Tim Barton
Equipment Editor
[email protected]
Kentucky Wonder hates beets.
His CB handle says at least two things about him, he says before the beets I’ve ordered come. One, he is from Kentucky, and two, he was a whole lot skinnier years ago when somebody thought he looked like a string bean. Kentucky Wonder is a strain of string bean, he tells me. But he’s not skinny anymore.
He tells me he used to imitate Elvis back home on the porch, and he starts to sing a decent version of “Hound Dog,” his wife beside him looking like she could just cry it is so beautiful. Then my food arrives, and he gets up and walks away just like he said he would when the beets came.
Kentucky Wonder’s wife is always with him. They are good Christian people and good drivers, and like me, they’re signing on and getting oriented. Been in the business for years, she says, her hair tall as his but teased and thin, making her look a foot taller. Behind her thick glasses she’s thinking about how this job will let her send some money to their oldest back at the house taking care of the two young ones. It is a long winter only half gone by.
She goes by Jet Stream on the radio. It may be someone thought of her like a river of wind, a stream of words big enough and strong enough to change the weather. They had their own truck once, she says. She got pregnant and had a miscarriage in the bunk running for a load. She stayed home while Wonder went out on his own and sent every penny home except what they needed to keep the truck. She came back, though. She couldn’t stay home and not be a driver. And here they are today, company drivers looking for high miles and good pay.
We were all promised that. A few days in Baltimore to learn the ropes and pick up our trucks, and then everything was going to be OK.
I’ve eaten my beets, so Curtis and Lulu (without their handles because we’re friends now) come back. Curtis smiles and tells me why he doesn’t like beets. It seems his grandma raised him, and there was a time all they had to eat was beets and some potatoes. He just got plain sick of them.
I never saw Curtis and Lulu again. Somebody told me a few weeks later they quit and went home. Seems they took a load west and sat like me for a week or so and just couldn’t wait anymore.
