Personal Writing: My Experience as a Truck Driver

The sun was hot on my neck as I got out of the truck. The end of a long Wyoming workday in June seemed about like always, high thin clouds laughed at the thought of rain as a hot sun beat on my dads trailer house.

Looking at the big cottonwoods over the old trailer, I walked into the welcome shade they cast before pausing on the wooden porch. I hadn't heard it first, the swamp cooler that was a must on days like this running in the background. But the smell had damn sure caught me offguard.

Who the hell could be smoking weed in my dads house?

Then I heard the guitar. A sound I would never fail to recognize, dads old guitar. It was a thing I had grown into adulthood with, summer evenings and dads music. It never seemed to change much, kind of like the old man had learned what he liked and stopped. Some things shouldn't change perhaps.

It was also a sound I had given up on hearing since arthritis had taken its toll.

I had tried, my greatest hero being a guitarist had definitely lead me to take up the guitar, late perhaps but I had done it. One of the things I regret most I suppose is that when I had reached a level that would allow me to play music with my father, well, he no longer could.

So I stopped. I stopped stock still and looked at my father hunched over his gitfiddle as he sometimes called it Wrapped over her, slowly slowly pulling music from her.

Tears began to run down to the slow smile that hit my face, tears so bright I almost missed the source of the smell, a small roach lay cold in the ashtray surrounded by the normal pile of cigarette butts. Filtered , menthol PLEASE!

Dad had always denounced my pot smoking, later in life we had had a talk about it, both tenacious, the marijuana issue had nearly broken something between us. Eventually I was granted the okay to make my own mistakes and he was granted the ability to remain a stubborn father.

But I had never given up. Repeatedly I had pointed out articles about possible treatments for his chronic pain, and reports that some people gained relief from rheumatoid arthritis. The reports out of England and Canada were casually put in front of him, never too offensive, but never ending. Dad had always dismissed it all with a derogatory remark. Marijuana was the devil's weed, and nothing anyone said would make a diference. Sitting slowly, I watched the old man, he looked up and grinned, small sparkles of water in his eyes too.

I suppose I can imagine what he must be feeling, if I were cut off from my music, and then to have it brought back, slow, painful but music, with the promise of more. yeah. I can understand that.

Reaching over, both of us wincing as he missed a note he had always missed, even earlier, I looked at what he had rolled his joint from.

"You need a pipe dad, I will get you one" letting my fingers sift through the low grade weed he had in his bag, I set it back down and walked out to my truck. the sounds of wildwood flower following me out.

It is amazing how, easy, we humans adapt.

Five minutes ago I had been floored with a double punch, and now I was reminding myself to have dad teach me the chords to wildwood flower. A couple of practiced hand movements and my stash was out of the glovebox and my guitar was in my hand. I hurried back out of the heavy heat, glad as hell the old swamp cooler was working as I sat right below its chill breeze.

"what did you have to pay for that?" Absently my fingers began to fill my pipe after I work it out of my jeans, good heavy indica, crisp and fresh.

"it doesn't matter" I nodded at the flat tone of his voice.

Treading cautious around the old man, I looked up at him before lighting that bowl. forty years of respect and obedience are not whisked away with a little smoke.

"You mind if I smoke this?"

Dad nodded and stretched his fingers all the way open then closed them again.

"Yeah, you might as well" His fingers fell to the strings and idly plucked them. "I guess I have lost the right to tell you anything now"

I passed him the pipe, that old familiarity between us seeming to help somehow. Light from a fluttering curtain lighting up the smoke about dads grey hair for a moment.

"Bull**** dad" I grinned a bit, picking up my guitar and beginning to tune it to his. Lost, somehow surreal, I began to pick an old tune he had used to.

I stopped to take the pipe back as it was offered, and tears began to fall again as the tune kept going. We played that song. We played it all the weay through. Halting and painful but music. It filled that moment of our lives with the promise of a new future.

Not one to let silence have complete reign, and not one to be too shy with anyone I asked the old man quietly.

"Seems to work good for your hands huh? how is your back?"

I could tell he was stoned, if that ragweed he had had not done it, the stuff I grow damn sure did.

"it ...feels good" the small judgemental pauses were familiar to me, if you live with chronic pain, it is a surprise when it is gone. Your mind touches all over familiar spots looking for it.

"So this is being "high"? hmmmph, dad's expression was not completely at ease with the idea, but a lack of pain is damned hard to argue with, I could see the fight on his face, in his eyes.

You have to understand, dad does not even drink. He smokes cigarettes and always will, even the cost of half a lung had not stopped him. one of the reasons I did not worry about the health effects of smoking a joint once or twice a day. It was nowhere near what he puffed away on tobacco.

"Yeah, this is it, makes you talkative"

I shrugged as He stood up, slowly but without the groan that had accompanied that feat since I was 16.

"makes you hungry too"

Grinning as he went to the fridge, loading another pipeful as he walked by with a sandwich of heroic proportions I mumbled past the grin.

"I probably would not tell your oldest son about this dad"

My grin widened, my oldest brother being definitely cut from another block of wood as we two. He would not approve, rarely did, and why toss out another bone of strife...

"And you do not need to buy the ****, I grow enough for both of us"

I do not know what caused it, Lord knows hugs between us had always been seldom, more so since age had crept over us. But I was crushed into something that I had not felt in a good 20 years.

Brief, fleeting, but treasured, that hug was reward for years of bitter emotion, for being RIGHT.

Later, as we played together, a candle the only illumination, call of a coyote ghosting in through the open window as night cooled the hills about us I had time to think. Time to think in a stoned kind of way.

This would not have been possible, had we not made weed legal, accepted.

Turns out a V.A. Doctor over in S. Dakota had recommended a puff or two, off the floor, and in strictest confidence.

That accompanied with my years long propaganda had made dad give it a private whirl. I had walked in on the third time he had smoked any.

I am glad I did.

I am also certain, had it remained illegal, my father would have died in pain. He might still, as might all of us, but we had THIS!

We had this.....And that happiness pushed gently into the night, ambassador for feelings which words cannot describe. maybe raising a passing travellers spirits as it was filled with a simple joy.

I am stopping this memory right here, at a point where it is happy. Let us leave them there, an old truck sitting below the moon, soft tones of music winding throuigh shivery cottonwoods on an early summer night.

Good evening.