I awoke to the sound of waves slapping the side of the boat. As that August dawn came into focus, I realized that my girlfriend and I had taken her parent’s pontoon boat out on the lake the night before and fallen asleep. The boat was grounded on a sandbar and we were in no real trouble, besides being out all night and me having to be at work in about an hour. “Oh shit, what time is it?” I asked as I jumped off the bow into the knee deep water. I pushed the boat off the sand as she fired up the engine for the short ride across the lake to her family’s dock.
I had a job in a small, neighboring town that summer while I was on break from college. I loaded and drove a delivery truck for a contractor’s lumber yard, mostly to custom lake homes being built in the area. I rushed straight to the yard and when I arrived it was still very early in the morning. Odd for me, as I was usually always late. In fact, I was late so often, that my boss once told me if I ever beat him to work he would pay for my meal that day. “Well, looks like lunch is on him” I thought, as I sat on the office step and waited. Ten minutes passed and his pickup rolled to a stop in front of me. “Jesus, Joseph and Mary” he said as he stepped out of the cab. “What did you do, sleep here”? “Basically,” I replied. “Well, I hope you are ready to work” he continued. “We had a car come in last night”. I groaned. A “car” meant a rail car full of hundreds of bags of Redi-Mix concrete. They weighed about seventy pounds each and were a real pain to unload as we didn’t have any way of getting them off other than one at a time, by hand. I turned and headed down to the yard to find my co-worker Wilbur. Days like these reminded me of why was trying to get an education.
Now, Wilbur was a real piece of work. He was kinda short and stocky, his long hair always in a ponytail. He usually had his shirt off and who could blame him? He was built like a Greek statue. Wilbur loved physical labor. “We gotta car!” He yelled to me across the yard. “Alright!” We went right to work loading the bags on pallets and making good progress through the morning, when my boss appeared again and told us to stop and go load my truck for a delivery.
“My” truck was a 1976 International Loadstar 1600. It had an eighteen foot scissor bed for second story deliveries. We would deliver sheets of drywall, roof shingles, plywood, nails and much more to contractors working on the lake homes. Wilbur jumped on the forklift as I climbed in the International and turned the key. She roared to life and I backed the big truck into the center of the yard. Wilbur picked a bunk of plywood and set it on the bed. “Put it near the back” I yelled. Its easier to unload that way. “You know it’s not safe doing that” he shouted back. But he did as I wished.
We were just finishing when the boss walked over and told me to go to lunch and be back in an hour. As I turned to walk away he said “Hey, asshole”. When I turned back he handed me a five and said “Have a nice lunch”.
At the time, my favorite place to eat there was called The Post. It was a Country and Western bar full of animal trophies and good food like steaks, sandwiches and other tavern fare. But their best effort was a killer broasted chicken and potato dinner made in a pressure cooker. It was also right across the street so I got cleaned up, walked over and sat at the bar. After I finished my chicken dinner, I still had about twenty minutes left so I wandered over to the park and passed out on a picnic table. There was an old, clock tower in the town, a church or courthouse or something, and a bell in it would toll on the hour. “What a morning” I thought as I drifted off to sleep.
When one o’clock came the bell rang and I woke up. As I walked back towards the yard, I could see that they were still loading last minute items to the delivery order. I had a couple of minutes to kill so I went down into the basement, under the office, to see old Leonard. Now, Leonard was in his mid seventies then I guess and he was the guy that fixed the broken windows and screens for the townsfolk and the farmers in the area. I loved to watch his weathered hands measure and then score the glass, with a special diamond tool. A couple of times a week, we would walk downtown together, to a little bar I can’t remember the name of, to have lunch. We would always sit at the same table and listen to the local farmers bitch about not enough rain, or too much rain, or one thing or another. “Jesus” Leonard would say. “These assholes wouldn’t be happy if you hung em with a new rope”. Leonard always ordered oyster soup for lunch. When I’d ask him why he would say “Cause it puts lead in your pencil. You should try some.” I’d laugh and say “That’s OK Leonard, my pencil writes just fine”. It’s funny. My dad’s name was Leonard too.
The truck was loaded and ready to roll when I got back up to the yard. I jumped in and looked over the paperwork and the directions on the clipboard. With everything in order, I started the engine and drove out the back of the yard and turned north on SR 13. I slowly picked up speed as I went through the gears. Reaching over, I turned on the radio and recognized the tune immediately. I sang along with Elvis as the big truck moved along the highway. “Maybe I didn’t love you, quite as often as I could have”. Always On My Mind was actually written by Willie Nelson but I thought Elvis sang it best.
After a while, I turned east onto a county road and lumbered on towards the job site. Just about then, the late night, the heavy work and the broasted chicken all kicked in at once. Now, I think the strangest thing about falling asleep at the wheel, is you never really know how long you’ve been out. It could have been five seconds or twenty five but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you wake up pretty damn soon, or you may not wake up at all.
This wasn’t the first time I had dozed off while driving. Four years earlier, two of my friends and I were on our way back from our Senior Trip, you know, the one you take when you graduate high school. We were driving straight through, twenty two hours from Boulder Colorado with three cases of Coors in the trunk. You know, the good stuff. I was behind the wheel driving through Chicago when I woke up doing sixty five on the Dan Ryan Expressway. We were all, completely asleep. Somehow, the car stayed in it’s lane. I don’t know if you believe in Guardian Angels but I do. I expect mine to be in the Hall of Fame one day.
Fast forward four years to four tons of truck barreling down a narrow, county road. It could have been a bump in the road, or the right front tire catching the edge, but something woke me up as I was about to blow through a busy intersection. I think I literally stood on the brake pedal and the wheels of the truck locked up as I slid to a stop, just short of disaster. A half second later, the bunk of plywood, that was strapped to the rear of the bed, broke free and slammed into the cab. As the back window exploded and filled the seat with broken glass, the sheets of plywood flew all over the road like a deck of playing cards. Miraculously, I was not injured as the headache rack took the brunt of the impact. I pulled over to the side and climbed down from the cab, shaken and embarrassed. I started to pick up the sheets of plywood and wondered where I might be able to find another job, because I might be losing this one. When I finally reached the site and unloaded everything, I called the office and spoke to my boss. I was surprised that he didn’t get mad and asked if I was OK. “Just bring her in” he said. So, I started to drive back. I had the window down when I suddenly heard Elvis again. I looked over at the radio but it wasn’t turned on. I passed a house and I could see that they had placed their stereo speakers outside. I drove on and the scene repeated itself over and over with Elvis music filling the late afternoon air. I reached to switch on the radio. A man’s voice said ” August 16th, 1977. The King is dead”.
Years later, I was driving with my wife by my side and an Elvis tune came over the speakers. I looked in the rear view mirror to see my two young kids swaying to the music and I remembered that day long ago, as he sang again, one more time.
PSW