I got a welcome laugh on a rainy day as I passed Toad Suck Park at exit 129B on I-40 in Arkansas. The legend behind Toad Suck is that it was a popular place for bargemen, traveling the Arkansas River, to pull over and drink rum and moonshine. They are said to have “sucked on bottles until they swelled up like toads.”
Passing Toad Suck inspired a reminiscence of some of the more uniquely named places I have encountered in my travels. Among the more memorable are Intercourse, Alabama; Flush, Kansas; Hell for Certain, Kentucky; Square Butt, Missouri; Big Butt, North Carolina; Cumming, Georgia and Climax, Georgia; Hog Jaw, Arkansas; Two Egg, Florida; Stinking Creek, Tennessee and Big Ugly Creek, West Virginia. The Frog City truck stop in Rayne, Louisiana offers an entrée of frog legs or a frog burger. If a bag of dirty laundry hampers your resolve, you can wash it at Suds Ur’ Duds in Corinth, Mississippi.
The rainy day in Arkansas dampened my mood when I noticed the windshield still leaking. The shop said they’d replaced the seal, yet the leak remained. I “rolled & dripped” my way to Sallisaw, Oklahoma where we spent the night at a Mom & Pop truck stop.
Sallisaw derived its name from the French word “salaiseau”, meaning salt provisions. Salt deposits along the stream in this area furnished salt used by buffalo hunters and early settlers to preserve meat. Evidence of old salt kettles can still be found in Sequoyah County.
Monday’s delivery to Tulsa went fine, but then I sat at the Flying J all day before getting a load offering to Romeoville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. After loading at the Kimberly-Clark plant in Jenks, Oklahoma, I was out of legal hours to work. Management refused to allow me to park there overnight, so I had to look elsewhere. I remembered seeing an old, abandoned Wal-Mart building on the way in, so I went back there to park. A rapping on my window rousted me from sleep at 11pm, and a police officer informed me that I could not park there. The officer, an older man, apparently recognized my fatigue and told me I could stay if I would pull to the back of the building. I appreciated his mercy, but it was difficult to go back to sleep after being awakened.
Tuesday was a long day of driving that ended at the Pilot truck stop in Bloomington, Illinois. The Pilot was packed to the gills, but I luckily secured a spot and got a glorious shower. Bloomington is adjacent to Normal, Illinois and is the proud home of the snack food, Beer Nuts. The Beer Nuts company is still family owned, and Bloomington remains the only production site.
On Wednesday morning, a thick blanket of fog helped to make locating the customer in Romeoville a unique adventure. If not for calling to confirm the directions, I might never have found them.
After delivery, we picked up another load in Bolingbrook, just four miles away, that delivers to Topeka, Kansas. We ran all day and made it to the Kansas City terminal for the night. I had to perform some minor faith healing on my logbook, but I kept it looking legal. Necessity dictates that rules sometimes be bent, although I have yet to bend them beyond a point of feasible repair. I hate telling “little white lies”, so I avoid putting myself in a position where I have to whenever possible. Nevertheless, the rigid inflexibility of DOT regulations makes it impossible for a driver to never be forced into logbook creativity. While I do not endorse lying on a logbook, inflexible rules for an unpredictable job set the stage for unavoidable moral conundrums.
Thursday was a crazy day. It started out okay-the delivery to Target in Topeka went fine. Afterwards, I had an array of rundown empty trailers from which to choose. All of them, except one, had at least one bald tire. The one with no bald tires was missing a mud flap. A missing mud flap is not as bad as a bald tire, but it still invites a ticket at a weigh station. Choosing the lesser of the evils, I decided to take my chances on “One Flap”. We went to Hill’s Pet in Topeka for the next load, the same place we had gone during my first solo week.
The Shipping Department at Hill’s Pet told me this would be a live load, but offered to load it on a newer trailer if I preferred.
“Heck yeah!” I exclaimed.
This would rid me of “One Flap”.
As I waited to be loaded, I got out to do a visual inspection of my tractor. I noticed that one of the steer tires was growing bald in a couple of places. It looked bad enough that I called the company Breakdown Department, and they told me to go to Cross Midwest Tire in Topeka to have it replaced. They added that I should tell Cross Midwest to use the spare tire on back of the cab.
When I arrived at Cross Midwest, the technician pointed out that my spare tire was a recap, and it is against DOT regulations to have a recap as a steer tire. I called Breakdown again and they reluctantly agreed to buy me a new one. I was confused at the reluctance because I sure as heck wasn’t going anywhere without one.
After getting my new tire, I returned to Hill’s Pet to find that my trailer still was not loaded. I went in to talk to Shipping, and they told me it was loaded on the original trailer I’d brought in.
Fabulous! Now I’m stuck with “One Flap” again.
Pet food is always a heavy load, and it is imperative to get it weighed as soon as possible to ensure a legal weight. The only nearby place to weigh was at the city scales, just down the road from Hill’s. After waiting there for what seemed like an eternity, the “Weigh master”, who was adorned in a pair of Boy Scout shorts, arrived on a bicycle. It brought surreal closure to a crazy day.
We went to a truck stop in Maple Hill, Kansas where I purchased a new mud flap and replaced it myself. The temperature was dropping rapidly and, by the time I got the flap on, I could no longer feel my hands.
Friday was a ball breaker! Once again, I had to bend the rules to make my appointment in Aurora, Colorado. We then zipped to Ft. Lupton, Colorado to pick up a load going to Hoosick Falls, New York. I was happy to get a good run, but this one will test my ability to conserve my remaining logbook hours. I will be as dry as the Sahara on hours by the time I get to Hoosick Falls. However, my hours were tight because of a very good week-around 3200 miles.
We drove 670 miles on Saturday and ended up in Brooklyn, Iowa. Brooklyn is a small rural town known as the “Community of Flags”. Brooklyn’s permanent display of flags features a huge American flag on an 80-foot pole. The flags from all fifty states, all branches of the Armed Services, and various special interest and international flags surround the gigantic flag. Brooklyn’s downtown streets are lined with flags of various countries.
After doing the math for my trip to Hoosick Falls, I saw that I’d be cutting it even closer than I thought. Spending the night in the Community of Flags might turn out to be a source of irony. The Hoosick Falls run just might leave my butt “flapping in the breeze”.