Jim We Need a Career Change!

by Diamon Jim
(Indiana)

Back a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to an old trucker song that brought back memories of things that I ran into while rolling from point A to point B.

Some things are not so easy to forget, but every once in awhile you'll run into something that doesn't leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

Take for instance, one night back in the early 70's. My co-worker, Gene and I were dispatched to Chicago at 2300 hours (11pm).

So in an effort to stay awake, we're chit chatting on our CB's, when around 0230 AM just north of Clinton Indiana, I get a call from Gene.

Gene:"Hey Jim, there's a woman standing on the side of the road waving a flashlight. I'll pull over in front of her, and you pull in behind her."

Sure enough, there's this woman standing behind her car with the hood up. What was odd, was that she was dressed fit to kill. Approaching I asked the obvious.

Jim:"Having trouble?"
Lady:"Something's wrong with my car! After hitting those railroad tracks back there, I started hearing this terrible noise. Something sounds as though it's dragging, so I decided to stop."
Well someone is gonna have to get down and see what the problem is, and seeing as how Gene weighed in somewhere around 250 or 300 pounds,through the process of elimination,I was that someone.So taking the flashlight from her, I dropped down to see what the problem was.
The noise that she was hearing was the exhaust pipe dragging the pavement. The clamp holding it to the muffler had broken. A simple fix if I would have had a piece of wire or better yet, a clothes hanger.
Jim:"Do you by any chance have a clothes hanger?"
Lady:"I have a few in the trunk!"
Opening the trunk, she separates a hanger from a piece of clothing and hands it to me.
When I was finished, it took me longer to brush my clothes off, than it did for me to wire the pipe up.
Jim:"There you go! It'll get you to Midas Muffler or a service station, and they can install a new clamp."
Lady:"Can I pay you?"
Jim:"Naaa, we don't do this for a living! Just glad that we could help."
Lady:"Then I insist on buying you a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. I'm pretty sure that there's a truck stop in Kentland that has an all night restaurant."
She said it as though we were strangers to this area! I mean after all, we probably knew every Mom & Pop diner and truck stop between Evansville and Chicago.
So firing up our trucks, we followed her to Kentland to collect our reward for being good citizens,and conscientious truck drivers.
As we're washing down our pie with coffee,curiosity got the better of me, and I had to ask.
Jim:"What are you doing out this time of night?"
And without blinking an eye, she replies matter of factly.
Lady:"I ferry prostitutes between Chicago,Nashville,and Atlanta. I dropped off four in Nashville earlier this evening, and I'm on my way back to Chicago."
Gene is choking on his pie, but eventually he clears his windpipe and mumbles.
Gene:"Jim, we need to change career fields!"
As Gene is wiping the coffee and pie off of his shirt, I ask her another question.
Jim:"Why?"
Lady:"After a few arrests for soliciting, the girls become well known, and whenever the cops spot them, they immediately run em in. So after numerous arrests, we have to move them to another city, and sometimes that's once or twice a month, depending."
You would have thought that she was discussing deliveries to McDonald's or Wendy's, instead of moving working women to Nashville and Atlanta!
Finishing our coffee, we bid her goodbye, fired up the trucks and hit the road.
This little delay gave us plenty to talk about for the rest of our trip, and of course we arrived in Chicago just in time for the Dan Ryan morning rush hour..... Jim said that!
P.S... We forgot to get the name of her employer, so another opportunity to improve our lot in life, gone by the wayside!