The Week Ahead!

My son was home for roughly 36 hours - his big time off! He left about 2 p.m. today to return to driving the highways as they criss-cross across this nation in a big rig. He just completed truck driver training about 3 weeks ago and was hired immediately and last week was his first week on-the-job.

I miss not having him near-by daily but I am so happy for him that he found this job. I'm happy that yes, simply put, he is employed again. A big relief with so many around not just this area but all over the country who can't find even sub-standard employment. A very big relief that he got THIS job and it pays quite well so maybe he will be able to finally get himself on a decent financial ground for a change! And the best part of this job - for him and for me - is that he likes it. He REALLY LIKES it! That aspect of any employment - one that people often overlook and opt for a well-paying job that they hate at times and fail to see the forest for the trees that work like that can do more harm than all the big wages in the world may help!


A prime example of that would be my son-in-law here. He has a job now that he likes but, as is the case all too often too, the pay is not bad but still not really enough to provide a means for him and my daughter to get the stability they need financially. So now, because my son got this better paying job driving tractor trailer, my son-in-law is talking about how he would like to get a job doing that too. How, he would fare so much better if he would/could do that and if my son's employer is considering putting someone on there, part-time even, he will go try to take the CDL driver's test and get hired driving big rigs too with my son.

Now, on the surface, to him this sounds like an excellent solution. To my daughter, his wife, and to me, it is pure and utter nonsense!

Two years ago, he quit a job he'd held for about 7-8 years as a mechanic to take a position as a laborer with a local coal/construction type firm that paid very well. The drawback to that job was that it was seasonal - lasting from about April thru November and unemployed over the winter months plus, there was no insurance for medical care and with a wife and five children in all, medical expenses without that commodity can keep your potential for any net gains to an absolute minimum, if any at all.

So, he quit that job and returned to the old postition of mechanic but was very disgruntled to be back at that job because of the methodology of the shop supervisor/owner and he found the job he now has, as a mechanic, but in a place where he likes the actual work better. The drawback here - to him - is this job pays less than did the previous job as a mechanic thus making that dream of some type of financial stability that much more difficult for him and my daughter.

Ok, so he now thinks this truck driving possibility would be the best thing for him since sliced bread, but he's dead wrong there. You see, he HATES to drive for openers, plus he is completely unfamiliar with ANY big city traffic, dislikes traffic in general and city or rush hour traffic, he abhors. So, how would this job be a good thing then for him when it would make him more and more miserable in the end over his predicament! If he enjoyed any form of driving at all - which my son does like - maybe it would work for him. But considering his base attitude about driving, travel, traffic and all those components rolled together, the finanicial aspect that might improve slightly would not be strong enough to off-set the migraine headaches he would be getting on a really strong and constant basis nor would it help with his qualms about being away from his wife for any length of time either. Because his first wife ran around on him, he does have a tendancy to worry that my daughter will do the same - not to a really bad point there in the jealousy things that can erupt from things like that, but you can tell this is still something that creeps into the back of his mind, nonetheless.

Which avenue would you try if you had a choice about employmen and wages: increased earnings and a job you really didn't like, or liking a job and making do with the earnings?

Gimme 40 Acres and I'll Turn This Rig Around

I think that is how the words to a song goes that I used to hear some of the truckers I waited on 20 plus years back in time mention.

And now, by all appearances, it looks like we will have a bonafide trucker in the family very soon who can be singing that song!

My son may soon be gainfully employed as a truck driver. Yippy skippy and hip hip hooray. The boy might actually have a job that will pay a reasonably good wage and may actually be able to get his finances all straightened out too in the fairly near future.

Clate's had some hard times in the recent past - or maybe too, not so recent past. Good employment seemed to always escape or elude him.

When he completed his four-year enlistment in the Army - back in 1997 - he decided then against coming back home to Pennsylvania at that time and opted instead to head down to Nevada where his Dad lives. His reason, as he explained it to me then, was that he wanted to get to know his Dad a bit better. Since Clate was 6 years old when Frank and I separated for the last time and almost 7 years old when the divorce went through, his years growing up without his dad were often very rough for him. Much as I wanted the boy to come back east, I understood completely his need to develop some type of, hopefully, decent relationship with his father and I had to let go of the reins I wanted to desperately to pull on and use to get the kid back here.

By 2000, the boy and his girlfriend (who he had met in Washington state, but who is originally from the Scranton area of PA) had decided they had spent more than enough "quality" time with Frank. Although Clate and his dad had managed to forge a relationship - somewhat rocky every now and again - overall they managed to get along fairly well. Amie, however, was a horse of a different color as she and Frank clashed almost on a daily basis.

Before I had even met Amie in person, one night as we were talking on the phone and she was telling me all the evils about Frank (as she saw them and many which I had to agree with that they did indeed exist), it dawned on me why she and Frank couldn't get along and I told her my theory. She is very much a feminist - card-carrying member of NOW if that paints a picture there - and she has no qualms about stating right up front where someone with the many male chavinistic beliefs and attitude as Frank has, that all he was seeing and hearing from her was his ex-wife - me!

After the kids moved back east and had settled down in Littlestown, PA - just outside of Gettysburg - Clate found a job driving a delivery truck for a meat packing firm across the Maryland line. His route normally was to load the truck and make door-to-door deliveries in and around the Baltimore area for quite awhile and then, just before he left that job, he was doing deliveries in and around Washington, D.C. As trucking jobs go, this one didn't pay all that well but it was better than minimum wage work. And, Clate learned he didn't mind driving all over the place in that job.

He left there for a factory-type job - assembly line - and the pay was ok, the work wasn't bad either but then the relationship he had with Amie fell apart and he decided to move back home. That was in April of 2004 that he came back to central Pennsylvania and his finances - and work prospects - have pretty much been in the bucket since then. This area is not notorious for having an abundance of good paying work for people with only a smattering of experience and just a high school diploma.

This summer, he lost the job he had working at the garage with his brother-in-law - Mandy's husband. And, knowing how difficult it was going to be to find something that paid relatively well here, he started looking into some type of training program and that is when he decided to try the Truck Driver School at the Vo-Tech in Clearfield. He applied, was accepted, got funding through the state for the expenses and began attending this school the beginning of October.

Now, his schooling is completed; he passed his CDL test a week ago this past Friday and that weekend, made contact with some folks who contract trucks to FedEx to see about signing on with them driving team, coast-to-coast. This past Friday he went to Harrisburg for his physical and to take the "whiz" test but wasn't able to get the "whiz" test worked in that day because the lab the company uses was closed that day - maybe part of the Thanksgiving Holiday.

So, today, he is now enroute back down to Harrisburg to finish up the testing stuff and as he puts it - "pee in the bottle" and since he already passed the basic physical and this test will not be a problem since (fortunately) he doesn't indulge in any of the bad test they test for, the company told him he should be in a truck and on the road by next Monday or Tuesday, the latest.

He's happy and very excited at the prospect of becoming a "paid tourist" as he puts it because this job will afford him the chance to see lots of the country he would never be able to see otherwise. And, as I said early on in this post, it will be a good paying job and one that might also enable him to actually begin to get the house he bought here fixed up in a decent manner!

And for me - I'm happy that he is happy. I will worry constantly about him being on the highways with so many others out there who might be the type of driver that has no business on the roads. I will worry every time I hear reports about bad weather conditions in this or that region knowing he might be having to contend with weather much worse than we see here. And I will also worry about the people he might meet in his travels too - "lot lizards" (truckstop hookers) or maybe lots of other unsavory characters who haunt the world today - or is he eating properly, resting as much as he should to be a really safe driver. All kinds of things will of course enter my mind and won't leave until he makes it back home or at least, calls old Mom every now and again to report in that he's ok.

So yes, I do have a lot of mixed emotions about the day, coming faster and faster on me (and him) now when he will begin this new endeavor.

But overall - as I said above too - I am happy and excited for him and the opportunity this job will give him and most of all, I am happy that he is happy, for a change.

And who knows, maybe sometime down the line, if he can arrange it - maybe Mom will even be able to go along on a run someday too!

Now, that's something for me to really get excited and happy about too!