Me and Muslim Mike in the City of Brotherly Love (part 2)
We got an exciting job hauling million dollar Army tank simulators from upstate New York to Ft. Dix, NJ. A fun time for sure, since this was more or less a convoy affair with military escort. Mike introduced me to one of his former trainees in the group, who consequently was still a trainee; I could see why Mike liked me so much. The trip was quick through some of the prettiest parts of the country I’d seen so far, much to my surprise. The whole scene is mostly a Thomas Kinkade postcard mixed with a little Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post. The closer one came to The City however, the grayer things got; something I wrongly figured the whole of New York State to be.
The group arrives just outside of Ft. Dix the evening before our delivery was due and hangs out in a Petro station for the night. All of us took in the $7.99 buffet and a Van Damme flick playing in the trucker’s lounge. Yes, we feasted on a steady diet of Jean Claude Van Damme, Christopher Lambert, and Dolf Lundgren- only the finest cinema for America’s hardest workingmen. Incidentally, most of the pictures from my whole driving experience were taken at this truck stop with Mike and me and the sims. It was a fun time and a relief from what I’d experienced in California. The situations were a bit more normal now. Hot showers were a bit more frequent. Perhaps things were getting better; this couldn’t be so bad, this was pretty cool. Then I went to bed.
The delivery went without a hitch the next morning. Mike showed me off in front of the others by allowing me to do all the backing maneuvers, which I performed nearly flawlessly. This put us both in a good mood and further squelched the doubts I had concerning the decision to pursue this career. The lingo was naturally flowing from my lips; the balding head, goatee and rotund midsection were part of my uniform. I was talking the talk and walking the walk, and everyone knew it! If this was indeed a brotherhood as the teachers at trucking school had said, then I was ready to learn the secret handshake.
We celebrated with another buffet and got our next assignment. Mike was always looking for the next haul, especially something to get him closer to Houston. Apparently Safeway had some old payroll records in a warehouse in Downtown Philadelphia that they needed in Phoenix. The tonnage wasn’t going to pay well, but suited us just fine. Driving in the west, especially west of the Mississippi River, is a lot different than in the east. There’s more room, less traffic. Besides, I’d never been to Philly and wanted to be in a place where so much national history had taken place. I wanted to tell all my friends that I’d eaten a real gooey Philly cheese steak sandwich, not some micro waved soy product on a bun from Jack-in-the-Box.
Mike let me drive the short distance from Ft. Dix to Philadelphia. He wanted to see how I handled the truck in a congested area. I did well until we got to the outskirts. Philadelphia is an old city, a fact that poses interesting challenges for anyone driving anything larger than a Suburban. All the streets are narrow, the interstates too, clearance for bridges and such are lower and people are far, far more cutthroat about their space in the lanes. Horns! People use their car horns in the northeast as a natural form of communication. And the communication is usually negative. AND most of the communication would be directed at me.
Mike made sure to point these things out while I was driving, not before hand. My earlier confidence was waning. It’s hard to tell if he was enjoying my discomfort or just trying to put me at ease by smiling a lot. Probably both. It’s when we get to Liberty Square that things go wrong. The directions to the warehouse had come in on the sat-link, but were a little unclear about exact street names. We knew 16th St. ran mostly north and south but there were two streets with similar names that intersected 16th St., both north of downtown. Our haul was waiting at 16th and Huntingdon, but we had directions to 16th and Huntington. Even the people Mike stopped and yelled to on the street were confused. I end up driving back into New Jersey twice, paying tolls both ways, before Mike and my own exasperation took over.
He finally pulls the rig down an incredibly narrow street in front of the warehouse at 5:30 PM. Warehouses in this part of town aren’t open past four in the afternoon. There’s a reason for that. We ring the buzzer anyway. Nothing. We’d have to wait until morning to get loaded up. And it was here, on the corner of 16th and Huntingdon in downtown Philadelphia that I spent the strangest night of my life.
(To be continued…)
The group arrives just outside of Ft. Dix the evening before our delivery was due and hangs out in a Petro station for the night. All of us took in the $7.99 buffet and a Van Damme flick playing in the trucker’s lounge. Yes, we feasted on a steady diet of Jean Claude Van Damme, Christopher Lambert, and Dolf Lundgren- only the finest cinema for America’s hardest workingmen. Incidentally, most of the pictures from my whole driving experience were taken at this truck stop with Mike and me and the sims. It was a fun time and a relief from what I’d experienced in California. The situations were a bit more normal now. Hot showers were a bit more frequent. Perhaps things were getting better; this couldn’t be so bad, this was pretty cool. Then I went to bed.
The delivery went without a hitch the next morning. Mike showed me off in front of the others by allowing me to do all the backing maneuvers, which I performed nearly flawlessly. This put us both in a good mood and further squelched the doubts I had concerning the decision to pursue this career. The lingo was naturally flowing from my lips; the balding head, goatee and rotund midsection were part of my uniform. I was talking the talk and walking the walk, and everyone knew it! If this was indeed a brotherhood as the teachers at trucking school had said, then I was ready to learn the secret handshake.
We celebrated with another buffet and got our next assignment. Mike was always looking for the next haul, especially something to get him closer to Houston. Apparently Safeway had some old payroll records in a warehouse in Downtown Philadelphia that they needed in Phoenix. The tonnage wasn’t going to pay well, but suited us just fine. Driving in the west, especially west of the Mississippi River, is a lot different than in the east. There’s more room, less traffic. Besides, I’d never been to Philly and wanted to be in a place where so much national history had taken place. I wanted to tell all my friends that I’d eaten a real gooey Philly cheese steak sandwich, not some micro waved soy product on a bun from Jack-in-the-Box.
Mike let me drive the short distance from Ft. Dix to Philadelphia. He wanted to see how I handled the truck in a congested area. I did well until we got to the outskirts. Philadelphia is an old city, a fact that poses interesting challenges for anyone driving anything larger than a Suburban. All the streets are narrow, the interstates too, clearance for bridges and such are lower and people are far, far more cutthroat about their space in the lanes. Horns! People use their car horns in the northeast as a natural form of communication. And the communication is usually negative. AND most of the communication would be directed at me.
Mike made sure to point these things out while I was driving, not before hand. My earlier confidence was waning. It’s hard to tell if he was enjoying my discomfort or just trying to put me at ease by smiling a lot. Probably both. It’s when we get to Liberty Square that things go wrong. The directions to the warehouse had come in on the sat-link, but were a little unclear about exact street names. We knew 16th St. ran mostly north and south but there were two streets with similar names that intersected 16th St., both north of downtown. Our haul was waiting at 16th and Huntingdon, but we had directions to 16th and Huntington. Even the people Mike stopped and yelled to on the street were confused. I end up driving back into New Jersey twice, paying tolls both ways, before Mike and my own exasperation took over.
He finally pulls the rig down an incredibly narrow street in front of the warehouse at 5:30 PM. Warehouses in this part of town aren’t open past four in the afternoon. There’s a reason for that. We ring the buzzer anyway. Nothing. We’d have to wait until morning to get loaded up. And it was here, on the corner of 16th and Huntingdon in downtown Philadelphia that I spent the strangest night of my life.
(To be continued…)
posted by BigDan67 | 1:58 AM
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