It’s the People that You Meet
volume 1

I’m at a rest stop in Massachusetts, grabbing some food. There is a man sitting next to me. He looks like he’s seen his share of rough days. I just eat, minding my own business. I’m certainly not going to stare at this guy. And then, out of nowhere, he starts a conversation with me.

I can’t recall his name, so I’ll call him Bill. He drives an 18 wheeler for a living. He tells me all about how it works. The hours. The miles. The lack of sleep. The sleep-deprived hallucinations. The roads. The independent loneliness. He tells me all. He then starts to tell me about his family. They live in Texas, and he gets to see his wife and children every few months. He recognizes the difficulty of being a dad and husband when you are never around.

He has many children. I forget the exact number. His children are from two marriages. He admits that his first marriage was a disaster. He was abusive to both his wife and children. His older children hate him, and he doesn’t blame them.

I find myself wanting to hear more stories from this stranger. We start talking about places to travel. He gives me some off-the-beaten-path places to visit, roads that are most certainly less traveled. I take mental notes.

We start talking about how short life is. I briefly tell him what I do for a living. He has no meaningful interest in it, and I am comforted by his honesty. Still, I do strike a chord with him when I mention that our lives are but brief breaths of air. He vigorously shakes his head. Then he leaves me speechless with his final story.

One night while driving the dark roads of America, he was in a conversation with one of his best friends, who also happened to be a truck driver. They were keeping each other awake, as both were worn out from the taxing day. Bill was driving in mid-America; his friend was driving in Virginia.

At one point, his friend shouted out, “Oh, s**t!” Bill responded, “What’s wrong?”
“I loss control of my truck, and flew off the edge of the cliff. Oh, man, I’m going down. Tell my wife and kids that I love them.”

My mouth was open. “What did you say? What did you do?”

“Nothin’,” he retorted. “I just said, ‘I’ll miss you, man’, and then there was a loud noise. And then there was silence.”

Conveniently, he had to head back to his truck, and I had to head back home. I had 250 miles to go, but I didn’t want to drive home; I just wanted to keep driving. I wanted to drive on the straightest path possible that wouldn’t take me over any cliffs.