How many consecutive days, weeks, months can a cross-country trucker sleep in his rig before he gives in and rents a motel room?
It started innocently, up in Buffalo, about 1982. My forty-four foot trailer and my wallet were both empty. Loads were scarce. It looked like it would be at least a week before I would be rolling again, earning revenue, so I was reluctant to draw an advance to rent a room, about $30 a night, when I could sleep in the bunk for free.
So I camped out in the corner of a mall parking lot for the weekend, spent a little money watching "Honeysuckle Rose."
It took almost two weeks to fill my trailer, loading little shipments spread across several northern states. By then some sort of stubborness had set in, and I don't know why, but I wanted to keep the non-motel streak alive.
Maybe there was one reason I shunned old Howard Johnson and Motel 6 with its bath towels thin as Handi Wipes and the extra three bucks for the TV key that you had to insert in the side of the monitor.
You load, unload, all day, drive a couple hundred miles that evening, check in at the front desk nine or ten p.m., check out at six a.m. It's not worth the money, or trouble, to lug the suitcase to second floor, unpack, go through the whole rigamaroll, when you can park it, kick off your shoes, crawl in the bunk grab some ZZZs.
A shower? Brushing teeth? You can do that for free in the truck stop in the morning. What's a little body odor at night? Hard work never smelled bad to me.
So, I made it a few more weeks, taking showers in truck stops, and felt empowered. Keep the streak alive, just because ...
Don't know when I broke down, splurged on a room. Maybe it was when the old GMC broke down. But sleeping in a rig was like camping out to me. You could read in the bunk by the overhead light, get the logbook updated, check the road atlas.
Of course, if you've been drinking coffee while driving late that evening, you had to take a preventive measure or risk waking up at three a.m., kidneys on fire, and face the long walk to the truck stop restroom.
Still, that streak was fun - odorous, perhaps - but invigorating. One man. One truck. Parking in the rest areas, vacant shopping centers, empty lots, eating food purchased at a grocery store rather than a restaurant; it felt like what Woody Guthrie would have done had he been a trucker.
