On the Road: a City of the Mind

The author is a sometime trucker who, for the past seven years, has been using a three-quarter-ton pickup to deliver honey from her bee farm to retailers around the country. She sleeps in truck stops because they are safe and coffee is always available.

In the early morning there is a city of the mind that stretches from coast to coast, from border to border. Its cross streets are the interstate highways, and food, comfort, companionship are served up in its buildings, the truck stops near the exits. Its citizens are all-night drivers, the truckers and the waitresses at the stops. In daylight the city fades and blurs when the transients appear, tourists who merely want a meal and a tank of gas. They file into the carpeted dining rooms away from the professional drivers' side, sit at the Formica tables set off by imitation cloth flowers in bud vases. They eat and are gone, do not return. They are not a part of the city and obscure it.

It is 5 a.m. in a truck stop in West Virginia. Drivers in twos, threes and fours are eating breakfast and talking routes and schedules.

"Truckers!" growls a manager. "They say they are in a hurry. They complain if the service isn't fast. We fix it so they can have their fuel pumped while they are eating and put in telephones on every table so they can check with their dispatch- ers. They could be out of here in half an hour. But what do they do? They sit and talk for two hours."

The truckers are lining up for seconds at the breakfast buffet (all you can eat for $3.99 -- biscuits with chipped-beef gravy, fruit cup, French toast with syrup, bacon, pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, doughnuts, Danish, cereal in little boxes).

The travel store at the truck stop has a machine to measure heartbeat in exchange for a quarter. There are racks of jackets, belts, truck supplies, tape cassettes. On the wall are paintings for sale, simulated wood with likenesses of John Wayne or a stag. The rack by the cash register is stuffed with Twinkies and chocolate Suzy Qs.

It is 5 a.m. in New Mexico. Above the horseshoe-shaped counter on panels where a menu is usually displayed, an overhead slide show is in progress. The pictures change slowly, allowing the viewer to take in all the details. A low shot of a Peterbilt, its chrome fittings sparkling in the sunshine, is followed by one of a bosomy young woman, the same who must pose for those calendars found in auto-parts stores. She almost has on clothes, and she is offering to check a trucker's oil. The next slide is a side view of a whole tractor-trailer rig, its 18 wheels gleaming and spoked. It is followed by one of a blond bulging out of a hint of cop clothes writing a naughty trucker a ticket.

The waitress looks too tired and too jaded to be offended. The jaws of the truckers move mechanically as they fork up their eggs-over-easy. They stare at the slides, glassy eyed, as intent on chrome as on flesh.

It is 4 a.m. in Oklahoma. A recycled Stuckey's with blue tile roof calls itself simply Truck Stop. The sign also boasts showers, scales, truck wash and a special on service for $88.50. At a table inside, four truckers have ordered a short stack and three eggs apiece, along with bacon, sausage and coffee (Trucker's Superbreakfast -- $3.79).