Big Time Truckin': True Trucking Stories
Dispatch 27: Sleep and Dreaming
by Kirk Gonnsen
He fell asleep somewhere between Finch and Dixie. A wheel-monkey from Quebec with too many hours under his belt and not enough pills to keep his eyelids from closing. And the queer thing is. With all the rush hour traffic around him, with his body working and driving the 70,000 pounds of peat moss, he still closed his eyes and went off to dream at 100 kilometers an hour. No matter how much he tried. He couldn't stay awake. It makes me shiver with questions. What's really at the center of the brain? Who's in charge up there? Really? What sort of system of management would agree to shut down the body when it's still operating heavy machinery at maximum highway speed?
Whatever it was. Whatever crude mechanism that flips the coin of fate for us all, did its job poorly. A few seconds later the driver of le camion was out of control. Sure, he woke up. But it was too late. Gravity already had a hold of him. Flipped him over. Blocked the whole damn highway. Peat moss was everywhere. It was a gardener's nightmare. If there is such a thing. Westbound 401 was closed. The message was coming hard and fast over the CB radio. Chaos was taking over. (But wasn't it always?) The side streets were jamming up. The back-up growing like a bad mullet. I had to move quickly. I drove north.
I was lucky. That was all there was to it. The same thing happened to me a few days later. In the fog outside Sarnia. Visibility was shut down to twenty feet. Just enough time to see unfortunate traveler. But luck kept me from plowing into any of the early morning commuters. And a day later. On the QEW, when a flatbed shifted its load of earth-movers. Scattering bright yellow metal machinery across two eastbound lanes, causing a major clusterfuck at the Ford road exit, I diverted to a back road and avoided the delay.
But I had my problems too. I lost air pressure outside Sarnia at one in the morning when a vital piece of equipment dropped off its bracket and ripped the air lines to shreds. I had to sit on the side of the highway for three hours while a strange man with a large moustache slid under the belly of the beast, cutting and fusing lines together at -30°C. I tried to act the concerned customer. The friendly victim of poor maintenance. But it was all too cold forme. I sat in the cab. Rubbing my hands together. Thinking about things only a headcase could dream of in a midmorning time-out. How come those old Walmart greeters don't high-five the customers when they walk in. Slapping hands and screaming out cliché phrases such as, "Waaazup!" "You're the man, now, dog!" and "Do it to it, Sister." And why doesn't Canada have drive-thru convenience stores like the Big United States has... Converted garages with coolers of beer, racks of cigarettes and shitloads of snacks. All within reach of the vehicle. Genius. Really. Although it does make you shiver with questions. What's really at the center of mankind? Who's in charge up there? Really? I'd like to know before I drift off in my sleeper again, only to wake up screaming about a nightmare - rolling over the bodies of a car crash catastrophe - eighteen wheels of blood, and many more miles to go.
