The Journey: On The Road East

On route 80 going east big trailer trucks whizzed past us. Their speed scared Carol. She asked if they knew the speed limit. That was unimportant to them, time was money and speed was the way to get more time.

We had a CB radio that plugged into the cigarette lighter and had a magnetize antenna you put on the roof of the car. CB’s were the highway's communication link. You don’t realize the number of people that are on the airwaves until you spend time out on the road. Truckers have CB conversations like they are in the same room with you. They talk about everything from the weather across the country, how to by-pass state weighting stations, what they had to eat and what their wives and girlfriends did or didn’t do. No one uses their real names on the air they have handles. Airwave names, that most of the time are reflective of who they want people to think they are, like Grey fox, wild man, hoochy momma, farm boy and the like.

Carol like to listen to the CB traffic, a new and different language to her. She heard women on the CB saying what milepost or exit the commercial beaver house was parked. She finally asked what the women where talking about. I laughed. Her face flushed when I told her they were telling men where their camper was parked. They were women who were applying one of the oldest trades.

She couldn’t believe there were women traveling the highways doing that. Long distance truck driver don’t stay in one place very long. When they off the road they were not making money. Since they are always on the on the road, houses of pleasure were mobile like their customers. The journey would be full of discoveries we had never thought about.