As soon as Molly and I climbed aboard, Molly headed straight for the passenger’s seat. She sat erect, lengthening her head as high as possible to look down at bathers on the beach, down on the rest of the outside world.
She reminded me of Snoopy, his ace-pilot scarf flapping in the wind, as he sat atop his doghouse waiting for the Red Baron to attack from behind the sun.
I imagined the images Molly had in mind.
Her new perch, I was told, was a bobtail, the double-decker, tractor part that tows the rest of an eighteen wheeler and towers above most everything else on the Interstates.
Molly and I had introduced ourselves to the owners, Caroline and Ken Stamper, earlier that morning along the beach.
It wasn’t everyday that we saw a couple tooling around the oceanfront in a 10,000 pound semi.
The truck was big. Inside its cabin, as Molly continued to watch for the Red Baron, or whatever, Caroline, Ken and I easily walked around with plenty of room to spare on all sides, including the ceiling, which seemed to extend another four or five feet above our heads.
Neither Molly nor I had seen anything like that, not that Molly seemed interested in anything other than her newly discovered trucker’s world.
A table and bed were stacked along the back wall, though it was necessary to remove one to get to the other. That was okay. Not many people used both at the same time, anyway.
Elsewhere there were other modern amenities such as a television, refrigerator, microwave, and, yes, a sound system connected to a guitar and banjo.
I haven’t mentioned that Ken was the lead guitarist for a band that had opened for Charlie Daniels, and toured with big-time artists such as Patty Lovelace, Mark Chestnut, and the Gatlin Brothers. He and the “Keeping it Country” band had, just the week before, performed at the national clogging tournament “Mountain Days” in Dayton, Ohio.
After that gig, while they waited for the next one, Ken and Caroline slapped a sign on the door of the bobtail (“McFadden Trucking – Serving God and Country”), picked up a trailer load of freight and headed for Cherry Point. Then, while they waited for their next trucking assignment, they came to the beach, to “get some sand between their toes.”
I sensed it wasn’t a bad life at all. A little nomadic, but Molly and I had some of that in our blood, too.
There’s something else I haven’t mentioned. It won’t sound like much, until you hear what they do with it. Caroline and Ken lashed a charcoal grill on the outside of the truck, a grill on which Caroline apparently excelled. She often cooked a feast – barbecued chicken, pork chops, and corn-on-the-cob. After adding fresh local tomatoes and watermelon, she had a feast in search of the most discriminating diners. And search they did, in cities along their routes, for the homeless.
Thinking of the homeless, Ken said, “That could be me.… We could lose our truck.”
Both their smiles broadened when they told of driving the bobtail, more than once, into Nashville, to an area known as the Broadway Strip, near the Ryman Auditorium, which once housed the Grand Ole Opry, to feed the homeless. Sometimes Ken, a bluegrass kid from Wolf County, Kentucky, sat on the back of the rig and played his guitar while the homeless dined.
On the Road Again meant a couple of different things, maybe more, to Caroline and Ken.
Molly might have hit the road with them for a while, if she could have had the front passenger seat. She didn’t get to ride up front with me (it’s safer in the back).
But she wanted to. Ah … to have been able to ride that high. Nodding down to other dogs in the four-wheelers. She might have had the thrill of her lifetime. She could have left the Red Baron dreams, or whatever, to Snoopy.
