Breakdown

I hate being late. I absolutely despise it. I have been running the same runs now for a little over six years and I know when I'm supposed to be somewhere. I don't have any set appointment times but if I'm not at a certain spot by a certain time then I may not get it all done that day.

This looked like it was going to be that kind of day.



I had two stops in Columbus, three in Cincinnati, one in Lawrenceburg, IN, one in Indianapolis and one in Lafayette, IN that I was due to get off the truck on Monday. This was three weeks ago.



I made my first stop in Columbus and as I pulled into the parking lot I could hear air leaking around the service valve on my dash. (Also known as the parking brake knobs.) Not a good sign when you hear air.



I pulled the knobs out and the air quit, which means one thing. The air is leaking from the brake system somewhere. The next step is to find it. The first place I looked was the brake chambers. Now for those of you not familiar with the mechanical workings of a tractor trailer, each axle of a truck and trailer has two brake chambers on them. They are air operated and the system operates between 90 and 120 psi. If it falls below 60 psi then the emergency spring brakes lock up and the truck is not going nowhere. I really didn't want that to happen. You're pretty much dead in the water, so to speak, if you get below 60.

I made a few phone calls and found a shop that would take care of my problem and I figured I could limp her over there since it was only about 20 minutes away. All seemed to be going good at this point. I found the shop, checked in, promised my next child or motorcycle, whichever came first, and went to the drivers lounge to watch some TV and wait for my truck to be fixed. (The new shiny part in the picture is a brake chamber.)

The repair normally should only take about an hour to fix and so after two hours of not hearing anything from them I went back out to the desk to check on the progress. At this point, they had not even started on my truck, even though they had an available mechanic and an open bay. I asked what the problem was.

"We have to give the customer a quote first before we can start the work and we don't know if you need the whole chamber or a piggyback."(A piggyback is basically half of a brake chamber.)

"What's the difference in price?" I asked.

"A full chamber is $57 and a piggyback is $39."

"Put the full one on," I said. I figured for $18 bucks difference it was worth knowing that the whole thing was good for another few hundred thousand miles. Besides, I needed to get going and a full chamber is easier to install than a piggyback.

Back to the lounge I went to watch a snowy version of The View, (not my favorite show, always figured they should have been in front of a fence instead of a coffee table) on the one channel that would come in, and began to wait again. At times I would wander outside and check the progress of my truck and was not very pleased with what I saw.

At three hours I was once again sitting out front, smoking a cigarette, and stewing about being late. Another trucker who needed repairs done had tied his dog up to a post by the front door and I sat there fuming while this black and white mutt, who looked like he had a lot of Pit bull in him, chewed on his bone.

The day was beautiful and I should have been enjoying it cruising down the highway, but I was stuck here on a bench while some mechanic took his sweet time with my ride. I was getting hotter by the minute.

"You really need to learn to relax."

I looked around to see who had given me these great pearls of wisdom and was a bit confused to see that I was still alone. No one else was within 50 feet of me, except for that mixed mongrel, and the voice had definitely come from withing just a few feet. Or so it seemed. I began to think I was hearing things in my stressed out condition.

"Who was that?" I said glancing around.

"Just me," I heard and still saw no one but the dog.

I took a long look at the dog wondering if he had heard it too since he was staring right at me.

"Did you hear that too, boy?" I asked the mutt.

"Of course I heard it," the dog answered. "I'm the one who said it, and please don't call me "boy". I'm 37 and I find it demeaning." It was at this point that I knew I had been waiting way too long. I was mad and hot and fuming and I was hearing things. I picked up my cell phone and thought about calling my boss to tell him to send a replacement driver since I was obviously cracking up.

"Who you calling?" I heard and glanced up quickly to see the lips of the dog form the last word of the question.

I just stared at him wondering if I was really losing my mind or if a miracle was happening or if...I don't know what.

I was staring straight at the dog when he said, "Didn't your mother teach you not to stare? And it's also pretty rude not to answer a question that's been posed to you. At least my mother taught me that much."

" I was calling my boss," I said. "Obviously I'm too sick to drive if I'm hearing dogs talk."

"You've never heard dogs talk?" he asked.

"No. Can't say that I have," I said and I could not believe that I was carrying on a conversation with a dog.

"Hm," was all he said as if he found this quite curious.

"Do you often hear dogs talk?" I asked immediately realizing how stupid the question was.

"No," he said and I could hear the sarcasm in his voice. "Usually it's just rocks that I hear talking."

I stared at him wondering if just maybe he had sent a little barb my way. Yes, he had. I had just been insulted by a mixed-blood mongrel of a mutt outside a truck garage in Columbus, Ohio.

Might as well roll with it, I figured. "So why do you say I should learn to relax?" I asked obviously expecting some great pearls of wisdom to come forth. Why else would I be hearing a dog speak to me if not to gain some message meant only for me.

"You just do," he said. "I can see you're all worked up by the way you're smokin' and cussin'. Even a cat could see that you're pretty pissed about having to wait for your truck. Just relax. You can't make 'em work faster but you can make 'em work slower if you piss 'em off."

"So how do I relax when I'm pushing 4 hours behind right now?"

"I don't know. Just relax. I'm not God you know. I don't have all the answers."

Here I was talking to a dog! I could not believe it! Why else would I be talking to a dog if not to gain some message from the event, some great new thought for my mixed up life, some ecclesiastical teaching that could lead me to greater heights of wisdom than any man has ever reached. And he was just saying "Relax".

"That's it? No great insights? Just that I should relax?" I said.

"Yeah, that's it," he said.

"I figured if I'm talking to a dog you would have some great message for me."

"Why's that?" he said. "I already told you I'm not God."

"Yes, but you're a dog! Dogs don't normally talk so there must be a reason for this conversation to be taking place other than for me to just calm down a little."

"Don't know where you've been living, buddy," he said. "But I hear dogs talk all the time."

"Yes, but you ARE a dog!" I shouted.

" I think we've already established that," he said. "And I'm not sure I really like the way you keep saying that."

I had just offended the sensibilities of a black and white pit-bull mixed dog. What was my world coming to?

"I'm sorry I said. I didn't mean to offend you," I said.

"Apology accepted."

"So there's no other message other than that I should calm down."

"Nope"

"No great pearls of wisdom?"

"Uh-uh."

"No insight into the inner workings of the cosmos?"

"I'm a dog for crying out loud," he said. "You can't seem to get that through you're head!" At this point he cocked his head a little and said,"You want some insight? some wisdom?"

"Yes," I said. "Maybe that would make this whole encounter mean something profound to me."

"OK," he said, as he stood and stretched his legs out in front of him. "Here's your great pearl."

I leaned forward expecting something that might come from the mouth of Gandhi or Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr.

"At least you don't have to worry about being neutered against your will," and with that he walked around to the other side of the bench and lay down with a sigh.

I sat there staring at his tail twitching in the dirt and realized that he was right.

Maybe I would just go back inside and watch some more of The View while they finished my truck.