There we were, the four of us packed into a booth at the local ice cream parlor, two on either side of the worn formica-topped table. Mom, my older sister, my wife, my cousin. Each of us were relishing a cold ice cream on a warm summer night and swapping stories. About traffic violations.
Some stories are compellingly rare, such as winning the lottery or taking an exotic trip to Nepal, or taking an exotic trip to Nepal funded by lottery winnings. Traffic ticket stories are commonplace. Most Americans of driving age have at least one. Still, since these events constitute the extent to which most of us experience the ‘wrong’ side of the law, we remember them.
Other stories are made worthy by the teller - the selection of words, the timing of the delivery, the inflection of the voice, facial expression. Add in an appreciative audience with a shared history and the thread of humor fairly hums with mirthful joy. I heard one such story while sitting in that ice cream parlor in Wyoming. Though it will lose something in the translation from oral to written form, here it is as best as I remember it, with a bit of literary embellishing to fill in what I don't remember.
Once upon a time, in 1978 or 1979, when the United States was in the middle of a gas crisis and Jimmy Carter was President, there lived a young man, barely eighteen. His home was in central Wyoming. He may have looked something like the picture shown here. Like many men of his age, he was trying to make his way in life as best as he could. He had no grand ambitions, except perhaps to earn a little money, have a little fun, avoid hurting anyone, and learn something along the way.
The young man was employed by a meat packing plant, where livestock are turned into marketable chunks of dense animal protein for human consumption. It was physically demanding work, but not the most mentally stimulating. Early one afternoon when the work was a bit slow, the owner of the plant came through looking for volunteers. He needed a couple of workers to drive a load of ‘inedibles’ down to a rendering plant in Denver. Inedibles would be the stuff that, well, is what you have left when all the edible stuff has been packaged. Guts, fat, floor scrapings, bones. Nasty.
The hero of our story did a quick mental comparison.
“Should I stay here cleaning freezer floors and meat hooks or drive to Denver?”
He quickly concluded that the road trip would be a more interesting way to spend the afternoon and raised his arm to signal his willingness to volunteer. A second employee, another young man perhaps two or three years older, also signed up.
After hearing some brief instructions about their destination and obtaining the keys to the vehicle, out to the truck they went. It turned out to be a bit bigger than either of them had expected.
The older of the two got in behind the driver’s seat, while my cousin took shotgun. They sat bewildered for a moment at the sight of not just one, but three levers sticking up from the floor. Finally, the driver said to his companion, “Ya ever driven one of these before?”
“Nope. Have you?”
“Well, no, but it can’t be that different from a regular truck, can it?”
“Probably not.”
After fiddling with the levers for a bit, they discovered that one was indeed the gear shift. The second one seemed to have something to do with shifting as well. Sort of an in between or half-gear shifter that required an extraordinary amount of eye, hand, and foot coordination to operate in tandem with the primary gear shift. The third lever engaged an additional drive axle. After grinding their way through the levers a few times, they settled on keeping the extra axle out of operation and using only the primary shifter. This last decision meant winding the engine up pretty tight to make sure that dropping into the next full gear wouldn’t stall the truck. Shortly, with a little revving and grinding, they were on the road.
Now, you may be wondering what employer in his right mind would send two inexperienced drivers with a commercial truck out on the highway for a round trip in excess of 300 miles. In the wild west of Wyoming and likely most places in the U.S., the cost differential between a licensed commercial driver and a couple of unskilled laborers in a meat-packing plant was and is significant. So, rather than pay to have a driver around that wouldn’t be kept busy most of the time, or hire one temporarily, it was quite a potential savings over the course of a year to use the ‘volunteer’ method. Legal? No. Cheap? Yes.
As the adventurous duo cruised within a few miles of their destination, they began to notice an odd smell. The closer they came, the worse it got until it was overpowering. It had something to do with the rotting contents of the rendering vats where all the ‘leavings’ are chopped, sliced, diced, cooked and separated into various chemical compounds used in an astonishing variety of ways.
Needless to say, our two stalwarts were highly motivated to leave their load and be on their way. After emptying the truck, they switched places and were back on the road north. As they approached the border between Colorado and Wyoming, they came upon the port of entry with a sign saying that all commercial vehicles needed to stop. The younger driver looked at his partner.
“Are we a commercial truck?”
“I dunno. Don’t think so.”
“Well, should we stop?”
“I didn’t stop on the way down.”
“Right.”
So, they kept on going. Not long after passing the port of entry, however, they saw the dreaded flashing lights of a patrol car in the rear view mirrors. After they stopped, the Wyoming state trooper pulled up behind them and walked up to the truck.
“Do you know you were going 63 in a 55 mile-per-hour zone?” he inquired.
(At the time, with gas prices having soared over a dollar per gallon, the government had deemed it necessary to throttle back freeway speeds as a means to conserve petroleum.)
“Well, um, no. I didn’t think it would go that fast.”
The trooper, who had heard his share of creative excuses by speeding drivers, glared incredulously into the cab.
“You didn’t think? What do you mean, you didn’t think it would go that fast?”
“I couldn’t really tell how fast I was goin’. The speedometer’s busted.”
That revelation dramatically changed the tone of the encounter. In spite of the ignorance of the two drivers, they were indeed driving a commercial vehicle. Regulations covering commercial vehicles specify that all components be in proper working order. Having a broken speedometer set off alarms in the troopers mind. On the spot he initiated a complete vehicle inspection. In addition to the broken speedometer, there were six other violations, for a total of eight tickets, when including the speeding citation.
The zealous trooper, in his eagerness to do a thorough vehicle inspection, neglected to ask for the log which drivers of commercial trucks are required to maintain. Since, to our knowledge, Wyoming has no published criminal statute of limitations on traffic violations, we are not saying that the log wasn't filled out, just that the officer failed to verify the log. Whether he confirmed that the driver had a commercial rating on his license is also lost in the murky historical record.
That collection of citations cost the owners of the truck a cool grand in fines, as well as the cost of repairs. However, it is unlikely the experience changed their business practice. In the years since, my cousin has done more commercial driving, but without any more 8-ticket experiences.
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