The Kingdom City Driver

I originally posted this because it happened and I found it to be an amusing thing when I saw it so many years ago.

I have suddenly realized that I have been writing parallel thoughts about donnie and his little Strait of Hormuz Problem: donnie is to world politics and foreign policy what the "Professional Driver" in this story was to "Professional Driving": they both end up in the ditch.

******************************************** 

If you want to get to Kingdom City Missouri from Jefferson City Missouri, you probably will take US-63 to I-70.

Unless you are Bonnie and Clyde wanna bes.

I wasn’t so I took US-63 the first time I needed to go to St Louis.

I went north to 70 and turned right and just kept going.

But not before I had noticed something there at Kingdom City.

It was called Gasper’s.

It was a Truck Stop.

And it looked to be the sort of Truck Stop that I would want to have breakfast at if I weren’t late for an appointment in St Louis in the midafternoon.

Midafternoon was martini time.

When I was an IBM salesman in Portland I had assigned accounts in Portland, but most of my territory was - territory.

I had geography the size of the Holy Roman Empire.

There was almost no business in that territory, but it was my territory and I loved it; and I spent a lot of time in it; over time, oddly, that generated a lot of business for me - and for IBM.

The most plausible part of that geography was Astoria.

When I was covering Astoria, I always headed back to Portland via US-30 at a time that would get me to Hump’s Bar and Grill in Clatskanie at 1600.

That was when they fired up the popcorn machine and turned the bar TV to old - original in those days - Star Trek episodes.

Popcorn, a martini and Star Trek were the perfect ways to spend an hour on the road.

I have never had a martini before 1600 - a religious thing - and I wasn’t sure as I passed Gasper’s on the left as I turned right on I-70 that they even had a bar, but the thought of really good Truck Stop hash browns lodged in my mind.

Not long later, I had occasion to go, one early morning up to I-70, but needing to turn left at Gasper’s.

I had left JC at the crack of dawn.

I had gotten to Gasper’s as the sun was coming up.

Trucks were everywhere: in the parking lot, over by the showers, getting diesel etc.

I found a place to park a civilian vehicle and went in.

There was a sign: “Professional Drivers Section”.

It was to my left.

On my right was a vast expanse of booths obviously intended for just drivers like me who were going somewhere and wanted breakfast.

It was Clatskanie perfect.

I was sure that the hashbrowns were going to be as good as the popcorn.

I took a booth and was quickly served by a chirpy waitress, a la Mel’s diner.

I was savoring my breakfast when it happened.

I saw an obvious driver (“Professional”) pay and skip happily out to his rig.

I ate my last bit of hash brown.

He joyously flung himself up into his rig.

I saw the stacks vent black.

The rig was loaded with rebar, I noted, and “that’s heavy", I thought.

I got tied up in asking for a coffee re-fill from the chirpy waitress and lost eye contact with the stacks, smoke and rebar.

When I had regained that vista, I saw something both entertaining and somehow cosmically meaningful.

The rig wended its way to the exit, stopped, started and entered the circular egress to the freeway, went a distance and tipped over into the ditch, spilling tons of rebar.

I stood up and cheered “Let’s hear it for professional drivers”.

I was asked to leave.