Rubber Duck’s Memoirs

Back then they knew me as the Rubber Duck. I’m talking way back, the 70’s, the height of the OPEC embargo and a hard time for truckers everywhere. Those sartorially inept sheet wearing a-rabs had pushed the price of go -juice to an all time high of 75 cents and naturally the full cost was offloaded to the independent truckers. Back then the only way to make a buck was to keep your wheels rollin 24 hours a day, coast to coast and everywhere in between. Naturally this made loading and unloading kinda difficult so we had to devise some systems and tricks which I won’t go into right now.

I lay all this out for you to give you some idea of the climate of that time, in some ways, the golden era of trucking and in other ways a seething nightmare from which we couldn’t escape, except by way of a Rocky Mountain guard rail, if you know what I mean.

I remember it was the night of the 5-6th of June and, as I recall, a new moon. It was as dark as the inside of a 200 gallon diesel tank with the cap on. I was drivin a big Kenworth back then, it had the stock 955 with fully blown over blowers and 57 speed transmission, and that’s just reverse.

I had picked up a load of logs back in California about two days ago and had driven non-stop utilizing a special cocktail of cold medications and Columbian coffee. The secret was taught to me by one the all time greatest truckers, Snow Job. I was about 100 miles from Shakey town, what we used to call Stockton Illinois. Come to think of it maybe I was haulin something else. Seems kinda crazy me haulin raw logs from California to the East coast. Whatever it was, my point is that I was wired like a Sony PlayStation.

I was barrelin along at about 85, pissin into an empty bottle of motor oil, when I heard my good buddy, Big Ben, coming in on the CB. “Breaker, breaker, good buddy. Come in Rubber Duck this is Big Ben, over.”. With my free hand I grabbed the CB mic, “Breaker back at cha, honky tonky, buddy, this here’s the Rubber Duck comin back at cha, over.”. By this time I had finished my business with the bottle of motor oil and I had just enough time to whip the bottle out the window and get that hand back on the wheel before wiping out an on-coming Pinto. “6-12, Good buddy, I got a 12-8 on a wildlife sighting ’bout a mile out of Shaky Town. Come back now, over.”

“12-8 on a wildlife sighting”, shit, it can’t get much worse than that. Ben was tellin me that he had heard of a police road block a mile outside of Stockton. That’s all I needed. Despite having exceeded the speed limit non-stop for the last 2 days, I still only had, maybe and hour and half, before I would start losing bonus. There was no way I could stop.

Times are different now, you might be wondering why smoky the bear would set up arbitrary road blocks, just to screw an honest trucker out of his bonus. You might well ask. The answer is somewhat complicated. Suffice to say that the bear is at one end of a massive geo-political power struggle and the trucker is at the other.

“Breafy, Breafy, mood, buffy”, I said, spitting pieces of the muffin I was eating onto the dashboard. “mun, fek, mover.” . I hastily washed down the remainder of my 3 day old muffin with some more special coffee. “Good buddy, I think we better make us a CONVOY”. “Connnnn-voyyyy”, came his reply, as if providing backing vocals for a cheesy country song.

Well, the convoy assembled pretty quick. We had a bit of trouble when the Hemi pullin a load of pigs assumed the lead position but we soon sorted that shit out. With the Hemi pullin up the rear we were good to go with a few miles to spare. From the lead position, I got on the CB to rally the drivers. “Breaker now, breaker, breaker, this here’s the Rubber Duck. I know some of your have had it hard. I know some of you have had tough. And sure as shit I know you want your bonuses. Well right here is how you start payin for it, in twisted steel and road side carnage…. good buddies.” and then, with the lights of the roadblock the only feature in that inky godless night, “Big Ben, this is the Rubber Duck, I’m dropping the hammer!”. Which is trucker speak for “increasing speed”.

I got to upwards of a hundred miles an hour before impacting the first gate of the road block, the smokies leapt out of the way at the last second, to make it look good I suppose. I can still see the look of feigned terror in their eyes, illuminated by the vast array of head lamps on my truck.

I delivered my load, got my bonus, and was promptly arrested by the bear. The usual charges applied, reckless endangerment, organizing a convoy without a license, and inappropriate use of radio communication. That’s what the bear calls it, we call it doin what you gotta do to keep the rubber on the road.

11 March 2007 | General B.S. | Comments