Chapter 10 - Why I Shattered the Steel Ceiling & How I Did It

I was thrilled to be learning how to drive a semi truck. I went to the AA club in Des Moines after classes.  An alcohol counselor with quite a few years of sobriety told me several years later that he had been interested in me, “but I heard you telling somebody that you’d tell him when he was done, and I didn’t think that I was man enough to handle you.”

I scared men like that on purpose. Unfortunately, it was the good men I scared.  I was willing and capable of giving a lot to a relationship and expected the same back, but what happened was that I ended up with men who did not have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.  They didn’t have anything to lose.  They needed somebody to take care of them, and just like I had done with those kittens and puppies as a child, I tried. 

Problem is, I was always going someplace. I would try to drag them along with me, but they were very happy being taken care of.  They didn’t want to go.

I was hoping that driving semi over the road would change the type of men I got involved with.  Surely I would find someone who was responsible; someone to be a partner to me. 

Of course they would be different. After all, they would have to be responsible enough for getting the cargo from one place to another on time.  Problem is, I forgot that those drivers that I had hitchhiked with had real good drugs to give me, but I had been sober and straight for a few years and would refuse to drink or drug to be a good driver!

The truck we practiced in at school was a 9-speed single-bunk cab-over that did not have power steering or air conditioning.  It was called ‘a piece of shit’ in truck driving language.  We pulled around a short empty trailer. 

Two of us would go out with the instructor and take turns driving in the city, on the interstate and on two lane highways. We learned how to do the log books, how to get the axles legal, the laws we were expected to adhere to, etc. in classrooms at the school. I still know a lot more about hazardous materials than I ever wanted to know. 

The classroom instructor told us that each state and each company had their own requirements, “but you’ll figure out the ones you need to use after you start driving for that company. It will depend on the kind of company you choose, what kind of cargo they carry and the wages and benefits you want.  Some stay in-state and others are interstate.  There will be a lot more to learn if you go over the road.”

My driving instructor was a man with a lot of years driving over the road, but he had to take some time off until a few of the speeding tickets dropped off of his license. Otherwise, one more ticket and he would lose his license completely.

I told him the first day, “Look, I’ve hitchhiked with some drivers.  I want to go over the road so teach me the real stuff instead of the stuff you’re supposed to teach us.”

He smirked, “Git in the truck!”

One student would sit in the bunk while the other one tried to herd the tractor and trailer down the road. Our instructor sat in the jump seat so he could grab the bar above his head when we just about wrecked.  Then he yelled at us. 

The male student hit the right mirror on a big pole going down University Avenue in Des Moines and I almost laid it down the first time I drove. 

I was trying to get from Hickman Road on to Interstate 35/80 headed north.  The instructor grabbed the handle above his head, braced with his other hand on the dashboard and his feet on the floor.  He yelled, “Slow this bitch down!”

After I got on the interstate, and he started breathing again, he let go of the handle and hissed, “If we’d been loaded, we’d still be layin’ in the ditch back there!”

“Can I smoke?”

“Can you keep it on the road?”

Okay, so I didn’t make such a good first impression, but I swear he went out at night looking for road construction to make me drive through.  Some were on real skinny highways.

The other student got to drive on the streets and the freeway, but the instructor yelled at me every day through construction zones, “Didn’t you see that flag? That means for you to slow down!”  or “You almost hit that guy with your trailer!  Pay attention!”

I’d yell back, “There’s people in front of me too!  How the hell am I supposed to see everything at the same time?”

He’d get even louder, “Keep your eyes movin’ from one mirror to what’s in front of the truck, to the other mirror and back to the first mirror.  Then check the gauges on the dash to make sure they’re okay.  This ain’t just sit back and listen to the tunes!  Use your peripheral vision!  Start watchin’ your mirrors for cars coming up on both sides of you and keep track of ‘em.  You have ta know what’s going on around you all of the time!!”

He caught his breath and started again, “You have a blind spot on the right side where you can’t see a car. Don’t ever go right without makin’ sure there’s nothin’ there! ”

God, did he ever piss me off!  “How in the hell am I supposed to know if there’s somebody there if I can’t see ‘em?”

“See this little round mirror on the bottom of the big mirror?  Look at it!  You can see what’s beside you in it!  Use it!!!”

Every day we went to the Fair Grounds.  He sat on a short block wall and read the entire newspaper while we took turns trying to back the trailer straight into the wall as if it was a loading dock.  He acted like he was not watching, but when I got the trailer a little too close to him, he would move.  Okay, so maybe I did that on purpose a few times. 

I yelled at him almost every day, “The least you could do is give me a hint about what I’m supposed to be doing.”

His answer was always the same, “You’ll figure it out.”

Actually, the only way to learn to back it up is to do it, but I didn’t know that.  I thought he was just being an asshole.

Trying to back it up without power steering was almost impossible for me because the steering wheel was so hard to turn. One of the other students told me during class, “it’s a lot easier to move the steering wheel when the truck is moving.”

I had been wearing myself out every day trying to turn that damned steering wheel while I was stopped, and you-know-who had never said a word. He just let me work and sweat.

Again, in reality, he knew that I would have to figure out a lot of things on my own after I started driving. This was the 1980s and male drivers resented women thinking they could do the job.  Men were going to try to fuck me, intimidate me and just plain humiliate me.  I had no idea of what I was getting into.

He told me a few weeks into my training that he was trying to find out if I had the ‘balls’ to go over the road. He said that he finally had no doubt that I would be very capable of handling most everything I got myself into, but “don’t ever just git into your cab and take off after the truck has been parked.  I’ve watched men pull the pin on woman’s trailers in truck stop parking lots, git on the CB and tell everybody to watch. 

She’d jump into the cab and drive the tractor right out from under the trailer. Always back up into your trailer first to make sure the pin is engaged so you aren’t publicly humiliated and fired.”

There were not that many women driving over the road at that time unless it was with their husband. There were no big truck stops like there are today.  Just little mom and pop fuel stops. 

I would have to ask an attendant to unlock the women’s shower room at the back of the building. Then after I showered there would be all kinds of propositions for sex by ugly, sweaty drivers waiting for me outside the door.  I got pretty good about telling them what they could do to themselves, and even came up with a few ideas for them that they apparently had never thought about.

The washers and dryers were in the men’s rest room at the time and I would have to figure out how I was going to get my laundry done. What I ended up doing after I started driving is bobtail (drive only the tractor and leave a lock on the trailer so no one could steal it) to a laundromat.  I also carried lots of clothes with me so I could be clean even when I couldn’t get to the laundromat.

There were a lot of other things that he did not remember to tell me about, but after I got on the road, I found solutions as the situations arose.

A short trailer turns a lot faster than a long one does. I was all over the fair grounds trying to put it straight against that dammed wall.  I had to learn to really take my time.  I had to watch the trailer duals and the back of the trailer before I could even start to figure it out. 

I could either stick my head out the window and watch while I turned the wheel or open my door so I could see them in my mirror, but the instructor said that I would flunk my driving test if I opened the door. With lots of practice, I slowly learned to stop over-steering most of the time. 

It was hot and humid. The little fan above the windshield did not really help.  Every day I yelled out the window at him, “I hate this fucker!”

He wouldn’t even drop his newspaper to look at me, “You’ll appreciate a good one some day.”

That man got me as ready to drive over the road as he could in six weeks, but it was impossible to teach me to drive in the mountains. You see, we don’t have any mountains in Iowa. 

#5 would end up teaching me how to climb and go down steep grades on the way to California.  I’m glad he did or I would never have passed the company driving test at Bakersfield.  The driving test consisted of climbing and coming back down a steep grade east of that city. Then I had to park the trailer back where it was.

The driving instructor kept telling me, “Don’t think ya know how to drive truck just because you haven’t hit anything. It’ll take you years out there before you can call yourself a real driver!” 

A couple of times he looked at me with sadness in his eyes, “Don’t let ‘em burn you out! If you’re not comfortable, park it.  I don’t wanta hear about ya goin’ off a mountain!” 

Other times he would say, “You do what you need to do to be safe out there! You hear me?”

He was talking about dispatchers. He knew they would try to make me keep going no matter what the weather was like or how tired I was.  It was their job to get the freight picked up and delivered on time.  Drivers were expendable. 

This was before cell phones were popular. I had a tape recorder with a suction cup that fit on the telephone so I could record both sides of a conversation.  I made sure that my dispatchers knew that I had it.  I didn’t always use it, but they were never sure.  There were several times when I was driving solo that I was told to chain up the truck and go over a mountain pass during a real bad blizzard. 

I’d say, “Just a minute.” …. I’d wait a few seconds so they would think that I was putting the suction cup on the telephone. ….  “Now let me get this straight, are you telling me to chain up and go through a closed highway?”

There would be a silence on the other end of the line and then, “Why don’t you go to the bunk and wait for them to open the road?”

There are a couple of chapters about my trucking experiences in Proclivity. I also included a list of the things I kept in the truck with me.  If you are really interested in more information, you may want to read that book.  Readers have told me that they never see a semi now or the zip lock bags lying beside the highway without thinking of me.

Speaking of zip lock bags, I used gallon size for me to urinate in. I got quart size for my male partners.  If you ever see one coming out of a semi window, duck and wash your car as soon as possible. 

I even helped two older women sitting in the car ahead of me one hot day when we were stuck in a traffic jam on the Salt Flats in Utah.  A woman with a bunch of kids and a dog were going the wrong way on the interstate.  She hit head-on with a semi.  It came over the CB that none of them in the car made it.  Even the truck driver was injured.

I walked to the car in front of me and told the women that we were going to be there for a while because they had to clean up the wreckage. “You can come back and sit in my cool truck.”

One said “We really need to use the rest room.”

“I’ve got that covered too.”

I helped them clime into the cab. I showed them how to hold the gallon zip-lock bag open in front and behind them with their fingers before they went to my bunk and closed the curtains.  Each took their turn.  They looked very relieved as they thanked me.  Then we all used wet wipes for our hands and had sandwiches and sodas from my refrigerator.

One time I was driving with #7 and got up during my hours in the bunk. I used the bag, climbed into the jump seat, opened the window and threw it.  Only after I had released the bag did I see that we were on a bridge and there was a convertible with the top down on the road below. … I got right back in the bunk after I saw how much it splattered in that car.

Let me just interject that driving over the road is a real good place for someone who wants to hide. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of very good men and women driving semi, but there are also people I never wanted to stay around very long.  I have wondered for years about how many of those missing children are sequestered under the bunks of some of those trucks.

After I took the driving test to get my chauffeur’s license, my instructor told me that the Department of Transportation officer said that I was the best student he ever brought him.

My instructor gave me that look, “You flirted with him didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

Back then I got a chauffeur’s license and that grandfathered into a CDL (commercial driver’s license) a few years later. I got hazmat (hazardous materials) certification, but I told the DOT examiner to call the police if I ever tried to get a certification for doubles because I had gone completely nuts! 

I explained that I wanted nothing to do with pulling two trailers, especially on ice.   I had seen them wrapped up around themselves in the medians and ditches with the tractor sitting on its butt so the driver had to jump to the ground. 

“I’m having enough trouble getting one trailer through construction zones. I want nothing to do with two trailers back there!”

The examiner and I laughed as he told me about listening to the drivers who ended up in that situation. “Some of them said they soiled themselves.”

I was almost giddy when I was handed my license. I had to work at not jumping up and down and giggling.  Then it was off to the buffet so I could pay for my instructor’s meal.  It was one of those places where there was lots of food.  My instructor was a BIG guy!

He said that he had started the tradition of the students paying for his meal the day they passed the exam. He said, as far as he was concerned, we owed him that meal for him putting his life in jeopardy riding with us while we learned to drive. 

He smirked, “And you really owe me! Nobody else has tightened up all of my orifices as many times as you have!!  Good luck to those holding the flag in construction areas when you get out there!!!”

“I should do just fine! You screamed at me through enough of them that I will hear you every time I see a flag!!”

Looking back at what I had put him through, and after I tried to train some people a few years later, I totally agree with him. Only two of the women learned to back the truck up and were assigned their own company trucks.  The others just wanted to find a man to take care of them.  The one man I tried to train made one turn to California and back with me, but decided to drive trunk in Iowa rather than over mountains.

Yeah, the men will take care of the women all right! They will use them for whatever pleases them until they get tired of them. 

I have found women in the ladies room and on the fuel island of truck stops through the years where the man just drove off and left them standing there. I was even in trucks several times with men who tried to treat me that way, but I stuck with it and got back to the terminal before I got off the truck.

I knew from the beginning, and so did everyone at the truck driving school, that my ultimate goal was to drive solo so I did not have to depend on someone else. That meant that I had to learn to do the whole job, including backing that damned trailer up. 

It would be a year or so of driving team before an owner operator finally explained backing the trailer up so that it made sense to me. I have to admit that I had lucked out during my driving test because it surprised me that the trailer had actually gone where I was supposed to put it.  Also, the examiner did not make me back up very far.  He liked me.

The owner of the school grabbed my arm as soon as we got back from eating lunch, “A driver called to see if we had any women that wanted to drive over the road. I told him that you were getting your license this morning.  He is coming here to see if you want to drive with him.”

I got excited and then looked at my instructor. He said, “It’s a good company, but you’ll have to figure out if you wanta drive with him.  Remember, you’re gonna be in that truck 24-7.  You won’t be able to get away from him for weeks at a time.  Some of ‘em ain’t as nice as they pretend to be when you first meet ‘em.”

Just then a big beautiful dark blue double-bunk cab-over drove into the yard. Then it backed the trailer into an empty spot. 

Blue is my favorite color!!

I asked the instructor, “What’s that on the front of the trailer making that noise?”

“Oh shit! I forgot to teach you about reefers.  It’s a refrigerator so the freight don’t freeze in the winter or spoil in the summer.  Just listen to him and he’ll teach you, but always remember to defrost ‘em often, even in the winter.”

A 6’3” slender West Virginia hillbilly unfolded and climbed down from the cab.  The instructor asked him how much the company was paying teams and the driver told him.  I got the nod that the pay was good and my mentor walked away.

The driver asked if I wanted to see inside the cab. I could not hide how excited I was, “Yes!”

It was beautiful! There was dark blue vinyl everywhere.  I knew the air conditioner worked because it was cool inside the cab.  There was a small closet and a shelf at the end of the large mattress in the bunk.  There were two cabinets on the back wall.

He told me, “I hafta buy queen sized sheets ta fit the mattress.”

The bed was made with a brown velour blanket, beige sheets with brown African animals and there were four matching king sized pillows leaning against two walls.

The transmission was a 9-speed like I had been driving, but the trailer was a lot longer.

Yup! This will do just fine!!!

I told him, “I have to do laundry before I can leave. I didn’t know I’d be leaving so soon.  You can follow me and I can do your laundry too.”

It was good that I had been taught to look at more than one thing at a time because I was watching that big beautiful blue truck behind me more than I was looking at the road in front of me.

Dad lived north of Adel. The house was on an access road that had a slight curve.  #5 backed that big beauty down it like he was driving forward and parked in front of the house.

I’m sure glad he didn’t make me back it up that far!

I ran in the house and grabbed the clothes I would need for a couple weeks on the road. He climbed out of the cab with a pillow case of his clothes and got in my car.

I knew he was sizing me up as I put the clothes in the washer, but I figured that he had liked what he saw or he would not have followed me home. Then I sat on the table next to him and asked a bunch of questions.  He finally told me that he was not sure the company would hire me. 

I was absolutely shocked, “Why wouldn’t they?”

“You’ll have to take a driving test, a drug test and pass a lot of written tests before they’ll hire you.”

“Look, I’ve just spent six weeks in driving school. I passed all of those tests and have my license.  You can teach me anything else I need to know on the way to California.”

“You’ll have to hide when we go through the coops.”

“Where will I have to hide?”

He looked at me like I was some kind of virgin sitting beside him, “You’ll have to hide in the bunk with the curtains closed.”

“Oh, I can do that.”

“Sometimes we’ll be on the road for six weeks at a time. Do you want to be away from your family that long?”

“Look, I just got a divorce. What little I have left is here in dad’s house.  He’s the only tie I have.  I have no problem passing drug tests. but you need to know that I’m a recovering alcoholic.

I could tell that made him think, but he finally smiled by the time the laundry was done, “Let’s do it.”

He told me a couple of months later that he had thought that I was “a bit pushy” that day. Can you imagine that?  Me pushy?

There are several chapters in Proclivity that tell the stories about my escapades on the road.  I am not going to copy all of it here.  Husband #5 chose drugs instead of our marriage.  However, I will always give him the credit for teaching me to be a good driver. 

He learned to drive chip trucks running up and down the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia.  He made sure that I was a safe driver by showing me the proper way to climb and go down steep mountain grades.  He was always there to keep me safe as I learned how to deal with other drivers, dispatchers, shippers, receivers, DOT and the four wheelers.

A few years later I got off the truck because I was burned out. I told #5 that we were done.  I started an affair with the future #6.  I vacillated back and forth between them for quite a few months before I finally divorced #5 on May 4th, 1988. 

I still miss the relationship we had for three years on the road, but I do not miss trying to hang on to some semblance of reality while living with a practicing drug addict in an eight by eight foot space for months at a time. He seemed to believe anything he said, and a lot of it was pure fantasy. 

He said that he was living with a woman from Mexico the last time I spoke to him.  I hope they are very happy because he was a great guy and deserves much happiness.

#6 could not read. We were going together for quite a while before his mother told me.  I was shocked!  It had never occurred to me that I should ask a person if they can read before I got involved with them. 

I had thought reading was not one of the things he enjoyed. To be honest with you, I had never been around anyone who could not read.  I had no idea of what I was getting myself into. 

This became a big issue when we started driving semi as a team. I had to stay up to read the road signs while he drove and then drive my hours while he slept.  Then I had to do it all over again until we got to our destination.  He was getting his rest, but I just as well have been driving solo because I was not getting any sleep.

When he could not stop yelling at me, I left him in the terminal at Ankeny, Iowa, and drove team with a woman until the company realized that I was serious about divorcing him on December 14th. 1990.  Then I was assigned my own truck again.

Even though he had very little when we got together, he took my furniture when he moved out. In fact, I had to disconnect all of the utilities while I was on the road to get #6 to move out of my mobile home after he almost burned it down by being drunk while he was cooking.  I had to clean up the mess when I got home from the rotten eggs that exploded in the refrigerator too. 

I bought new furniture on one of my breaks. I was vacuuming and thought about calling him to thank him for taking the old furniture.  I would never have bought the beautiful new furniture, but realized that making that call might be tacky so I left him alone.

I heard that he rear-ender somebody while he was drunk and lost his license again. That irked me because I had helped him study so he could take the test orally. 

Someone else told me that he had moved back to his home town in northeast Iowa and was living with his parents.  I hope he was finally able to sober up and find happiness.

Now for #7, I paid for him to go to truck driving school so he could go over the road with me, but he got on the truck with the attitude, ‘me man, you woman and therefore stupid’.

He just could not stop bitching and yelling at me. Most of the time it was when I was driving so I couldn’t get away from him.  Sometimes he didn’t even remember why he was yelling. 

He would lose his trip advance money in the Nevada casinos each way from California to Ohio and back, and then expect me to feed him from my trip advances.  That got tiresome real fast.

I left him and the company truck at the yard in Oklahoma City. #7 tried to talk me out of leaving, “You can’t leave!  I love you!!”

As I was getting out of the cab, “I don’t want to be loved that way!”

I hitchhiked to Kansas City.  My old company out of Ankeny had a team pick me up in Kansas City so I could deliver their load while they attended the man’s father’s funeral.  I was assigned my own company truck when I got back from delivering their load. 

Several weeks later I woke myself up screaming, “Shut the fuck up!” I was alone in the bunk.  I had been reliving some of #7’s tirades in a dream.  I was not going to allow myself to be berated like that any more.  We were divorced May 15th, 1992.

The owner gave me his original green extended nose, chromed-up and lit-up Peterbuilt tractor to drive when I started driving out of Ankeny again. It was the one he drove when he started the company.  That was great because it didn’t have a governor on it.  I could get out and run with the ‘big dogs’, but what I figured out a few months later was that he had actually let me drive it so I would get all of the ‘bugs’ fixed on it. 

He knew that I took good care of my equipment. I asked the mechanics to fix things when I was in the yard instead of taking it into a truck stop and charging up big bills.

Little things went wrong at first like I had to duct tape my mirrors to the brackets in freezing fog on the Salt Flats. There were several air leaks coming home from Texas, but I babied it back to the yard both times so it cost very little to fix.  Later my headlights went out about 3:30 in the morning on my way to Denver.

I had been running with another driver on ice. All of a sudden the only thing that was illuminating the highway was the moon, and it wasn’t very bright. 

I got on the CB and asked the other driver to slow down and turn on his flashers so I could see the road. He led me into a small country station.  I waited until after the sun came up to go through the weigh station so they wouldn’t know that I had no lights.  Then I got them fixed after I made delivery.

I was sent out into the boondocks to pick up potatoes for California right after I got the lights fixed.  It was in the middle of the night by then.  It was way below zero and I was on a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere.  Oh, did I mention I was in the mountains?

All of a sudden I realized that I had not seen any other traffic. I was apparently the only person stupid enough to be out there.  About that time I also noticed that it was getting cold in the cab.  My windows were starting to frost up on the inside.  The heater blower just had cold air coming out of it. 

If I parked, nobody would find me until after dawn. I turned on the fan above the windshield and pointed it toward the part I needed to see through.  That helped some, but I had to keep scraping a hole in the frost with my credit card.  The rest of the windows had heavy frost on them.

I could see the loom of lights in the distance so I figured there must be a town in front of me, but it seemed like an eternity before I finally got to it. I was pretty numb physically and mentally by that time. 

I finally found a motel with a big enough driveway for me to turn into. I tried to make another turn to get out of the way, but I felt my trailer nudge a light pole.  I stopped. 

I set the breaks, turned off the truck, grabbed my purse and tried to climb to the ground. My foot slipped on the slick step and the only thing that kept me from falling is that I was holding the handrail.  It took several tries to get the door locked because I could not feel my hands and fingers. 

I had drawn a crowd by that time. Some of them helped me get inside.  They gave me hot coffee and a couple of women rubbed my hands to get the circulation back.  They called my night dispatcher and I was given a room for the night. 

I was so relieved to be able to crawl under all of the warm blankets they gave me, but it took me a while to warm up enough to go to sleep. Actually I was there three nights so my company could fly the water pump into the mechanic. 

I finally got the potatoes loaded and headed cross country. I was going to get on Interstate 40 at Albuquerque, and then on to California. 

Again I was on a two lane highway driving through territory I had never seen before. There was absolutely nothing out there except more nothing.  It was still real cold, but at least it was daylight this time and my heater was working. 

I stopped at a stop sign and the engine quit. I had no cell phone or computer in my truck to stay in touch with my dispatcher like most trucks have today, but then, it was a lot easier back then to make my log book look legal when nobody knew for sure where I was.  I liked that a lot because I ran hard and could never have logged my actual driving time.

Today most dispatchers can check their computer screens and see their trucks’ exact locations at any given time. They are in constant contact with the drivers on the computers in the truck, or via cell phone.

Those drivers enter their data into the computer on their truck instead of using a log book. It matches their fuel receipts, pickup and delivery times. 

That would have been impossible for me to do because I seldom slept for thirty hours at a time. I’d sleep for five hours when I absolutely had to and then be off again.  We called it creative documentation.

In fact, the last time I drove semi the laws had changed while I was off the road. There was a new normal.  If I was not parked in a truck stop by 5:00 pm, there was no place to park for the night except on entrance ramps in the country, which are even less safe than rest areas. 

Trying to drive at night, like I had always done, only got me stopped by the highway patrol to check my log book. Additionally, I had never used more than one log book before this, but I told dispatch I was going to the bunk after I ran out of hours in two of them.

My dispatchers and I always had an understanding. I was not going to pull off of an icy highway to make a check call each morning because going down those ramps was more dangerous than continuing to drive.  I told them, “Unless you hear from me or the cops, I’m still moving.”

It wasn’t long before a car stopped next to my truck after my engine quit in the middle of New Mexico.  I climbed down out of the cab and asked the older woman to call the police for me.  She looked shocked until I told her that my truck was ‘dead in the water’ and I didn’t have any way to call the police myself.  She told me that she would make the call when she got home.

I got back in the cab, locked the doors, laid my pistol next to me on the floor, put on warm clothes, drank some of the hot coffee from the thermos, got my log book brought up to date and waited.

I sat there freezing for quite a while. I started to wonder if she had made the call.  I had not seen anyone since she drove off. 

About that time a sheriff’s car pulled up behind me. He had me sit in his warm car while his dispatcher called my dispatcher.  They called the towing company in Albuquerque.  It took some time to get to us. 

The deputy asked me, “Do you realize that you are in the worst county in New Mexico for murder?”

“You brought your gun right?” I conveniently forgot to tell him that I had one too.

Have you ever seen a tow truck big enough to pull a loaded semi through the mountains? It was real nerve racking riding with that driver.  I was afraid he was going to drop my truck before we got to Albuquerque.  I really didn’t want to hear what the owner would scream at me if that happened. 

Come to find out, a belt broke. They got a new belt put on and I was off and running again. 

Now remember, I didn’t drink or use drugs because I had been sober and straight for over ten years by then. I just had so much energy all of the time.  Driving was so much fun to me that I got excited about what might be around the next curve or over the next hill.  Many times I got to the destination before teams, but then, I didn’t stop in Nevada to gamble like some of them did either.

There were no more major problems with the owner’s truck, but about dawn a few months later, after running hard all of that time, I was on my way to the market in Chicago.  It was warm by then and I was enjoying the scenery. 

All of a sudden I had to park in a rest area. I felt like I was totally exhausted.  I was afraid I was having a stroke.  In fact, I’m not sure I didn’t have one. 

I dropped into the bunk. I couldn’t have gotten back up if my life would have depended on it. 

I waited until I heard a driver walking by on the sidewalk. I opened the bunk door and asked him to call my dispatcher.  Then he drove my truck closer to Chicago followed by his partner in their truck while I rested.  They parked me in a small country fuel station and continued their run.

I absolutely could not drive. I barely made it into the station to go to the rest room and call my dispatcher.  He had me calling every few hours to make sure I was still alive. 

I would turn off my alarm clock, go into the building, go to the restroom and telephone him at the assigned time. I’d grab some ice cream and water, go back to the truck, set my alarm for the next time I was to check in and fall back into the bunk.  There was nothing else I could do.  I had nothing left.

The company sent another driver to trade trailers with me. I rested another couple of days before I felt capable of even getting behind the wheel.  I picked up a load, took it back to the yard in Ankeny and went home. 

The owner took his tractor away from me, got it cleaned up, had it painted, and started driving it himself. We were going opposite directions on Interstate 80 several months later.  I heard over the CB, “I’m so tired of bein’ called ‘Hot Air’!”  (My CB handle.)

“Well give it back to me then! I looked a lot better in it anyway!!”

Later still I was northbound, dropping off the hill south of Las Vegas.  I saw the Green Beauty in front of me, but it was going real slow in the right lane with the flashers on.  He was behind another semi with smoking brakes.  As I got closer I could tell they were on another CB channel.  My boss was helping the other driver get down the hill safely.  I just waved as I passed and stayed in the left lane in case he lost the brakes completely. 

The next time I saw the boss in the yard I asked if he got the other driver down the hill.

“Of course I did!”

I hate to admit it, but that green truck helped me to learn some humility, not everything is about me. There were ten or twelve times that a driver walked over to me with adoration in his eyes as I was getting in or out of the cab.   Each time I would think to myself, I must be lookin’ good today. Then the man would say something like, “Would you mind if I tipped the hood?  I used to have one of these and I still miss it.”

Another time I was driving through Utah and a driver told me on the CB after I passed him, “Lookin’ good!”

“Yeah and you aren’t bad either.”

“Ah ….. I was talkin about the truck.”

When the owner took his tractor away from me I was assigned a purple extended nose, chromed-up, lit-up Peterbuilt tractor with a really ugly dented grill. The safety manager told me that the team before me had hit a man that committed suicide in front of them while they were hammer down on the Salt Flats.  He told me that I would have to drive it with the grill like that until the insurance paid to have it fixed.  He said, “Tell everybody you hit a deer:”

I laughed, “Deer don’t stand on their hind legs to git hit!”

“Just do it!”

Of course, you know I ignored him. When somebody asked me what happened, I told them.  I still can’t believe how many people actually asked if it hurt the guy.  I’d just look at them with disgust, “I imagine it was an instant autopsy at over seventy miles an hour!”

That dented grill worked out very well for me many times in different cities when I tried to make a sharp turn. There would be a 4-wheeler sitting in the way.  The driver would be laughing at me when I motioned for them to back up.  I just shrugged my shoulders, pointed to the grill and started moving toward them. 

They would stop laughing and back their vehicle up, but most of them also flipped me off as I passed. That was okay with me because I was used to being told that I was number one by that time.

I always named my trucks. I thought it would not be right to name this one after the song ‘Purple People Eater’ so I named it ‘Duke’ because purple is regal.  It was not the truck’s fault that the man chose to jump in front of it.  I told Duke that I understood because lots of things had happened to me too.

The Safety Department assigned a young man in his thirties as my second seat. He had not been out of truck driving school very long, but he had driven for a while with another trainer from our company.  The first run we made was to Sioux City for a load of meat headed for California. 

I was still really weak from whatever that was that had put me in the bunk for days. I was exhausted by the time I drove to the shipper in Sioux City.  I checked in, told the youngin’ to wake me up if he had any trouble getting loaded and pretty much passed out.  The next thing I knew he was waking me up, “We’re ready to roll!”

“Not yet. We have to weigh and fuel.”

“I already fueled.”

“Did you weigh first?”

“No.”

“How much fuel did you put in?”

“The tanks are full.”

I was so tired that I didn’t even call him any names. Apparently whoever he had been driving with had not taught him very much about getting legal before they started the trip. 

“Get a twenty out of my billfold, go fill up my thermos with hot black coffee, go to the fuel desk and pay for the scale ticket. I’m gonna weigh this big bitch.”

I already knew that we were over gross if he had actually filled the tanks. I looked at the scale ticket. Yup, he filled ‘em!

There were two choices, other than trying to beat the hell out of him, and he would have won. (1) Find somebody with a siphon hose and sell some fuel, but that wasn’t going to happen.  (2) Get out the map and plot my course through Nebraska on some real skinny roads around the coups and back to Interstate 80. 

I called dispatch and told them what happened, “You know that I’ll try to get us to delivery on time. Wish us luck.”

Our company tractors had lots of lights on them so I knew it was not going to be possible to be inconspicuous out in the middle of Nebraska, but I also knew there were lots of things being delivered to them out there in semis.  With any kind of luck I would be able to sneak through most of Nebraska.  That is, if I didn’t find any low bridges or something similar.  I had never been on those roads.

He was smart enough to keep his mouth shut until after we got our logs brought up to date, I had calmed down by then and we got down the road a few miles.

I started, “None of us know until we understand why something needs to be done a certain way. You always have to scale after you git loaded.”  

He said that he knew I was tired. He was only trying to help by letting me sleep. I told him that I appreciated him doing that, “but please wake me from now on.  I’d rather have you wake me up.  My license is on the line if I get caught this much over gross.”

I explained that we never put fuel in, unless the tanks are completely empty, until after the trailer is loaded. “We can move the axles around to leave room for fuel, but we have to weigh so we know how much fuel to put in and still be legal by the time we get to the first coup.  Then, if we are running real close to gross, we weigh again in the next truck stop, figure out how many miles it is to the next coup so we can do it all again.  Normally we wouldn’t have to go out on skinny roads with this load.  Hopefully we’ll be legal by the time I get us back to interstate 80.  Go get some sleep.  I’m gonna need you to drive when I get there.”

I don’t know how many times dispatch had me hauling loads that were real close to gross. I had to stop after each weigh station and put in just enough fuel to get through the next one.  I should have never let them know that I could do that because it took so much more time and work for those extra stops.

Dusk turned to dark and it was beautiful. The stars looked like I could reach out and touch them.  I was enjoying myself.  The country music was keeping me awake. 

I turned on a real, real skinny blacktop.  I had to keep my right tires on the edge while the left side of the trailer was over the middle stripe.  I prayed that I would not meet anybody because there was a drop off with only a little bit of dirt on the side of the blacktop.  If my tires dropped off, the truck was going to slide for a ways on its side in the ditch.

I caught something out of my left eye. I glanced and there was a gray transparent outline of a man’s head and shoulders.  I could see the black sky and stars through him.  He was looking through the window at me.  It didn’t scare me.  In fact I found it quite comforting.  I told him, “Let’s just get along” and he disappeared. 

I have always surmised that either I was so exhausted that I was delusional or the man was the one the truck had hit on the Salt Flats. I chose to believe it was the latter.  I had never seen that type of apparition before nor have I seen one since then. 

You can believe whatever you want, but I know that I had that truck in some situations that most people would think impossible. We came out of them together each time. 

There are forces I do not understand, but then I don’t need to understand them in order to recognize they are working in my life.

I got to the interstate and scaled to make sure we were legal. I was relieved that we had actually made it undetected through Nebraska and were no longer over gross. 

I woke him up and told him when to get me up. The last thing I remember is nose-diving into the bunk.

I drove with the youngin’ for quite a few months. He was a darned good driver, but there were a few other times I wanted to swat him. 

Once he was trying to help again by letting me sleep. He drove over Donner Pass, which put our logs out of kilter for California.  Actually, I think he just wanted to drive it to make sure he could do it.

I started south out of Sacramento and, sure enough, we were pulled around behind the coup for inspection.  I told him, as I threw his logbook through the curtains at him, “Always keep your log book in the bunk with you.  Stay in there with the curtain closed and don’t move around.  They can’t wake you up or look at your log book as long as you are asleep.” 

Luckily I had just gotten my license renewed. The officer saw that I had a new license and a male partner on my log.  He assumed that I had just got out of truck driving school. 

Since I knew California was giving drivers $1,200 tickets for being over time or out of time on their logs, I didn’t correct his conclusion.  In fact, I let him spend about twenty minutes helping me get my log book legal while he explained, “These are the rules you will have to follow driving in California.” 

He didn’t even inspect the tractor and trailer, which was a relief since we had an air leak. As soon as I got back out on the highway I told the youngin’ to change his logs to match mine, “and get it done fast in case I get pulled over again.”

I got a $120 ticket. My safety man thought it was a mistake by leaving off one of the zeros and called the California DOT to make sure the amount was right.  He was assured that it was only $120. 

When I got back to the yard he asked me, “How in the hell do you get out of all those tickets that everybody else has to pay?”

I smiled, “That’s simple! I’m cute, wear cleavage and shorts, and I do pitiful good!!”

I was fearless back then. I suppose some would have called me stupid.  Oh wait, they did!  But now that I am seventy one.  I really miss that part of me. 

Actually, she is still there. She just can’t get around as well as she used to.  I’m tethered to oxygen and use a walker.  Throwing around all of those bolts of heavy fabric in my drapery shop, helping to unload freight, and sitting in the seat for long hours driving semi for years took a toll on my back, legs and feet.  Smoking since I was nine messed up my lungs.  I have COPD.

Most of the time the youngin’ and I got along very well. As I said, he was a darned good driver, an excellent lover and he learned quickly about how to go off of each mountain pass safely, but it was in the middle of the night.  The truck was stopped and he was in his bunk when I woke up. 

I looked out of the curtain and then through the windshield. We were sitting in a pull-off.  I realized that we were a few miles west of Laramie, Wyoming.  I could see the moonlight reflecting off of everything so I knew everything was covered in ice. 

I got up, got dressed and into the driver’s seat. There were no other trucks sitting there.  There were no trucks parked across the road in the other pull-off either.  There was no traffic going either direction on the interstate.  Apparently the highway was closed.

The youngin’ was either asleep or pretending to be asleep in his bunk. Apparently he didn’t want to drive, and he didn’t want to wake me up to tell me that.

We didn’t have enough fuel to make it through until they opened the highway back up. I swore under my breath about him not waking me up again.  I used a ziplock bag, dumped it out the window and put the bag in the trash.  I got back into the driver’s seat. 

I carried a double sized thermos of coffee for times like this. I slammed down a couple cups.  I sat there smoking, praying, talking to the truck and getting up my nerve.  Finally I knew it was then or never, “Okay Duke, let’s go home.” 

I shoved him into gear, put the right tires on the edge of the highway where there is always gravel and walked him up and down the hills until we got to Laramie where I put fuel in both the tractor and reefer.  By that time they had Sherman Pass open so I drove to Cheyenne.  We had another talk when he got up.

Actually the youngin’ adopted my attitude. One night I was driving down the west side of Donner Pass in a blinding blizzard.  The wind was blowing the snow into the windshield so hard that the wipers were having trouble keeping up.  I had driven those grades lots of times, but this time I was guessing where the highway was. 

Also, the wind was so strong that trees were coming down on the highway around me. I ran over one of them and the youngin’ stuck his head out of the curtain, “What’s goin’ on.”

“I can’t see a damned thing. Can you?”

“I don’t have to. I’m not driving.”  His head disappeared and the curtain closed.

I was blessed that the only things I ever hit when I was driving semi were (1) a cat that ran under my trailer in the middle of the country on a 2-lane highway, (2 & 3) an alligator [truck tire tread] & a skunk in Nebraska on Interstate 80, and (4) those pine trees on Donner Pass. 

I parked as soon as I found a truck stop and told my partner that it was his turn to drive. He gave me an ear full when I got back up because he had to use his boot string to tie up the part of the driver’s side step that the skunk had knocked loose. 

“Did you know you hit a skunk when you got me up?”

“Yup.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I almost threw up trying to get that step tied up.”

“Because you are always telling me that you are the man. I figured you could handle it better than I could since I am only a woman.”

“You can handle your own dammed skunks from now on!”

Now I’m not claiming that I was some kind of wonderful driver, but I did the very best I knew how every time I got behind the wheel. I knew that my life was not the only one that I had to keep safe.  If I had a co-driver, I was responsible for their life too.  And the public in those other vehicles, the pedestrians and let’s not forget those people in construction zones who are close enough to the traffic that they can probably feel the wind as we drive by. 

There are a couple of reasons that I believe I didn’t have accidents: (1) I left a lot of room between me and the vehicle in front of me and (2) nobody did such stupid things in front of my truck that I couldn’t get stopped before I hit them.

However, when 4-wheelers passed my truck going down hill on ice, pulled over in front of me and then hit their brakes while their child was smiling through the back window and pumping their little arm up and down asking me to blow the air horn, well, they were just plain out of their freaking minds!

There was absolutely no way I could stop 80,000 pounds that bends in the middle going down hill on ice! If they didn’t let up on their brakes soon enough, I was going to run over them. 

After a few times of this I learned that my being terrified that I would kill that child always manifested it’s self with me screaming at the driver and calling them everything but a child of God. I had always thought I was mad, but realized that many times my rage covers my terror.

One of my friends said that he used to go around a semi on ice because he wanted to be in front of the semi in case it jackknifed. He told me that he was right because a few of them had jackknifed behind him. 

I told him, “You’re lucky I wasn’t driving one of those trucks because I would have gone ahead and hit you when you put on the brakes. I would not have tried to miss you and jackknifed.  There is no sense in hitting innocent vehicles.”

The same thing goes for the sand pits placed on downhill grades in California and other states to stop runaway trucks that have lost their brakes. 

I heard of a driver who had lost his brakes and was going to use the sand pit to stop his truck, but there was a car parked there with children playing in the sand. He chose to go on down the hill and put everyone else in jeopardy. 

I took a lot of time rolling the problem around in my mind so I would not have to stop and think about it if and when I found myself in that situation. What would I be willing to live with? 

I lived with the possibility of killing people every day driving that big bitch down the road. I did everything I could to make sure that didn’t happen.  I finally decided that I would yank on my air horn to let them know to get the kids out of the sand because I was coming in.  There is no sense taking out a bunch of innocent people simply driving down the highway minding their own business because somebody chose to ignore the signs about not playing in the sand. 

Anyone with this type of job, even firemen and police, have to make life and death decisions every day. I found it helpful to think about the problems I heard other drivers live through, or died trying, so I could make my decisions spontaneously rather than being frozen and not knowing what to do. 

Additionally, I have always been tuned in to my intuitiveness. Once I got an overwhelming feeling that I should slow down.  I did.  A couple of miles later I drove around a curve and there was a semi that had lost control.  It was coming to a stop across my lanes.  If I would not have slowed down, it most likely would have hit me.

Another time, I came around a corner about 3-4:00 a.m. in California and there was a freaking plane sitting in the highway in front of me.  I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could and grabbed the CB mike, “Shut it down!  There’s a plane in the highway!”

A male voice came back, “Sure there is lady.”

The driver going the other direction yelled, “She’s right! Shut it down!!”

I came close to hitting it that time! I had to calm down for a while before I was ready to climb down out of the cab.

I loved driving truck. It was exciting and exhausting.  I was so tired by the time I finally got to go to the bunk that I always fell asleep right away.  I am glad I did not miss those years. 

We have an absolutely beautiful country. Driving for me was like a paid vacation running back and forth from coast to coast and from the border of Mexico into parts of Canada.  In one week I swam in the Atlantic Ocean and waded in both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.  #5 and I had to drive hard so I could say that I had done it. 

I have eaten lobster and other fresh sea food on both coasts, watched the sun rise over Hoover Dam, and somehow we missed the ‘no trucks’ sign so I could be amazed by the Redwood’s massive grandeur.

I have seen the sun making immense pink crystals sparkle at sunrise in Colorado.  I have chased lightening storms clear across Nebraska at night numerous times.  Yup!  Higher Power is the best artist!!!

I got really frustrated because it was always storming when it was my turn to drive and clear weather when #7 drove. I finally started bitching at Higher Power about it. 

Not too long after that I was driving through a real bad storm in Nevada.  I finally had driven out of it when an absolutely beautiful, intense double rainbow appeared on the dark blue-gray sky.  It didn’t disappear for miles.  All of the drivers were on the CB talking about it.  When #7 woke up I told him, “I know why I drive the storms.”

“Why?”

“Because I need more rainbows than you do.”

There were also times that just plain gave me the begebbers! I was running solo with a couple of drivers on a beautiful clear night where the stars looked like they were coming to say hello.  We were somewhere out in the middle of the northwest where it is desolate except for a few hills.  I say somewhere because after a few years, if I didn’t run on that highway enough to know every hill and curve, all of them became one long road where I only remember the terrain. 

I was in the middle truck. We had been talking for a couple of hours.  We shared about our lives, families and laughed at some of the things that had happened to each of us, both on and off the road. 

We followed the highway around a hill and there was a bright light sitting midair just above and to the right of us. All conversation stopped.  There was no sound except the humming of my motor. 

The hair raised on my arms and the back of my neck. I was used to this happening when I was close to a tornado in Iowa, but not in the middle of nowhere without some kind of atmospheric instability.  The CB stayed silent so I knew they were seeing the light too.  I sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything. 

About a half an hour, and quite a few miles later, I grabbed the CB mike, “I didn’t see anything.”

One of them answered, “I think that’s a good idea.”

We kept running together, but I turned on music and we all stayed off of the CB.

Quite a while after that trip I hurt my back unloading a trailer of Brach’s candy in Sparks, Nevada.  I was pulling a wooden pallet off of the top of the pile of pallets that was a little taller than me.  I backed up so the pallet would fall on the concrete, but a box of candy was sitting behind me.  I fell backwards on the concrete and the pallet came down on top of me.

Eventually, after taking some time off to recuperate and rehabilitate, then going back out on the road several times where the pain would once again become excruciating, an MRI showed that I should not be driving with bulging discs. I received workers’ compensation to reeducate myself. 

I had a rough time with that reality. My self esteem was wrapped up in being a good driver.  I had driven through all kinds of weather and got to almost every destination on time.  The only times I stopped were on entrance ramps to use a zip lock bag to urinate in or at truck stops to fuel and grab some groceries.

If I had the time, I enjoyed the free shower that went with buying the fuel and would eat a meal. The rest of the time I used wet wipes to stay clean and ate out of the refrigerator.  I would grab five hours of sleep if I really had to, but most of the time I did not sleep when I was running hard.

I told my safety director after a clean drug test, “If I was being raised today they’d call me a hyperactive child,”

He laughed, “That’s pretty much what we tell everybody about you now.”

I got off of the truck for the last time. The people who worked for the company, that I thought were my friends, would no longer speak to me.  My attorney told me that this was normal when there is an injury and the person is asking for compensation. 

I always had trouble knowing who I could trust. It smacked me in the face again just how fast the people I thought were friends could turn their backs on me.  I really wanted someone to care about me, but as usual, dad was the only one who seemed to give a tinker’s damn.

My home was a mobile home on the east side of Waukee. I was in physical therapy for the bulging discs in my back when I started classes at Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC).  I figured I had better start using whatever brain I had left because my body was starting to fall apart.  Besides, I was not getting any younger.  I was forty eight.

The drivers I had run with on the road were stopping in the evenings and on weekends to see me.  They parked in the truck stop close to where I lived.  They bought me food in the restaurant, but were disappointed because my back was not up to having sex. 

They would tell me, “Well, that doesn’t mean you can’t give me a blowjob.”

I’d laugh, “You’ve got to be kidding me! If I don’t get something out of it, neither do you, and a meal ain’t gettin it!”

The ones who offered me money got told to never call me again.

One guy called me, “I’m ready to move in.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“My wife found out about you and kicked me out.”

“And why is that my problem?”

“Well, you’re the reason she kicked me out.”

“No, you fucking around with me is the reason she kicked you out. You fucked around on her with me, and you would fuck around on me with somebody else while you’re on the road.  Forget you ever knew this number.” CLICK

It all changed for me one weekend two or three months later. I had healed quite a bit.  Three of the drivers called me Friday evening.  They were all in town until Sunday night when they had to leave to make delivery on time. 

I had one move to a different truck stop so two of them were not in the same one. Although I had a lot of fun, and I was exhausted by Sunday night, they were all gone by Monday morning.  I was sitting alone again. 

I realized, for me, that men were the same as alcohol. There would never be enough once I started.  I decided to stay away from men for a while until I could figure out how to have a productive relationship.

Gosh, I wish I could tell you that I finally realized that being married was not going to make everything better, but it would be almost two more decades before I finally understood that fact and was willingly to start living by myself.

My parents had made marriage look so darned easy and wonderful that I just was not willing to give up trying to find ‘Mr. Right’. That was the day that I became a serial monogamist and stopped having sex with multiple men.

I got over $30,000 of workmen’s compensation for my injured back. I used it to live on and pay tuition.  I took the liberal arts route with an emphasis of human services at DMACC. 

I would get to learn the basics of a lot of different subjects. Hopefully I would find something that I was really interested in learning more about.

I was back at looking through the lens of being alone and lost in a great big world. I have never liked transitions from one identity to a new version of me, or from one location to another.  It always felt like I was in quicksand with a lot of reeds floating around me.  I knew that one of them would hold me up so I could get out.  Sometimes fear stopped me from trying, but usually I started grabbing one after the other while I was still sinking. 

This time, instead of a man, I grabbed the rope of workmen’s compensation money that had been thrown to me. I was tired of trying to figure it out on my own and being a failure.  I would go to college and let the professors teach me the things others seemed to have already known.  I wanted to succeed too.

My intension for getting an education was to tell the right people, in the right way, so they would listen to me about the women in the mental hospitals, jails, prison and those living on the streets prostituting themselves. Many were just like me.  They had grown up being abused and running away.  They used alcohol and/or drugs to kill the emotional pain and ended up in trouble with the law. 

Just like me, many had some type of mental illness label consigned to them. This functioned to make their behaviors their fault instead of looking at the family where they were raised.  It is called ‘blaming the victim’.  It is used when those in power do not want anything to change.  Especially when they don’t want to own any responsibility for what happened to an innocent six years old girl.

It took me years to prove those professionals were wrong about me having all of those mental illnesses, but I had to live through the consequences of the labels before anyone would believe me. No one listens to us while we are living through the atrocities or while we are in those mental wards, jails and prison.  It is called ‘having no voice’. 

I knew I needed a lot of education so that educated people would listen to me. I figured they were the ones who had enough power to do something about it.  I had to learn how to speak their language so they could understand me and be willing to make changes.

Looking back I was so very na?ve! I think it was in my second or third semester that I took sociology.  That subject was foreign to me because it was never mentioned when I went to school.  I had no idea what it meant.  I was hoping that it had something to do with finding the mummies in Egypt. 

I remembered as a youngster that I had wanted to be one of those people digging around the pyramids. They found beautiful items used by people centuries before.  Maybe if I understood how they lived in the past, I could learn from them how to get along now.

I was pleased to find out that sociology (the scientific study of human social behavior and its origins, development, organizations, and institutions) was similar to archeology (a science that deals with past human life and activities by studying the bones, tools, etc., of ancient people), but I didn’t have to get dirty in the hot sun digging around in sand to do my field work for sociology.

After everything I had done to get those trucks back and forth in the hot summer and freezing winter, I was ready to be in air conditioning in the summer and sitting next to a roaring furnace in the winter for the rest of my life. I still dream of a crackling fireplace while I watch a blizzard through the window.  Maybe someday….

I read about a Canadian sociologist who was an expert in human interaction in my sociology text book. He explained total institutions, presentation of self, and other subjects that said all of those right things I wanted to tell those right people.  Hell, he had already told them about us and they were not doing anything. 

It became my mission to find out why nobody was helping people sitting in the chair I once occupied. Somebody had to do something, and apparently it would have to be me.  After all, I had lived through all of it.  Maybe I could tell those right people in a way they would hear.

I grabbed that rope of workmen’s compensation money, metaphorically put on my super crusader cape and my identity snapped into place. I was a sociologist! 

I was going to get enough education to make somebody listen to me. I didn’t care how long it took or what I had to do to get there.  That was in 1993.

 After I had completed a few classes, and listened to my education counselor, I understood that a two year associate’s degree was not going to be nearly enough education for anyone to pay attention to what I had to say.  I started interviewing sociology and criminal justice professors at four year colleges in Des Moines.  I was not impressed with the first one I interviewed.

My sociology professor at DMACC told me about a professor at Drake University that took his students out very early in the mornings to feed the homeless.  I had to meet that guy!  I called and set up an appointment with him

The day I met Dr. Dean is the day that I knew I had found my mentor. I walked into his office, shook his hand and asked, “Where were you when I needed you?”

He said, “What?”

I sat down, “Well, if you would have fed me when I was homeless, I could still be out there waiting for you to feed me instead of sitting here trying to go to college so I can get an education to help the girls and women still sitting in the chair I once occupied.”

We talked for quite a while.  He asked me questions about my life and I asked him about the university.  I had found my education advisor!  Over the years he became my mentor and friend.

I knew that I would need a computer when I started college. I was told that I should talk to #A because he was an AA brother, fixed computers and would know which one I needed.  Therefore, I am calling my next three year relationship #A because I did not marry him. 

He not only explained why I should buy that particular computer, but I also paid him to set it up and show me how to use it.

I have always laughed at me every time I think of this. The last time I had used a computer was years before.  I used the F-keys to move the curser.  I had wondered what they were talking about on the CB radio when they said something about a mouse in association with a computer.  I thought maybe somebody had figured out how to get energy to run a computer from a mouse running around on its little wheel.

I didn’t know it at the time, but #A was part of Mensa, the high IQ society. He was also lacking a sense of humor.  So when I told him my understanding of a mouse and computer, he started treating me as if I was two years old. 

To be honest with you, I’m glad he did. I learned a lot about operating a computer from him.  For instance, he taught me to use my left hand for the mouse so I could use my right hand for the 10-key. 

People would ask me what kind of a computer I had in front of him. I always told them “gray.”  He said that he appreciated me doing that, “You aren’t acting like you know something about computers.”

He got really testy with people who acted like they understood “the complexities of a computer”. He said that computers were not user friendly, “People really screw them up when they try to fix them or try to add programs.” 

Thank goodness they are more user friendly now. He is no longer around to fix mine, but one of his sponsorees does a fine job of making time for me when me or my computer screws up.

#A was a wonderful lover. I really appreciated his creativity.  He taught me his own version of ‘shades’ many years before the books came out. 

I sewed him a black satin man’s robe, matching sleep mask and wide strips that went between the mattress and box springs instead of metal hand and foot cuffs. He bought me beautiful gowns and pinafores.  I got to enjoy my creations and his purchases as much as he did.  We took turns thinking up pleasant date nights.  We did the things that made the other one happy, which in turn, found both of us extremely satiated. 

I had a fantasy of making love in the mud for years. A southern driver had told me over the CB one night, “Oh Darlin, you better not!  The dirt’ll tear you up!!”  But #A fulfilled that fantasy and I never got a speck of dirt on me.  His imagination was absolutely explosive … and melded wonderfully with mine.

I used to make fantasy packages to be raffled off at the AA club. We would make sure they worked before we bought another set of everything to pack for the gift. 

I will never know anyone like him again. Hell, I am seventy one now with COPD and a creaky body.  Somebody like him would kill me!!! 

Okay, okay you’re right! That would not be a bad way to go, but I do not have the air, even on oxygen, to expend that kind of energy any more.  I’m more than willing to be content with my memories of our unbridled sex for the rest of my life.  I hope you find someone like him and get the opportunity to know what I am talking about.

However, not all was fun and games. #A started talking about going camping with his AA group right after we met.  I bought all the camping gear, including a two room tent with a porch, with the understanding that he would go with me to other group campouts. 

I learned later that he had taken another woman camping with him in my new tent, on my new queen size air mattress, and in my new queen sized sleeping bags that zipped together. We discussed it and he was right, we were not exclusive at the time, but when he saw me talking to some other men after meetings, it wasn’t very long before he decided we should be.

At some point he moved into my mobile home and we had a great relationship. Then his grown daughter showed up. 

I have always had trouble when the kids were added to the relationship because the man’s attitude toward me always changed. I guess, if I am to be totally honest, my attitude changed too.

I had already lived through #2’s daughter going back so the mother could keep getting the child support. Taking her back to Chicago had almost killed me.

#6’s son came to live with us because he was getting in trouble and not doing well in school. I helped him start believing in his ability to do the school work and even told him that we would get him a tutor if he needed it.  His mother sued #6 for my mobile home and its contents when her son started doing well in school.  I sent the boy back to her so she would stop trying to take away my stuff.

Now #A’s daughter was leaving a mess all over the place including blood from her monthly on my new matching Egyptian cotton towels. He was not asking her to pick up or do the laundry after herself.  The last straw was when her cat was clawing the hell out of my small dog, and then the daughter and her uncle used moose to spike my dog’s hair into a peak on the top of her head like a rock star.  They were laughing as my baby tried to get it out of her fur!

Shortly after that #A and his daughter went out of town to visit one of her uncles and her grandfather. I called a couple of friends and we moved them into his brother’s apartment in Des Moines.  We never lived together again, but maintained a sexual friendship for several years. 

We always had interesting and thought provoking discussions where he sometimes ended by telling me something like, “You need to read pages (fill in the blank) in the Big Book!”

Then I would tell him to read them himself and take his own inventory. Okay, maybe I didn’t always use those exact words. 

#A and I also had lots of fun and discussions that were positive for me. I learned a lot about how he interpreted things in the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) and the Big Big Book (The Bible). 

He came down off of his high horse some when I reminded him, time after time, that he was not given a high IQ so he could look down on others, “How dare you not use your gift to help others less fortunate!”

He was a great dancer, but it got to be too dammed serious to him. We had to look good on the floor.  I finally stopped dancing with him one night when his hand was clamped so hard on my right hand that it was going to sleep and his other hand was digging into my side so hard that it hurt. 

I started focusing on getting good grades. It took lots of time for me to study.  I had not been in school for decades, but I was on a mission now and really wanted those good grades.  Also, I had to really concentrate to read for very long, and memorizing took a lot more effort than I would have liked.

#A started being busy when I had time to be with him. One day I was talking to a man eighteen years younger than me.  I had known him for years because he was the son of a friend.  He had been in and out of prison so we connected on that level. 

I wanted to help him stay sober, straight and out of prison. I started spending the time with him that #A did not want to be with me.  This went on for a few weeks, but all of a sudden #A asked me to marry him. 

He looked shocked when I told him that I would have to think about it. I probably would have married him, but I remembered that I had been really sick with pneumonia a few months before this. 

I had asked to stay with him because I didn’t have health insurance and was really scared. I was having a lot of trouble breathing and wanted someone there in case I needed an ambulance. 

I kept him awake when I sat up often. I couldn’t get my breath lying down.  In the middle of the night he told me, “Get dressed, get the dog and get into the car.”

He drove us to my mobile home, “Get out!”

He drove away.

It was in the winter and really cold that night. It took everything I had and then some to get inside.  I was weak and couldn’t get my breath.  I finally ended up dragging myself to the bathroom and pulling the bath towels and shower curtain back to my recliner.  I sat there for several days urinating in them because I didn’t have the strength to get to the bathroom again. 

I called and had pizzas and other foods delivered from Casey’s store in Waukee. The pharmacist from Adel brought me over-the-counter medicine and bottles of fluids to keep my electrolytes up.  I paid them with checks, and yes I had money in the bank to cover the checks.  I doubt that I would have made it without their help. 

After two weeks I finally had enough strength to go to the doctor. She told me, “You need to be in the hospital!”

“I don’t have insurance.”

She gave me antibiotic samples and I started slowly getting better, but it took a long time to really feel good again.

#A had not called to see how I was. If I could not count on him when I really needed help, how could I marry him? 

Additionally, I did not get along with some of his family and realized that I didn’t want to live that way. I told him that I would not marry him.

Looking back from here, I have always had a hard time getting along with anybody’s family, especially mine. Also, I think I was more attracted to #8 because he needed my help and #A didn’t.  I have always had a tendency to like the feeling of being needed so I didn’t have to take my own inventory and realize just how screwed up I really was. 

I believe that my proclivity to be needed has kept me from becoming romantically involved with men who were capable of having a positive relationship. Most of the time I was trying to save somebody, but I ended up being pulled down with them and needing help myself. 

In most of my marriages I ended up losing everything I had put together so I could walk away physically unscathed, but this time, since I had not married #A, I still had my mobile home, car and all of my possessions.

#A moved out of state to take care of his father. We emailed a couple of times through the years.  Once he was married.  Then he was divorced.  Then I didn’t hear from him until after I published Proclivity in 2007. 

I contacted his brother. I wanted to know if #A would put together a web page for my book.  #A emailed me and asked for a copy of the book, a picture of me for the web page and any other information I thought was important.

#A told me that he had gotten his graduate degree in psychology because somebody had to straighten out sociologists, tee-he, but he did not tell me that he was sick with a breathing issue.  He died before he could teach me how to work the web page.

His daughter, his brother, one of his sponsorees, #B and I had a celebration of #A’s life behind the AA club in Des Moines.  We related lots of wonderful experiences about him to each other. 

His daughter said that he had taught psychology until he could not talk any more. I smiled because I was very proud of him for finally sharing his intellectual gift with those students.  I would not have missed most of the time I spent with him.

It may sound like I am some kind of victim and men just keep treating me horribly, but remember, this is my version of what happened. I am also trying to let you know that I was not a silent participant in any of it.  I was so passive-aggressive that sometimes I scared myself.

I was talking to #B the other day on the phone, “I’ve been writing on my book and realized something. Did you know that I’m hard to live with?” 

He started laughing. “Yes Bonnie” is all he would say.