown bear(state police), pulled up in front of my rig and turned his Christmas tree on.I got up and walked to the front of the tractor as he got out. I spoke to him, and he asked if I was OK. Yep, I told him, I was checking my tires, thought I had a flat, but they seem ok, guess i'll be on my way smokey...thanks for checking on me, I appreciate it.
He shined his light on my door placcard, which had the name of the company I was leased to on it. He casually remarked that he had worked a serious accident some months back, in this very spot with the SAME name on the truck as mine had. He shined his light on the berm and said, see, you can still see the scorched area there from the diesel fuel burning. He asked if I knew the trucker, or had heard of the accident and I told him this was a nationwide co. and that I probably didn't,since they have several thousand drivers.I asked him if he knew what exactly had happened, and he went on to say that two kids were westbound in an old clunker driving very fast when they had a blowout on a steering tire, crossed the median and the big rig eastbound like yours there, hit them head on. Diesel spilled everwhere, and almost immediately caught fire. The driver had probably just fueled up. The driver of the truck was burned up, and his wife, who had been in the sleeper at the time. The boys were burned almost completely up. One of them was missing an arm, which we never found. Thinking aloud, I muttered, there were TWO FIGURES there I saw!! One had both arms, and one had only one arm, the first one I had seen in the roadway. I got a chill along my spine, and shivered. Smokey asked what I said. I replied, nothing, thanks for the info, be safe smokey, I gotta go. You too driver, take care.

I couldn't wait to get outta there! I released the brakes, turned the headlights on, four ways off, and started winding gears. Damn, I have to really think about this. I looked down and saw the red light on my cassette player flashing. I forgot that I reached down in the dark and inserted a cassette just before stopping back there, and that when I stopped I turned the volume down. I muttered aloud Damn, damn, damn, Billy and Bobby, i'm so sorry! I turned the volume up on the stereo, and heard Randy Travis singing "You whispered my name". I still think about that whole incident and wonder about it, but i'm almost sure Billy and Bobby thanked me for taking them home, from beyond the grave.

Copyright©February-2003
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