I learned a lesson about fathering in 1956 at the Monolith Cement plant, in Tehachapi. As I write it is vivid to me. On Christmas Eve, 1956, I was waiting to load cement for a haul to the Five Freeway project near Bakersfield. It was Christmas Eve, 1956. My wife and I had a young son, born on the 28th of October, 1956, which made him barely two months old. Recently out of the Air Force, I returned to the trucking job I had prior to my four-year hitch. Also, I loved driving rigs. Struggling to make ends meet, to prove myself a man, I worked as many hours as possible. Working through Christmas also helped the image I thought was essential, to be a Teamster.
My boss, Ted Hollingsworth, owner-operator of Hollingsworth Truckng, in Colton, kept his rigs busy. I scrambled to keep up with him. In December, there wasn't that much work. I took every haul available. I was driving on percentage, which meant it paid me to be in that rig every load I could obtain. Driving on a percentage basis meant I got ten-percent of the gross of my rig. That was a motivator and almost like being in business for oneself. I was driving a Peterbilt, an NH200 horsepower Cummins diesel, with a set of cement hopper Utility trailers. We were pulling three to seven loads per day out of Monolith Cement Company, Tehachapi, and some out of Riverside Cement Company, Oro Grande, just north of Victorville, many more miles away, keeping the freeway project going.
Gabe Gomez drove the other Hollingsworth rig, a better tractor than mine, with much more power. He had been on the road for years and was a mentor for me at that time. Art Thompson, Ted's number one man, had quit and gone to another outfit. I think he went to work for Ray Sharp about then. He was, next to Ted himself, the best driver I had ever known. Both Ted and Art were the smoothest drivers from whom a youngster could learn. (Rigs in those days had two transmissions, a 5-speed main box and a 3-speed Brownie or auxiliary tranny. The driver had fifteen combinations possible, but we of course, rarely used them all. Once the rig was rolling, we rarely used the clutch, just changing gears in by feel, listening to engine RPM, and "knowing" when to shift to keep the engine speed betweem 1700 or so and the governed speed, usually 2250 RPM. A good driver kept his engine at the right RPM for the load and road situation. Optimal cruising RPM for the NH200 was 2000 to 2100. On the flat, out in the country, my Peterbilt would cruise at 82 MPH in the "doubles" or fifth overdrive, i.e., fifteenth combination. Fully loaded climbing a grade such as the Grapevine, I would be in Second Direct or Overdrive.)
Christmas Eve, about ten in the evening, I was lying across the seats of my tractor, the engine running in the cold, snowy night, to keep the cab's heater going. I got some sleep before I could load. A tap-tap-tap on the window awakened me. I sat up, thinking it was my turn to pull forward under the loading sock to get my next load of fifty-thousand pounds of hot Type Two (highway type) cement. Outside in the darkness, standing on the running board, Gabe’s face smiled at me on the other side of the window: his mustache, black hair, and white teeth, smiling at me through the frosted window of my tractor. A very light snow was falling.
I cranked down the window and asked him, "How you doin', Gabe?" Gabe had a smooth, quiet manner. Nothing rattled him. We had been through a lot of conversations, waiting to load and while unloading, and we knew one another well enough. (The story that truly ended his driving is one I need to write, also. It took place later on, one night in Lucerne Valley.) Gabe was driving Number Three, a Peterbilt with a recent kit on it, in beautiful condition. Most of all, it had a 275 horsepower Cummins diesel. That gave it power that was leaps and bounds beyond my 200. When it wound up to 2100 RPM, the blower whine was wonderful. The stack barked, emitting about six inches of red flame at night. Viewed through the smoke mirror, that flame was a joy to behold on a dark night. I coveted that tractor, of course. That is mostly all a driver has to look forward to, a newer, more powerful tractor, or a better run, or more money per mile.
Gabe answered my question with a declaration. He said, "Chris, I'm going home. It is Christmas Eve. I haven't been home for a Christmas in seven years. I am not going to spend another Christmas away from my wife and kids. I've called Ted and he is going to come and get your rig. You take mine. He said it is yours, now. I just quit, Chris. Don't know what I'm going to do. I got a ride back to San Bernardino with Blacky. He's leaving his rig up here for the weekend. You are supposed to take all the loads. I know it will give you lots of hours, but just take it as you can and you'll get it done."
Gabe reached through the open window and shook my hand and I watched him in my mirror, walking away in the glow of my rig's clearance lights, carrying his little suitcase, he climbed into the passenger side of Blacky's two-by-four pickup. I sat there watching the 1954, red Ford pickup pull away in the cement dust, with the snow on the ground. Cement dust somehow pervades over snow. I think I felt lonely, abandoned, perhaps. Also, I felt very confused.
That was the first time in my life I realized there was something to being a father I had not considered. I thought my job was to work, make a living, and bring home the bacon, so that my wife and child would be secure and have all the necessary things of life, like a house, washing machine, life insurance, clothes, and the important things of life. It hadn't occurred to me, yet, that I was important to the life of the family. I had been gone in the Air Force, had been trucking before the service, had returned to trucking, all the time thinking I was being a good husband and now, with one child on the ramp, a good father. I thought I was doing what I should, because I was working, all the time. But, Gabe had given me pause to rethink this husband and father matter.
Gabe went home, giving up all that I thought was important. He gave up that newly-kitted Peterbilt with that 275 blown Cummins diesel. He just walked away from the many loads that were guaranteed for the next few days, during a slack time of year, saying, in effect, to hell with the money. He valued his time with his wife, his four children, and with his own role as a husband and father more than all this for which I was striving. Of course, it was confusing to me! It took a long time to sink in, but I got it, eventually. Gabe helped me to see the future, that Christmas Eve. It was his Christmas present to me. I realized, not even a 275 Cummins and a new Peterbilt tractor could make the future into what it was to be. I had to quit and go to school. That seemed like the answer. That is what happened, and Gabe was the mentor for that. Ted Hollingsworth was the mentor along that path. Art Thompson and Gabe were the mentors steering me toward that last load, which I pulled in February, just before starting San Bernardino Valley College. I cannot thank all of them enough.
The last weeks I drove for Ted Hollingsworth, I averaged one-hundred-ten hours on the clock per week. There are only one-hundred-sixty-eight hours in a week. That means, I was home in one week for fifty-eight hours. I was a zombie and I might as well not have been home at all. But, I was making money, proving myself to be the man I thought I had to be, driving a shiny rig and proud of how I split the fifteen gears, learned the truckers' tricks, evaded the legal limits by going around the scales, drove faster and faster, until that early February evening, when I told Ted, "That's it, Ted. This isn't for me, after all." That was it. But, I kept on driving, usually part time as I progressed through college and graduate school.
Inside many of us, there is a sub-personality, called the "Pusher." It is an important part of our make-up. It motivates us and keeps us from turning into couch-potatoes, sloths, and growing fungus on our north sides. But, it can become so powerful and almost compulsive in nature that the only way out from under it is to blow a fuse. That translates into illness, usually, maybe an accident, or some form of addiction that eventually debilitates us. I'm getting to know my pusher better. It is part of my shadow bag contents. I'm learning to eat it and inwardly digest it, so it might become more integrated and less spuriously powerful, like some loose cannon on a storm-tossed deck. My son, Scott, once told me, "From you I learned how to work hard. Now I'm going to learn how to work smart." I think working smart includes becoming good friends with the pusher and giving him/her a seat on the inner Board of Directors.
In trucking, one learns to drop a third of a gear, with the old-type transmission arrangements, and take one's foot out of the pump a bit. That lets the engine run freer up the grade, decreases the smoke, lowers the temperatures, and the whole rig feels happier, given the help of that better ratio. I'd like to learn how to drop that third of a gear now, when my hills get too steep and the loads get too heavy. I guess that is working smarter and I'm going to take my foot out of my pump a bit. Thanks, Gabe. It has been thirty-six years, but I'm getting the message again.
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