One of the nice things since my arrival in Idaho is that I've found a new truck stop, so the Truckstop Diaries can continue.

Today I was pacing back and forth when a somewhat destitute man with a cardboard sign walked in my general direction. Feeling a bit stingy with my money, I avoided eye contact with him but he struck up a conversation with me anyway.

Somewhat Destitute Man: I got myself a cardboard sign.
RAW: I see that.
SDM: You're not going to steal it if I put it here, will you?
RAW: No, no I won't steal it.
SDM: Good. Cause it says... it says will undress for food.
RAW: Oh really. [looks at sign, it says nothing on it]
SDM: Yeah. Would you give money to someone who would undress for it?
RAW: I'm pretty sure that's illegal.
SDM: I guess so. Good sign, though. Huh?
RAW: Well, whatever works for you.
SDM: [to young girl, about 16, walking to car with her family]
YG: Yeah?
SDM: I have a sign that says 'will undress for food.'
YG: Oh yeah?
SDM: Yeah. I figure that makes a good sign, don't you?
YG: I guess.
Young Girl's Father: [steam coming out of ears]
SDM: Would you give money to someone that had a sign saying that they would undress for it?
YG: I gotta go...
SDM: Okay. [to me] I like my sign. Your accent. Where are you from?
RAW: Texas originally.
SDM: Oh, yeah?
RAW: Yeah.
SDM: I don't like Texans. Want to know why?
RAW: Why?
SDM: I'm from Oklahoma. They have that game every year in Dallas. Are you a Longhorn?
RAW: No, but my father and brother are.
SDM: So what are you?
RAW: I'm a Houston Cougar.
SDM: Where's that?
RAW: Houston, Texas.
SDM: Oh. I find it real funny that you are from Texas and that I am from Oklahoma and that we met here.
RAW: Yeah, that is kind of funny, I guess.
SDM: Yeah. So what are you doing here?
RAW: My partner got a job up here, so I came up.
SDM: Are you a fag?
RAW: My partner is female.
SDM: I see. My girlfriend calls me lovable.
RAW: That's good.
SDM: Yes. She says that I am a lovable teddy bear unleashed.
RAW: Well, better that than leashed, I guess.
SDM: Yes. Would you like to be unleashed?
RAW: I don't know. It's a big, bad world out there.
SDM: Huh?
RAW: Nothing.
SDM: So if I leave my sign here, you're not going to take it? It says 'will undress for food.'
RAW: No, I won't take your sign.

Three years or so ago, the No-Lyfe crew was holed up in an Austin hotel while we started the script for what became (for now, anyway) our last production. The cohesion of No-Lyfe had started to wear thin by the time we started on this script. There was already talk of reshuffling how we did things and Brian was talking about leaving the group. The start of a project was always the hardest and most tense part and this time around was no different. While I didn't know that Audrey and I were only a couple of days from collapsing, I felt the end was near.

I was walking the hotel courtyard when I saw what appeared to be a modern-day hobo. He had a blanket laid out in a portion of the yard that wasn't particularly visible to hotel guests or, more importantly, the hotel staff. I smoked a couple of cigarettes and paced back and forth collecting my thoughts about the project and problems with Audrey back in Houston. I wasn't too surprised when the hobo walked up to me and asked for a cigarette.

Three years or so later, I can still remember him very clearly. He was attractive enough to be in movies were it not for a brown tooth up front. He had a very shaggy beard and his curly hair grew up instead of out, giving him a white man's afro. When I gave him a cigarette and light, he asked where I was from. Unfortunately, I was distracted and didn't particularly have an interesting story to tell. While No-Lyfe is an interesting thing for anime fans and conventioneers, I gathered it was probably not the type of thing that he was interested in. I told him anyway, and the only two things he asked me were, "Never been to Houston, is it nice?" and "Have you found the Lord?"

I consider religion and spiritual belief to primarily be a matter between a person, their church, and God. I've never been one to open up too widely to strangers about my faith, my doubts, and my questions. I can't remember how I evaded the question, but I managed to do so and he started talking about his travels. I got the distinct impression that he was excited and appreciative that I didn't avoid him like most probably did. "You ever hear of Phoenix, he asked?"

"The city or the bird?" I asked, figuring that he'd assume that I'd heard of the sixth largest city in the nation.

"The city. I came out from that way. I'm on my way to Illinois."

"I've heard of that one, too," I said with a smile. He laughed.

When he told me his story, it actually didn't occur to me until much later that I could have gotten in trouble for helping a fugitive. Well, "fugitive" might be putting it strongly, but the Arizona parole board would not approve of his little trek. He'd gotten into some trouble about four years back with drug addiction and held up three convenience stores before he got caught and arrested for, insterestingly enough, only the first armed robbery. He found Jesus shortly after incarceration and spent most of his three years in prison spreading the Word to other inmates before being released on parole, good behavior, or whatever it is that they have out there.

I asked why he left Arizona if he wasn't supposed to and he told me that he wanted to see his father for the holidays so that he could apologize and make amends for what he's done. I have no reason to necessarily believe that anything that he told me was true, but there was something in his demeanor that told me that it was. He talked about his troubled relationship with his father and how he'd come to realize that he was the source for most of it. "Just as I walked away from Jesus and His teachings, I ignored my father and his."

After he finished talking, there was a slightly uncomfortable silence in the air. Suddenly I felt like I was waiting for his sales pitch for money and that threw just about everything off-kilter. Instead he asked if I was headed north and if I was, could I give him a ride. I thought briefly of Audrey back in Houston, some of the tension up in the apartment, and the sincerity of his voice combined with a lack of obvious nafarious reasons for wanting to go to Macomb, Illinois, and I honestly considered it. If I didn't have classes and work to attend to, I might have even driven him all the way up to Macomb.

But I had my responsibilities and all that I could give him was my best wishes and the $40 in my pocket. He accepted the money with some hesitation and said, "God be with you." As he went back to his blanket and I went back upstairs to the hotel room. "Thanks, I think I need all the help I can get these days."

"Then I will pray for you!" he yelled across the courtyard. I waved goodbye, swiped the keycard, and returned to my responsibilities.

I don't know what's more disturbing about the walls of the Truckstop. Is it that there are dozens of flies all over the wall or that they're all dead?

Or is it the art work?

These are pictures from the men's room at the Truckstop. I put them in the "Read More" section because they're a bit graphic. If you're eating and have a weak stomach, you might want to hold off taking a look (or prepare yourself). It's nothing too grotesque, but I wanted to warn you guys.

[Read More!]

One of the first people I met at the truckstop is a guy we call Cowboy Larry. Physically, Larry was most distinctively noticeable by how much he looked like... well, a cowboy. Not just the hat, though he had one and wore it well, but his stoic demeanor, persistent squint, and unique Texas drawl (when he's sober and it doesn't come out squeaky). If I ever needed to cast a cowboy for a part in a movie, he would be perfect.

Over the course of my time at the Truckstop while working for UFC, I saw Larry's life fall apart, piece by piece. Larry was, to say the least, an alcoholic. One of the most alcoholic people that I've ever known. The first thing that he lost was his job. He showed up to work tanked one too many times. Not long after that, his wife left him for Joe Bob, another regular of the Truckstop (since the Truckstop is a social circle, couples breaking up and coupling with others from the 'stop is not unusual). Without a job or a wife with a job, he was evicted from his trailer park and the trailer was repossessed. By the time I lost my own job with UFC, he was living in his van.

At one point, he was so strapped up for cash that he staged an accident. There is a particular parking spot at the Truckstop that has always been a problem area. It amazes me that the proprietors don't mark it off, but for whatever reason they never did. For two weeks he parked his van there hoping that a semi would back in to it. He needed a couple hundred dollars to make a trip to Arizona to see his daughter. Sure enough, eventually a flat-bed 18-wheeler backed into it, hammering the door and shattering the window. Despite the fact that it was 40 degrees out and that's where he had to sleep, he couldn't have been more excited.

"Hot damn! I'm gooooin' ta Arizona!"

That was only a couple weeks before I lost my job, so I never found out how the trip went.

Since I started going back there I have been seeing him more often. Or at least I had been, he hasn't been around lately (which seems to be a pattern lately, which I'll get to on a later post). I rarely drink alcohol at the Truckstop. Kinda a shame, since certain people offer to buy me beer regularly. It used to be because I was on lunch break but these days it's cause I'm usually headed somewhere afterwards. Instead, I just gulp on Mountain Dew.

The last time I saw Larry, he and Hiram were discussing addiction. Cigarettes, alcohol, and cocaine. With the stench of the alcohol that has ruined his life on his breath, he pointed to my Mountain Dew and said, "that [caffiene and sugar] stuff will fuck you up."

... because I had no shoes. But then I met a man who had no feet.

Several months back my car was broken in to in an unlit parking lot of a bar. They took my CD player and, in the process, disabled my air condition. I still haven't been able to replace either of them. I kept my anger in check, but I was nonetheless pretty upset about it.

Last night, someone broke into many of the overnight trucks parked at the truckstop. Instead of just stealing a CD player, they stole a man's truck and cargo.

I'd never seen a muscular, 300-pound man cry before.

One of the delights of my new job and home is that I am located close to where I used to work. That in and of itself isn't so good, but it also means I'm located close to the truckstop where I used to eat lunch all the time. I've been going by there nightly.

It's an interesting place with more interesting people. I've little or nothing in common with them, but a group that's more fun to watch and talk to you'll never find.

Jason Boland's second album is entitled Truckstop Diaries. I never much cared for the title track until I started hanging out at this place, but now it's among my favorite.

I've posted once or twice on a couple of things that have happened there, but I'm going to be doing more in the near future as I've been hanging out around there a lot.

"You just get used to it, you know. You get used to living in a house and when you wake up, someone being there next to you. Maybe she was never a very good cook and you weren't home enough, but it's your life and you get used to it and even when you complain, you like it. And you never know that one day you're going to miss it more than anything in the world." -Confederate Jake, frequenter of the truck stop where I eat lunch, named so for the confederate emblemed helmet always hanging on his motorcycle when he stops by.

I am rarely hungry around lunch time so I generally spend my lunches either writing for the blog or at a truck stop down the street. Today I was tired of sitting in front of the computer so I stopped by the 'stop. Right as I was about to leave, a frequenter of the 'stop named Larry was bumming around for a ride. I didn't offer up because I don't know Larry all that well, but I like the guy if for no other reason that he embodies the modern concept of a rugged cowboy. I am working on an ad campaign for a fictional cigarette company that needs a cowboy and if I had my druthers he would be cast for it. Everything from his cowboy had to his full moustache amid a sea of stubble. Perfect. Until he opens his mouth with a squeaky voice that even the slur of his perpetual drunkenness cannot compensate for. In fact, it only amplifies it and lately he's been amplified a lot.

Everyone else there either had walked or driven a bigrig that they obviously wouldn't want to take just a couple miles down the road, so I agreed to go ahead and take him. The combination of the smells of alcohol, burping gas, and dirt never smell so putrid as when they are in your car. It was only a couple blocks to the trailer park where he "works" (he's been unemployed for over a month now). I took him to the end of the park and dropped him off right by the colorful plastic swingset by the "office next door." In the meantime, I was regaled of how he was living with his ex-wife a couple months ago and how they *shudder* "made love" every night. Actually, all he said was "I used to live with my ex-wife. We made love every night" with periodic repetitions of "every night" and "made love" thrown in at periodic intervals, just in case the smell alone wasn't making me feel sick.

I make my way back to the truck stop and Stan is still hanging around. "Did he take you to his trailer?" he asks me. I tell him that I did. He then asked, "Did you see the blue trailer across the road? That one's mine. Biggest in the lot. Painted it myself!" To which I replied with a hardy congratulations.

Several months back I was telling my former roommate about one of my adventures at the 'stop when an angry wife threatened to drive-by shoot us all. He asked why in the world I keep going down there.

"You meet the most interesting people there," I replied.

So does anyone out there have any idea how to fumigate a car?