It was just another basic run. I had picked up in Seattle, Washington and was headed down to Florida. It was one of my favorite routes, taking me through the mountains of Oregon, then into the valleys of Idaho, then Utah, into Wyoming and over the Rockies,the wide-open plains of Nebraska and into Missouri, then I would go on to cross the Mississippi River into the South. It takes me five or six days, depending on my mood.Listening to the sound of my four hundred and seventy horse power Detroit Series Sixty engine, I enjoy the scenery that makes America beautiful.
I had spent the night at one of my favorite truck stops just west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They have great food there and, of course, the casino. I timed my start the next morning to go through the city just after rush hour. No big hurry, as the big bridge over the Mississippi River would be backed up if I left too early. After that it would be smooth sailing the rest of the day, on into Mississippi, and then Alabama into Florida. Everything pointed to a beautiful day. The sun was shining, it was warm, and I had plenty of time to make my run.
I made the river bridge ok, then to the split onto Interstate Twelve and into a construction zone. Speed drops to sixty mph. So as usual I back out of it. The truck behind me does not. It jumps into the left lane and blows by me, right on the ass of a four wheeler (car). They pass the truck in front of me, and I'm watching. I decide to back out of it some more because people are starting to act stupid. Good thing I did, because another four-wheeler gets wild and passes the truck and car that passed me in the right lane. Then it tries to go between the car, with the truck on its ass and another truck back into the left lane so it can pass that truck, too. But there is not enough room.
The car that passed everyone hits the front truck in the left rear, pushing its ICC bumper into the duals and the tires explode. The car being pushed by the truck runs into the car that just hit the front truck, and the truck doing the pushing pushes both cars down the highway. By this time I'm in the smoke and debris and locking it up. I stop about thirty feet behind the truck in front of me. That driver hit the ground running. Before I can get out of my truck, people from both sides of the interstate are all over the wreck.
But I do go up to see what can be done. As I get there, one of the drivers is pulling out this little girl and handing her down to another driver. The rest of the scene I think I'll pass on. But I will say this. I drove my first truck in 1980. Over the years I have held a dying man in my arms with his skull crushed. I've stood and listened to a man scream for two hours after he pulled out in front of a big truck. I've seen what was left after an air-born body met the sharp end of a guard rail. Saw some people that came out one windshield and went into another. Ive seen four-wheelers that met big trucks the wrong way on the interstate, and on and on. I've seen bloody sheets so many times over the years, well you kind of learn to deal with what you see and move on.
But today, yes, today would be different. And it really did not hit me hard until I was halfway across Mississippi. You see, that little girl was about five. They pulled her out. The stranger that, without fear of his own life, climbed through the wreckage just seconds after it happened, past the crushed bodies of what used to be her family, and handed her out to those that were standing outside. Then everyone gathered around to make sure she was okay. She was, by the grace of God, seemingly uninjured. The two cars had just been pushed down the interstate, crushed and ripped apart, unrecognizable, and she came through it without a scratch, so far as anyone on the scene could tell.
A few minutes later she started to regain her composure, wondering who all these strange people were. She started crying for her mom. No one had thought to move her away; they were so concerned that she was not hurt. She started crying and turned and saw what was left of her mom, lying there halfway under her minivan. Trying to pull away from the strangers, she was screaming for the mangled body that used to be her mom.
I walked away. Hours later,coming into another construction zone, again I backed down and again they came out from behind me and gas on it. My thoughts went to that little girl. And I cried. That was something I had never seen before. I hope it's a long time before I hear another child cry.
A week later found me at the house, just north of Atlanta, Georgia, a little town on the shores of Lake Lanier. I had delivered my load in Tampa, Florida.Being that I have my own truck and trailer and have to answer to no one, I just shut the doors on my trailer and dead-headed to the house. My mind, well, it was not on trucking. It was on that little girl and all the events of my trucking career that had bought me to her that day. One thing I have learned over the years is that if you cannot separate your work from your problems, it's best not to try and drive an eighty thousand pound truck out in public. You need to be able to concentrate on what you're doing and where you're going. One mistake and people die. So I decided to sit the next week or two out.
At the house, I try and busy myself with chores. Occupy my mind with the normal problems of everyday life. My wife Janet and I were working on painting walls, and my son had just broken his foot. But no matter how hard I tried, my mind just kept falling back to that day. I just could not stop thinking about it. I think the worst thing that kept coming to me was the fact that some of the arguments and discussions over the years with people left me to blame for the accident That because I slowed down to the speed limit, others got impatient and that led to the accident. Could they have been right?
A few weeks earlier I had promised myself to stop doing what I was doing, to just mind my own business and let the world do its own thing. You see, the last few years of my career, I had decided to run my truck as legal as I possibly could. That every chance possible, I would run a legal log book. I would not skimp on repairs. I would only run freight that paid enough to keep my truck and me on the right side of the law. To be a truck and a driver that I would be proud not only to have next to my family on the highway, but your family, too.
It's a funny thing; I think anyway, that the person responsible for me coming to the conclusion to stop promoting running legal was a cop. I found that, no matter whom I turned my attention to, I was the bad guy. Dispatchers, other drivers, shippers and receivers alike had no time to deal with me. After the events that brought me to meet that little girl on the highway that day, for my own sanity, and more importantly, for all the other little girls in the world,I needed to do at least one thing to try to bring a little sanity to this world. So I decided to write this book and dedicate it to that little girl I met on the side of that highway that terrible day.
