Stories from the road - Democratic Underground

Droopy

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Fri Jun-17-05 01:17 AM
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Stories from the road

This post is rated R. If you are under the age of 17 please get your parents' permission before you read it. This post has the potential to make you upset and/or disturbed. If you are feeling sensitive right now you may want to reconsider reading this post.

That little deal ought to get me a few responses. In all seriousness this is a thread about a couple of evil people and it might leave you wondering how far we've actually progressed since the civil war. Or rather if we have progressed that much at all when it comes to attitudes about race.

This story is about Martha and Tony. That is not their real names and if I were to tell you their real names and if they were to see this thread they'd probably kill me. Literally. The events that I'm about to describe are true. Although this story is not from when I was truck driving, it is related to being on the road and it has a truck driver in it.

Martha was a friend of my step-mother's when I was 15. She had her own plant maintenance business and she worked on her own at it. When I say plant maintenance I mean that she would go to restaurants and take care of their plants. Be they live or fake. One day she was talking to my step-mother and said that she could really use a hand with her business. She was putting in long days because the work load was getting so heavy. My step-mother recommended me. One day shortly after that conversation I met with Martha and she hired me on the spot. It was summer time so I had my days free. Martha hired me on for $25 a day. That was big money to me. Martha paid me under the table. We worked five days a week.

Much of our time was spent driving from restaurant to restaurant. She had several accounts in the city where we were from, but she also had a few that were out in the country a bit. We'd talk sometimes while we were on a little road trip. One day she started talking about racial issues. I don't know why she brought it up. She didn't know much about me and I was just a kid so I wondered why she was bringing up a subject that was kind of heavy. I soon saw the dark side of Martha. She said that she could not understand inter-racial couples. She said that she thought bringing a bi-racial person into this world was horrible. She said they would never know who they really are and would always be conflicted or confused. She said that people should, "stick to their own kind."

That kind of pissed me off. At 15 I was more enlightened than this lady who was in her 30s. One of my best friends at the time had a white mom and a black dad. He was a very nice guy and mature beyond his years. He knew exactly who he was. I often found myself thinking that I wished I could be more like him. I could be kind of a punk sometimes so I told the lady that I was reading a book on my family's history and it turned out that I had a couple of black ancestors. That was only half true. Such a book exists about my family, but I'm 100% white boy beyond a Native American ancestor. I don't know if she believed me or not, but she shut up about the subject.

Martha's husband was named Tony and he was a truck driver. He was gone a lot because of his job, but one day when he had some time off he decided to join Martha and me on our daily rounds to the restaurants. I didn't like Tony from the beginning. He was really arrogant and overt about his racism. I had a feeling that a reason Martha was somewhat racist was that her husband thought the KKK was a good idea. Martha seemed like the kind of person that didn't think for herself on such matters. Or maybe it was a match made in hell. Hard to say looking back on it through a 15 year old's eyes. There is good evidence for the hell option in what I'm about to relate.

We were cruising through downtown Dayton, Ohio on I-75 that day Tony decided to tag along. Martha liked to drive fast and she was cruising down the slow lane at 75 mph in a 55 mph zone passing traffic on the right because the left lane was clogged with slower drivers. That's a bad idea in Dayton because the highway has many short ramps and drivers often do not have enough time to build up enough speed to merge with traffic properly. And that's what happened. A car was coming up a ramp as Martha was getting close to it. The other car was probably doing about 55. The driver of the car coming up the ramp probably should have slowed a little and let Martha go by, but instead swung out in the lane and cut Martha off. After some cussing Martha pull into the middle lane to pass the other car. They drove up along side the car and there was a black couple that was in it. Tony flipped the driver the bird. The other guy shot the bird back at Tony and then hit the accelerator. Typical road rage. At first. Tony then said to Martha, "Catch that fuckin' n-word," and then started rummaging under the seat for something.

Martha pulled up along side the black couple's car. The driver wasn't looking at them. Then I saw what Tony had been fishing for under the seat. A hand gun. Martha honked the horn to get the other driver's attention. When he looked over at them Tony wiggled the gun at him. The other guy's eyes looked like they grew to the size of saucers. It was probably the same look I had on my face. Then the black driver hammered down on the accelerator. I don't remember what kind of car they were in, but it was faster than Martha's Mercury Topaz. Thank God. I got to thinking about what I had said to Martha about having black people in my family history and started praying that she hadn't said anything to Tony. I looked over at Martha with what probably was a "what the fuck?" look on my face and I saw that she was smiling.

When we got done with that day's work and Martha pulled up to my house I hopped out of the car and didn't even get my pay I was in such a rush to get away from them. Martha fired me the next day. I wasn't going to get back in that car with her again anyway.