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We awoke in the cold light of a frozen dawn, shivering with the frigid temperature and the beginnings of withdrawal from the drugs. There was one thing on both our minds, the promise of a replacement part in LA and of finding more drugs to get high on then. The road was winding and steep and we scared ourselves more than I care to think about coming down out of the snow into a long flat stretch which finally wound up in a piece of desert between Needles and Barstow. At the time, the California Highway Patrol could not use radar for the purpose of issuing speeding tickets. They had to sneak up on a vehicle and pace them for a few seconds before they could legally issue a ticket, so we were constantly on watch for CHP cars. Doug was more experienced at being tweaked and crashing than I was and the result was that for over 150 miles across the stretch of desert I kept seeing cops in the mirror.

I’d look in the mirror and say “Dude, there’s a cop back there!”

Doug would check and tell me there wasn’t and I would insist that there was. It seemed like it took forever to cross that stretch of nothing but it couldn’t have been very long because Doug kept the hammer down and I know we were doing at least 100 MPH all the way. I know now that I was hallucinating the cops the whole time, but then it seemed so real and I was scared out of my mind.

We finally arrived in LA and went somewhere( I have no idea where) to get a new alternator. I remember sitting in the sleeper while the mechanics installed the part, squirting water into empty baggies with a little dust in them and injecting it to try and get high again. All I got was a headache from injecting water into my veins.

I guess Doug must have been tweaking as bad as I was, because we didn’t even make it out of town that night. We wound up taking a motel room in another part of town that night and he spent some time finding drugs for us. I didn’t know until many years later that the part of town we wound up staying in was considered one of the worst areas of LA.

We spent the night in Compton, in some dive of a motel. Doug bought us 2 8-balls of truly excellent coke(enough to last us nearly a week)and some very nice weed. The guy he bought from had his own 8-ball, but where we were injecting it, he was freebasing it. We sat there and watched while he blew his entire ball in just a little under 2 hours. Doug and I did our shots and then he sent me down to the corner store about a block away to get some sodas and nabs.

I got stopped by the cops right across the street from the store. Looking back, I guess I did look a little suspicious. I was dressed in a pair a shit kicker cowboy boots, jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a Stetson. I was high as hell, but I somehow managed to hold it together and feed the cops a story, that I was from Oklahoma, in town to visit my uncle and another uncle had given me a ride, that we were staying in the motel down the street. I had the presence of mind to give them the wrong room number while they were making me take my boots off and searching me for drugs(fortunately, I didn’t have any on me). At the time, I thought they bought my story, but now I think they just couldn’t find any reason to hold me. They even bothered telling some cock and bull story about how some store near there had been robbed and I fit the description of the robber.

Anyway, I got back to the motel room with the goodies and immediately got s high as I could manage to get without overdosing. I swear I was vibrating I was so terrified, and when the other dude left after running out of his coke Doug and I clung to each other and fucked until the sun came up in a desperate frenzy.
We left as soon as we could manage and within the next day, we found ourselves in Idaho, a place in the middle of nowhere called Magic Dam. They were supposed to have equipment ready to offload our cargo, but they didn’t. Somehow, in the course of all the electrical issues, the blowers in the heating system had failed, so we wound up waiting almost 7 hours until they could get the equipment in place to offload our cargo. With no blowers, there was effectively no heat in the cab, so we were getting seriously hypothermic by the time they were finished and dusk was setting in. At that point, the temperature outside was around 20 degrees below zero(Fahrenheit) and the wind chill was approaching 70 below. We were both bundled up in insulated coveralls and still shivering violently. We were focused on getting back to the nearest small town and into a comparatively warm motel room for the night.

Fortune was not going to favor us quite so well, not that night anyway. We were making good time down the service road, doing maybe 50 MPH, when the headlights illuminated the T intersection we had negotiated on our way in, This time, we were on the stem of the T and there was no road in front of us. Doug hit the brakes and I swear we went faster!

The result of this was that we wound up bouncing across a ditch and a fence and into whatever lay beyond. The truck was intact and still running even though we had both gotten thrown around a good bit and I’m pretty sure I hit my head really hard on the roof of the cab. Lucky for us we were able to raise the dam crew on the radio and they sent a couple of pieces of heavy equipment to drag us back out onto the road.

We were happy with this outcome until Doug looked under the truck and realized that the crossover lines between the fuel tanks had been ripped out when they dragged us back across the fence. I should explain a little something at this point about older trucks. The fuel intake came from one tank and excess fuel was returned to the other thank. The crossover lines returned fuel from one tank to the other, keeping them equal. The upshot was, all the fuel was draining into the ground from both tanks.

No prizes for guessing who got to climb under the truck and hold a finger in each hole to keep the fuel from draining out until they were able to whittle wooden plugs to act as stoppers for the holes. I know it couldn’t have been any more than 10 minutes, but for that time, I got to lie there in a pool of slowly gelling diesel fuel in temperatures approaching 20 below zero with wind chill something under 80 below. Looking back on it, I’m amazed I didn’t die of hypothermia.

When that was done, we were left with a 40 mile trip to the nearest town and with no way to return fuel into the system, we had just barely enough to make it. I vaguely remember the trip and the feeling of dread, worrying that the motel office wouldn’t be open when we got there. I was so cold I wasn’t even shivering anymore and I just remember being grateful when Doug came back from the office with a room key.

He put me into the tub and ran the water as hot as I could stand it and I started shivering again, this time so violently I couldn’t control myself. Every time I started to feel like the water wasn’t burning me, he would add more hot to the tub. He injected me with more coke at least twice during that time and I gradually began to feel like I was going to live even though I was still shivering violently. This went on for several hours and finally I felt drowsy, even though I was still shivering. He picked me up out of the tub and dried me off, after which we got under the covers with the heat turned all the way up and he held me until I fell asleep. I was still shaking and my teeth were chattering, but his bulk and his warmth soothed me enough to allow me to drift into a short oblivion.

When I awoke I heard the noise of the shower and I pulled the covers up over my head, desperate to get more sleep. It had been a mere four hours since we had gone to bed and I was still feeling like a popsicle. I was so glad when he told me he was going to deal with the repair shop and I begged him for another shot. He gave it to me and that gave me enough energy to get into the shower. I was still under the hot needle spray when he came back, sitting in the tub, just luxuriating in the feeling of being warm.

There was a diner next door to the motel and he almost dragged me out of the shower and into some clothes, then there was the frigid run across the lot into the diner. I managed to force down a plate of sausage gravy and biscuits (I didn’t really feel like eating). I remember Doug always told me that I had to eat even though I wasn’t hungry or I’d crash. The joint we smoked before we went was probably the only thing that gave me any kind of appetite at all.

Even while we were eating, I’d still get the occasional fit of the shivers, so bad I could barely hold my fork. I don’t know how much of that was residual hypothermia and how much was the side effects of being strung out so badly. I do know I felt truly awful and I remember it was more than a month before I got the smell of diesel fuel out of my hair.

We went back to our room and I got massively stoned and coked while he dealt with getting the crossover lines repaired. I remember sitting in a tub of scalding water and injecting myself with coke, waiting anxiously for the twenty minutes to elapse before I could do the next dose while I puffed frantically on a cigarette. I can’t blame Doug for my drug habit, I was a more than willing participant at that time. The truth is, if he hadn’t been there to supply some moderation and some advice in how not to kill myself, I probably would not have survived that time of my life.

That night, we went back south to California. I don’t remember exactly where it was, but I can tell you it was the Fruehauf factory. We were going to trade his old steel trailer in for a brand new aluminum trailer and in the bargain, transport 3 other trailers up to the dealership(It might have been Washington, I honestly don’t remember). Anyway, with the mechanical problems fixed, it was an uneventful trip and several days later, we arrived at his home in Montana, in a little town called Arlee about 90 miles north of Missoula.

We spent almost a month there, living in a little apartment underneath his mother’s home(I think his grandmother lived there too). I’m sure they knew I was his lover and even though I was too drugged up for it to register at the time, I remember feeling amazed and gratified when they treated me like his girlfriend. Looking back on it now, I think they knew who and what I was and maybe even felt sorry for me, but they were so nice to me. Between us(The two older women, Doug and his cousin(Who was also a trucker)), we formed an intensely competitive Contract Rummy game that just wouldn’t quit. I didn’t get it at the time, but I think that his mom wanted me to settle down with him.

We had loads of fun and for Doug and I it was almost like a honeymoon, but that good thing came to an end and we were back on the road. It was barely a month later that I called my parents and they told me that I was in trouble with the IRS for taxes on a job I had worked as a gopher when I was 15. I was terrified of going to jail, so I bade Doug farewell somewhere on Interstate 40 and set off hitchhiking back to Charleston. I think it broke his heart and I know it broke mine, but I was so terrified of going to prison that I felt I had to go. I tearfully promised him that I would be back with him as soon as I could, but I never saw or heard from him again.

To this day, I wonder if he is ok, if he ever found love again. I’ll never know. That is it’s own heartbreak.

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To be continued.....