The company I keep

One of the pluses of being a truck driver is that when you finally park for the evening and go inside the diner to eat dinner, you run into all sorts of conversations. We spend so much time alone in the truck, 10 to 14 hours a day or more, that when we finally get around those of our own kind it seems we can't shut up. When it comes to politics you can hear every imaginable variation on why the government is the way it is.
Here are some of the comments that I've heard over the last few days in various truck stops and trucker hang-outs.

• One of the jobs of the President is to control the amount of drugs that come into this country and he gets an extra $12,000, yes, that's twelve thousand, dollars a year to do this task. Why else would he spend 25 million to get a job that only pays $400,000? It's the side benefits.
• The reason gas prices are so high is because the oil companies want to make more money so that they can push through the super highway that's supposed to go between Mexico and Canada and so that they can hire cheaper labor.
• If they wanna be here illegally then at least make sure they pay taxes like the rest of us.
• We're gonna miss Anna Nicole!
• Paris Hilton should have gotten a whole lot more time than that. I bet she won't be such a brat when she gets out.
• That tornado in Kansas reminds me of the time that I got caught in one just outside of Lufkin, TX or Tulsa, OK or comin across I-10 or Nebraska or another time in Kansas.

I actually heard, this evening three different tales of being caught in tornadoes by three different drivers. All of them, obviously, survived their ordeal with the twister.

The best story I heard this evening though, by far, was from an elderly African-American gentleman who sat across the aisle from me and told me of the time he heard God tell him to go see his brother.

Sammy Bailey was my fellow diners name and he was coming through Florida bob-tailing a tractor back to the terminal. (That's running without a trailer on the truck for those who are uninitiated in the trucking world.) He said," I was sitting there parked right off 95 finishing some paperwork when ah heard a small voice say, 'Go see ya brotha.'

"Now mah brotha was just up the road a piece and ah did consider it but ah hadn't seen mah brotha in a few years and ah didn't really wanna go see him today. Mah brotha was a bishop in his church and ah hadn't been all that faithful so ah really didn't wanna listen to his preachin'. At least not in his own livin' room. But I said, 'God, is that you? If this is you, God, then send me a sign.' It was at that very moment that ah remembered that little scripture in the bible that says something about only the wicked look for a sign. Well, ah didn't look for no more sign but ah decided ah was gonna go ahead and get that truck home anyway.

"Ah pulled out on 95 and headed north and as ah got to the end of the ramp ah pulled in behind a moving van that said Bailey's moving company on the back of it and I said, 'God, there's my sign.'

"You see my brotha's last name is Bailey and so is mine for that matter."

I had to chuckle a little at that particular comment. But he went on.

"Well, ah pulled right back over behind that moving van and followed him on down the road and wouldn't you know it, he got off the exit that goes towards mah brotha's house. So ah figured here was another sign that ah was supposed to go see mah brotha.

"Ah pulled up in his yard and went and knocked on the door. His wife Erlene answered the door and she looked at me like she was seeing a ghost. She backed up down the hall and hollered for her husband. 'Bishop! You gotta come see this!'

"He come around the corner there in the hall and he was a'sayin' 'Who is it, sweetie?' An' I'll tell you right now, when he saw me you coulda knocked him over with a piece a paper.

"'What you looking at me like that for?' ah said. He said, 'We thought you was dead.' Turns out he and his wife were just about finished packing so that they could go to Decatur, IL for mah funeral."

At this point, this elderly man laughed loud enough so that everyone in the diner turned and looked and he said, "Ain't that a hoot. Ah nearly missed seein' mah brotha cause I didn't wanna listen to that voice which ah believe was God talkin to me. Maybe He was tryin to tell me that ah was already dead." And there came that laugh again.

He continued to tell us that apparently someone in Decatur, IL had stolen his identity and that person had been killed in a bar fight in Decatur. He said after his brother made sure that he wasn't a spirit, he told him that he wasn't sure which upset him more; the fact that he was dead or that he had died fightin in a bar.

Can you see why I love my job so much. If I was working in a factory I never would have met Mr. Sammy Bailey, who has the same last name as his brother, from St Petersburg, FL.