|
|
|
Dave L's School Journal Male, 54 years young
Introduction
I financed my way through college with the GI bill. My Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in painting led me to jobs in the screen printing industry. (The similarity being color on flat surfaces, there is no fine ART happening in the production end of the business) Concurrently with this my wife and I performed music. (she sang, I played) We started as a duet, did trios finally ended up as a five piece country/old rock n roll/variety band. This provided enough money to raise our daughter and kept life very interesting. Now we're aging-up and watching the local music scene continue its long slide downward. First it was DJs, then Karoke now "pay to play". The increased penalties in the drunk driving laws have all but eliminated the little bar jobs and it's hard to keep a bands road chops up for the occasional better paying gigs. But more than anything my wife refuses to breathe second-hand cigarette smoke while singing for drunks. (What's the problem w/that? I always loved it!) So last year we did our usual State Fair job and will send the contract for the 2003 job that just came in the mail yesterday back unsigned and call it quits after twenty years.
Feb.18, 2003 THE TEST
I quit my job today. Two days earlier, on Sunday morning at 5:30, in a cloudless sky the icy silver-blue moon is setting behind the red barns and royal blue Havestores, the rolling hills and lattice-work of leafless hardwoods on the Wisconsin landscape. The temperature is -4. As the road points my little red Metro west I have the cold moon centered in the windshield and the rising red-orange sun inches away in the rear-view mirror. My car is fourth in line with a guy behind me. Leading our little convoy the blue-green Freightliner blows hot black smoke into the frozen air. I can see every gear shift as a puff of exhaust. Too close behind the truck is a white Towncar, then a brown Explorer then my metro then last an old green Catalina. We are the only traffic.
When we get to the test site; a gravel lot next to railroad tracks, that's the same order we test in. Q106 plays country classic on Sunday morning. I harmonize with the chorus hook on "Sea Of Heartbreak" and wonder if I'll be washed away by one if I fail. Pre-trip goes faster with the temp. below zero. Now I'm driving the truck with the examiner riding shotgun. At a stop in town, as the light turns green I ease the clutch out to idle away and the rig lurches BACKWARD! I got into reverse instead of second!! I get that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My face is burning. I stare straight ahead. I check traffic with the mirrors. I know I failed. We continue on. Coming back through town I do it again! Reverse instead of second from a stop light! I cuss under my breath. I forget to take my free pull-up on the straight back. Then I nail the alley back perfectly. This is all backwards. In practice I usually got the straight-back and messed up the angle-back. The examiner hit me for rollback on the stop light incidents. I pass the test. On the 50 mile drive home I feel terrible. I put on an awful performance. I let a crappy truck get the best of me. So here I go next week Tuesday, unemployed, with my cereal-box, diploma-mill CDL to a three day orientation with Swift. If I pass the audition they'll hire me.
Feb. 25,26,27, 2003 PASSING THE AUDITION
Starting class of seven. First guy quits when he finds out too late what the jobs is all about. He was fine on the road test but decided it wasn't for him after day one. Second guy to leave lied on his application, "I didn't think they'd hire me if they found out about my drunk and disorderly conviction." Two Union guys from the ashes of CF decide after six months of unemployment compensation to team. This is not the place for guys with 32 years of union shop experience to be. First the one guy bails and the other goes too. Now we are three. Two green-as-grass wet-behind-the-ears trainees and one guy with 10 years who wants to ba a trainer. I am hired on Feb 27. Now waiting on a trainer, maybe Friday.........
on the road w/ trainer I was lucky to get Gary B. out of Inver Grove Heights as there were no trainers available from the Menasha terminal. If you get Gary as a trainer you'll be lucky too. He is kind, friendly, brave, clean and tolerant, all the boy scout virtues and generous to a fault with his knowledge of the business.
There are many things that cannot be taught or learned at ANY driver's school. One of them is judgment. Here is a hypothetical situation to illustrate this. Let's say, hypothetically, that we are going south on I-35 just outside of Albert Lea MN in the wee hours of March 18. It is time to pull over and you make a spur of the moment decision to stop at the mm 38 rest area. All the angle slots are full. There's even a truck parked in the pull around lane so that to get back out onto the highway you will have to swing wide to get around him. To do this you will have to drive off the pavement onto the gravel shoulder of the rest area lot. Even though last week it would have still been frozen and next week it would have been dried out I will NEVER EVER LET MY WHEELS LEAVE THE PAVEMENT AGAIN! EVER! The frost was coming out of the ground and the shoulder was QUICKSAND, bottomless muck. The drive wheels spun and sunk, all the other wheels were ploughing a berm of muck. The trailer was listing 15 degrees to starboard. Ya that other guy was in the way but I made the decision to leave the pavement. He saw what happened and tried to pull us out but all we had was tire chains to pull with and they were not strong enough Bottom line...$372.75 for onroad to pull us out. What I should have done was stop (STOP!) and ask him to move. Good judgment cannot be taught - it must be learned through experience, usually bad experiences. I was lucky that no one, nor no thing, was damaged.
|
|
