On the Road: a City of the Mind

By Sue Hubbell

The author is a sometime trucker who, for the past seven years, has been using a three-quarter-ton pickup to deliver honey from her bee farm to retailers around the country. She sleeps in truck stops because they are safe and coffee is always available.

In the early morning there is a city of the mind that stretches from coast to coast, from border to border. Its cross streets are the interstate highways, and food, comfort, companionship are served up in its buildings, the truck stops near the exits. Its citizens are all-night drivers, the truckers and the waitresses at the stops. In daylight the city fades and blurs when the transients appear, tourists who merely want a meal and a tank of gas. They file into the carpeted dining rooms away from the professional drivers' side, sit at the Formica tables set off by imitation cloth flowers in bud vases. They eat and are gone, do not return. They are not a part of the city and obscure it.

It is 5 a.m. in a truck stop in West Virginia. Drivers in twos, threes and fours are eating breakfast and talking routes and schedules.

"Truckers!" growls a manager. "They say they are in a hurry. They complain if the service isn't fast. We fix it so they can have their fuel pumped while they are eating and put in telephones on every table so they can check with their dispatch- ers. They could be out of here in half an hour. But what do they do? They sit and talk for two hours."

The truckers are lining up for seconds at the breakfast buffet (all you can eat for $3.99 -- biscuits with chipped-beef gravy, fruit cup, French toast with syrup, bacon, pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, doughnuts, Danish, cereal in little boxes).

The travel store at the truck stop has a machine to measure heartbeat in exchange for a quarter. There are racks of jackets, belts, truck supplies, tape cassettes. On the wall are paintings for sale, simulated wood with likenesses of John Wayne or a stag. The rack by the cash register is stuffed with Twinkies and chocolate Suzy Qs.

It is 5 a.m. in New Mexico. Above the horseshoe-shaped counter on panels where a menu is usually displayed, an overhead slide show is in progress. The pictures change slowly, allowing the viewer to take in all the details. A low shot of a Peterbilt, its chrome fittings sparkling in the sunshine, is followed by one of a bosomy young woman, the same who must pose for those calendars found in auto-parts stores. She almost has on clothes, and she is offering to check a trucker's oil. The next slide is a side view of a whole tractor-trailer rig, its 18 wheels gleaming and spoked. It is followed by one of a blond bulging out of a hint of cop clothes writing a naughty trucker a ticket.

The waitress looks too tired and too jaded to be offended. The jaws of the truckers move mechanically as they fork up their eggs-over-easy. They stare at the slides, glassy eyed, as intent on chrome as on flesh.

It is 4 a.m. in Oklahoma. A recycled Stuckey's with blue tile roof calls itself simply Truck Stop. The sign also boasts showers, scales, truck wash and a special on service for $88.50. At a table inside, four truckers have ordered a short stack and three eggs apiece, along with bacon, sausage and coffee (Trucker's Superbreakfast -- $3.79).

They have just started drinking their coffee, and the driver with the Roadway cap calls over the waitress, telling her there is salt in the sugar he put in his coffee. She is pale, thin, young, has dark circles under her eyes. The truckers have been teasing her, and she doesn't trust them. She dabs a bit of sugar from the canister on a finger and tastes it. Salt. She samples sugar from the other canisters. They have salt too, and she gathers them up to replace them. Someone is hazing her, breaking her into her new job. Her eyes shine with tears.

She brings the food and comes back when the truckers are nearly done. She carries a water jug and coffeepot on her tray. The men are ragging her again, and her hands tremble. The tray falls with a crash. The jug breaks. Glass, water and coffee spread across the floor. She sits down in the booth, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm so tired. My old man . . . he left me," she says, the tears coming faster now. "The judge says he's going to take my kid away if I can't take care of him, so I stay up all day and just sleep when he takes a nap and the boss yells at me and . . . and . . . the truckers all talk dirty . . . I'm so tired."

She puts her head down on her arms and sobs luxuriantly. The truckers are gone, and I touch her arm and tell her to look at what they have left. There is a $20 bill beside each plate. She looks up, nods, wipes her eyes on her apron, pockets the tips and goes to get a broom and a mop.

It is 3:30 a.m. in Illinois at a glossy truck stop that offers all mechanical services, motel rooms, showers, Laundromat, game room, TV lounge, truckers' bulletin board and a stack of newspapers published by the Association of Christian Truckers. Piped-in music fills the air.

The waitress in the professional drivers' section is a big motherly-looking woman with red hair piled in careful curls on top of her head. She correctly sizes up the proper meal for the new customer at the counter. "Don't know what you want, honey? Try the chicken-noodle soup with a hot roll. It will stick to you like you've got something, and you don't have to worry about grease."

She has been waitressing 40 years, 20 of them in this truck stop. As she talks she polishes the stainless steel, fills mustard jars, adds the menu inserts for today's special (hot turkey sandwich, mashed potatoes and gravy, pot of coffee -- $2.50).

"The big boss, well, he's a love, but some of the others aren't so hot. But it's a job. Gotta work somewhere. I need a day off though. Been working six, seven days straight lately. Got shopping to do. My lawn needs mowing."

Two truckers are sitting at a booth. Their faces are lined and leathery. One cap says Harley-Davidson, the other Coors.

Harley-Davidson calls out, "If you wasn't so mean, Flossie, you'd have a good man to take care of you and you wouldn't have to mow the damn lawn."

She puts down the mustard jar, walks over to Harley-Davidson and Coors, stands in front of them, hands on wide hips. "Now you listen here, Charlie, I'm good enough woman for any man but all you guys want are chippies."

Coors turns bright red. She glares at him. "You saw my ex in here last Saturday night with a chippie on his arm. He comes in here all the time with two, three chippies just to prove to me what a high old time he's having. If that's a good time, I'd rather baby-sit my grandkids."

Chippies are not a topic of conversation that Charlie and Coors wish to pursue. Coors breaks a doughnut in two, and Charlie uses his fork to make a spillway for the gravy on the double order of mashed potatoes that accompanies his scrambled eggs.

Flossie comes back and turns to the new customer in mirror shades at this dark hour, a young trucker with cowboy boots and hat. "John-boy. Where you been? Haven't seen you in weeks. Looks like you need a nice omelet. Cook just made some of those biscuits you like too."

I leave a tip for Flossie and pay my bill. In the men's room, where I am shunted because the ladies' is closed for cleaning, someone has scrawled poignant words: NO TIME TO EAT NOW.