"Roll On” is the story of Ubi Sunt, a longtime, long-haul trucker. He drives an early model Peterbilt that looks like a Sherman tank, but is named after the war ship, Old Ironsides, because it's indestructible. Ubi represents the innate yearning to travel that for some is a mild case of wanderlust, a mere itch that is scratched with the annual road trip. For Ubi, it’s an incurable affliction.
The wheels to this narrative are set in motion after Ubi buries his wife, his anchor during thirty-five years of trucking. His first trip back on the highway takes him from California to Philadelphia to visit two grandchildren and his only daughter. Remembering missed birthdays, holidays, and high school graduation, the daughter plans to let the air out of the old man’s tires. If you want a relationship with these kids, Daddy, settle down. Drive local. Whatever. But it's my way or the highway.
Headed back east, Ubi notices subtle changes to the American landscape are now more dramatic. Homogenized cities lined with fast-food and hotel chains are linked by jammed toll roads. Gridlock. And this new generation of truckers is in such a hurry with their twin-turbo, 600-horsepower diesels that they never learned the code of the road. Probably wouldn’t change a flat for their own grandmother.
There are more potholes along the way, too. A truckers' strike looms like diesel smoke hanging in the air over a crowded truck stop. Investors have broken up the family-owned company that for three decades Ubi has hauled furniture for. The network of grand warehouses - liquidated and replaced by cheap rental yards with portable offices in industrial parks.
Ubi’s transcontinental trip celebrates the freedom of the open road, puts the reader in the shotgun seat. Trucking across the Painted Desert, the Black Hills of South Dakota, lush Minnesota, and through the breadbasket into the gritty northeast, you will meet his old friends and some new characters. In the literary tradition of escape and return, and journey to enlightenment, Ubi faces tough choices. The highway is home but the road is changing.
This book would appeal to anyone who enjoys travel, transportation, geography, or is interested in family dynamics. The reader will see America from the point of view of an old school, independent trucker via the windshield of a big rig.
The author, Fred Afflerbach, is veteran of a twenty-plus-year career owning and driving diesel rigs, traversing forty-eight states and several Canadian provinces. In his mid-forties, he enrolled in night classes at Austin Community College, sometimes parking his rig several blocks away and hoofing it to class. At age fifty, he earned journalism and English degrees at Texas State University. Writing for Central Texas newspapers, he was won several Texas Associated Press awards.
The wheels to this narrative are set in motion after Ubi buries his wife, his anchor during thirty-five years of trucking. His first trip back on the highway takes him from California to Philadelphia to visit two grandchildren and his only daughter. Remembering missed birthdays, holidays, and high school graduation, the daughter plans to let the air out of the old man’s tires. If you want a relationship with these kids, Daddy, settle down. Drive local. Whatever. But it's my way or the highway.
Headed back east, Ubi notices subtle changes to the American landscape are now more dramatic. Homogenized cities lined with fast-food and hotel chains are linked by jammed toll roads. Gridlock. And this new generation of truckers is in such a hurry with their twin-turbo, 600-horsepower diesels that they never learned the code of the road. Probably wouldn’t change a flat for their own grandmother.
There are more potholes along the way, too. A truckers' strike looms like diesel smoke hanging in the air over a crowded truck stop. Investors have broken up the family-owned company that for three decades Ubi has hauled furniture for. The network of grand warehouses - liquidated and replaced by cheap rental yards with portable offices in industrial parks.
Ubi’s transcontinental trip celebrates the freedom of the open road, puts the reader in the shotgun seat. Trucking across the Painted Desert, the Black Hills of South Dakota, lush Minnesota, and through the breadbasket into the gritty northeast, you will meet his old friends and some new characters. In the literary tradition of escape and return, and journey to enlightenment, Ubi faces tough choices. The highway is home but the road is changing.
This book would appeal to anyone who enjoys travel, transportation, geography, or is interested in family dynamics. The reader will see America from the point of view of an old school, independent trucker via the windshield of a big rig.
The author, Fred Afflerbach, is veteran of a twenty-plus-year career owning and driving diesel rigs, traversing forty-eight states and several Canadian provinces. In his mid-forties, he enrolled in night classes at Austin Community College, sometimes parking his rig several blocks away and hoofing it to class. At age fifty, he earned journalism and English degrees at Texas State University. Writing for Central Texas newspapers, he was won several Texas Associated Press awards.
