We arrived in Holiday the next morning and, when I found out that the unloading process would be lengthy, I walked across the road and had breakfast at a little restaurant called The Broken Yolk. It had a nice, homey atmosphere and friendly service, but I think that I ordered the most artery-clogging dish that was available on the menu. My eating habits had begun to suffer since being on the road but, due to the physical nature of flatbed work, I had not gained any weight. In fact, I think that I had dropped a few pounds. I had begun to notice, at truck stops, that there were far fewer overweight flatbedders than non-flatbedders. There was a valid reason for that.
When we had ridded ourselves of the chain-link fence, we were off to Palatka, Florida again to pick up more Gypsum board. As I was pulling into the waiting line at the shipper, Ringo’s unmistakable baritone boomed over the CB, “Get it in there Rick!”
“Man”, I replied, “they’ll let anybody in here won’t they?”
“I guess so!” he shot back with a hearty laugh.
After loading, we went back to the Jacksonville terminal to spend the night. There is no lighting in the terminal yard there, so one almost requires the psychic talents of The Amazing Kreskin to park after dark. At this point in the week, I was still in pretty good spirits. I still had no idea that this would be my final week with this company.
When we set out for Conway, South Carolina on Friday morning, I gave myself an enormous scare on a U.S. Highway. I was fooling around with my sunglasses and, the next thing I knew, the truck had veered off onto the soft shoulder of the road. I’m not sure how close I came to mowing down some mailboxes, but I couldn’t have missed by much. This near-miss put the fear of God into me and, after that, I straightened up and got with the program. This had been a frightening reminder that it only takes a split second of inattention for disaster to strike.
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