Sure Hope That's a Deer

No truck driver wants to be the one who runs over a passel of widows and orphans. We see the highway carnage more than the Highway Patrol. Only EMS technicians have it more integrated into their job.

I could tell thousands of wreck stories, but this one demonstrates the extreme danger of being a pedestrian on the highway.

We, my Kenworth, two teddy bears, and me, were westbound on I-40 in Tennessee. The trailer, a 53 foot dry van, was empty. I had a pickup in Memphis next morning and was heading for a secret hideout where no other truckers would disturb my sleep with their noisy idling diesels and toxic exhaust. A good night's sleep is a scarce commodity in trucker-world.

The tractor was a big, fast, independent-owned, 500 hp conventional with a row of chicken lights across the chrome front bumper. Yeah, the truck Mom warned you about.

We were ripping through the night, passing a slow plain-jane company truck, the kind only a rookie would drive, when the CB lit up.

"Westbound trucks, there's a truck wreck right around the next curve, back 'em down."

Well dang, me and plain-jane were side by side, already heading into the curve. We both mashed the brake pedal.

Up ahead I saw the box lights of two trucks. They had inexplicably gotten tangled up in the curve. But it didn't look too bad. Both rigs were upright and only showed light damage.

Still unavoidably side by side, jane and I rolled into the curve about 50 mph. The trucks had side swiped in the curve and completely exchanged lanes. Both drivers had managed to get most of their rig out of the traffic lanes. Coming down the left lane, all I had to do was miss the jackknifed set of doubles hanging out over the left line. If plain-jane did the same, we'd squeeze through just fine.

As we rolled through the wreck, I was looking down at maybe 6 inches of clearance between the orange lights on my front bumper and the jackknifed wreck. I didn't look to see how much room jane was giving me on the blind side, but knew it wasn't much.

As I neared the drive axles of the wrecked truck, I saw something that even a jaded seen-it-all driver never forgets.

Extending out about 18 inches from the drive wheels were the boot clad legs and feet of a human male. He was actually an ex-human male, but there was no time for fine distinctions cause I was way too close. Now down to maybe 30 mph, I hauled right on the wheel without looking for clearance from my best friend jane.

I made it, missing the boots by a few inches. But the banged up tractor's CB antenna had laid over. It scraped the side of my cab. Whack! That pumped the last reserve of adrenalin from my aging body, stuff I had hoped to deploy on a mountain top someday.

But I summoned my strength to broadcast a warning for trucks behind me.

"Eastbound, tell them westbound trucks single file through the wreck an' stay right, it won't be long before this place is crawlin' with volunteer state bears (Tenessee Highway Patrol) and they close the road."

"Sure hope that's a deer wrapped up in those drives." offered jane.

"That ain't a deer, Driver. Some lucky trucker just ran down a hitchhiker. Hey, you did a good job back there, thanks for the clearance, Buddy." I answered.

Then the right foot hit the floor, and me and my empty trailer left plain-jane, and some even less lucky fellas, in the dust.

Miles to go before I sleep, indeed.

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