Trucking The Back 48 ( Part 2 )

My last post had to do with Al Hoots a Hitchhiker I picked up at a rest area in Alabama.  I'm being loaded right now  with a load of turkey from Cargill fixing to head to Shelbyville, In.  Al loved turkey of course.  I hated to see Al go, after all how many trucker out here have an Owl traveling with them.    You might be thinking that me coming along did a lot for Al Hoots but really it seems to me to be the other way around.  Sometimes the stress out here involved in the Trucking Industry is hard to deal with.  It's very easy to be consumed with thoughts  of money lost, time lost, equipment failure, or just getting screwed in general.  Which at the time I came upon Al was at a high level.
So I'm grateful that Al Hoots took my mind off of getting screwed and onto if he makes it or not.  I have his or hers, (hoot knows), picture which if you see the pic in my last post is a very beautiful Owl. 

While I'm on the stress and beautiful things subject my daughter, Stephanie, is in the hospital waiting hopefully for baby Mason to arrive.  This is her third try at being a mother.  Just want Mason to know his granddad is out here on the road praying for him and his mother.  I know everything will be fine soon it's just really hard waiting and being away from home.

So until my next post which will be about being a grand father here's a pic of a truck I passed the other day with a strange sign or placard on the back if you can read it in the pic. (Click on pic to enlarge)

Trucking The Back 48

Couple of winters back I was leaving an rest area on I-40 in Alabama.  As I was gearing up I saw something laying in the middle of the entrance ramp ahead of me.  Coming up on it and over I saw it was a bird, and a flicker of it's wings, as my 18 wheeler passed over.  There had been several days of below freezing weather very unusual for the state.  By the time I got my rig to a stop and off the shoulder I was a few 100 yards down the road.  I let the air out of my brakes and started the walk back to see what it was and it's condition.  Coming up on it I noticed it appeared to be a baby owl.  I picked it up and it seemed to pass out in my hands.  I returned to the cab carrying it with both hand and laid it in the seat next to mine.

Later that day I tried dropping drops of water down it's throat but it remained in a coma state.  I knew one leg was broken by sight.  I was shocked the next morning when I saw it had come too.  At the next truck stop I got a subway made of turkey and tried feeding it.  Boy that hit the spot it loved turkey.

It traveled across the country with me for a couple of weeks and then it started flying around the cab and into the windows on the opposite side.  You know that owls are smart thing is way over rated.

So I knew I had to let it go.  At a rest area in Alabama not far from were I picked it up.  The look on the trucker's face next to me when I opened my window and released it out of my hands was something to see.