Wisconsin or Bust

This is not my first rodeo. But if I get through this one intact, it’ll be on a wing and a prayer. This time, it’s the Super Bowl of moves. Go big or go home, as they say. I’m already going big and hoping to find a home. No matter what, a huge change is coming. Of course, I’d rather conquer this quest and be completely triumphant, but it’ll likely be a pyrrhic victory if it’s anything less than what I’m hoping for. My plan will succeed if I reach my final destination, and a new life will begin where I had it planned. If I don’t, a new life will still begin, only somewhere unfamiliar to me. This time, it’s for keeps; there’s no messing around. All bets are off now; where I break down is where I’ll have to live. I only need to make it west of Buffalo, and I may be fine. If my truck doesn’t get me that far, I’ll still be in trouble, only worse. New York is nice, but I wouldn’t want to live there, Buffalo, either. There’s nothing wrong with Buffalo, but you couldn’t pay me enough to live there. And besides, they get about forty feet of snow every winter. I’m all set with that. Thanks, but no thanks.

 I’m aiming for Wisconsin, and their winters are probably worse than in New York, but I have connections there. I'm leaving New England because I needed some Midwest living, new people, new places, a different time zone, family, and jobs. I haven’t had any work in my hometown in the last six months. It wasn’t because I didn’t have any marketable skills. I did; there just weren't very many jobs. The economy was in the tank. Six months without money coming in is a long time. But it’s enough time to get your new Firebird repossessed. It’s plenty of time for the bank to foreclose on the mortgage. And it’s more than enough time to lose your job and family to leave you out in the cold. I grew to believe that the only people who say money isn’t everything are the ones who have plenty of it. I’m not one of those guys. I’m one of the guys who struggled to save his life and all that he had, just to lose it all in the end. After that, there was nothing else left to do except drink myself to death, maybe, or pull up my bootstraps and get the hell out of Dodge. I chose the latter, hence my quest to find a new life elsewhere.

It was 1991, and I was fresh out of the service after Desert Storm. I came back to New England with high hopes for the future, but it didn’t work out that way. Troops deployed on active duty were supposed to get their old jobs back after they returned home. That works if the company is still in business. Mine wasn’t. I ended up working at a local bakery delivering bread part-time until that petered out to only a few hours a week. Then it got ugly pretty fast. A few months of missed payments on the house gets the bank mad at you, so they take it away if you can't pay for it, go figure. The same goes for the car payments. I only had four left until I got the title, but they took the car anyway.

My family, well, she was my girlfriend of ten years, not my wife yet, long story. She had a few kids from a previous marriage that I helped raise alongside her, with me as a daddy figure, but we were a family. She wasn’t working either, and her hunk-a-junk car just about lived at the shop. We argued about money, my stubborn personality, and how I had changed since I returned from overseas with PTSD. That only lasted a while. Then we decided to split up. That one hurt, but what was I to do? I always thought we should have been able to work that one out, but I guess a year apart was too much for her. We now had no money, no house, and no reliable way to get around. It turns out that she met Jodie while I was away. Anybody who’s ever been in the service knows what I mean by that. She and the kids returned home to her family, but my family wasn’t around. So, I decided to go where they were, on a wing and a prayer.

I bought an extremely used pickup truck with borrowed money, which became my home. When I say it was used, trust me, it was. It was a 1978 GMC Sierra, which is what the emblems said, but it was just a thirteen-year-old bucket of rust with a hundred fifty thousand miles on the odometer. I felt like I needed to update my Tetanus shot just looking at the ugly thing. A three-speed on the column, with no heat, worn shocks, and holes in the floor so big you could put your leg through them. The body was practically falling off the frame, barely holding on by a thread. It came with an old metal cap on it, also rusted, so I could hide my stuff from prying eyes. But when you own a truck like that, there aren’t many prying eyes, maybe the occasional onlooker curious enough to see what kind of hobo was lurking inside. It wasn’t worth the two hundred bucks I paid, but it was all I could afford then. Another hundred dollars into it made it somewhat drivable. It would’ve never passed a state inspection, but I knew a few people in low places, and before I knew it, I had an inspection sticker stuck to the windshield (Shhh... don't tell). My rustic ride was decorated with O.D. green wool blankets I had from the Army to cover holes in the floor. My only heat source came from cans of Srerno, which did little more than steam up the windows. Winter in New England is pretty cold, and the Sterno helped, but it wasn’t perfect; nothing like the fireplace I had in the house.

I had a spot to park in the woods out of the public eye behind the airport where a plane, just months before, brought me back from Southwest Asia. I was part of a team then, but here, now, I was on my own. I never imagined it could happen to me, but I became a homeless Vet. I was thankful to have the truck, however. At least it kept me out of the wind and the freezing temperatures at night as I tried to sleep in its cab. I’d been through worse, but it was still a sad situation to find myself in after living through a war. I woke up alone in the truck on Christmas morning and decided enough was enough. Sprawled across the driver's bench, which I used for a bed, I had no choice but to sleep in my clothes for warmth. I used a small gym bag topped with a sweatshirt for a pillow propped up against the passenger door on which I rested my head. I was tired and stiff and in need of a shower. If I were lucky enough, I’d find some food. My holiday meal would likely be another gas station hot dog, and wash it down with Mountain Dew or bottled water, and I’d be fine. That’s still more than some people have. There’s always someone worse off.

That’s the day I decided to leave on my trek across the country for a bit of goodwill and a job. Who knows what else I might find out there? It would be a new life where no one knew me or knew of me except my family, who offered me the chance to stay as long as I needed. My family in Wisconsin consisted of my mother and father, that’s it. But I didn’t tell them I was coming when I decided to do it. I didn’t know if I’d make it. If my rust bucket broke down in Buffalo, Cleavland, or wherever, that’s where I’d have to live. However, I considered that if I didn’t find a vehicle, I’d pack my duffle bag and hike it the whole way. That’s pretty risky, but I would have done it anyway. That’s how badly I wanted to change my situation.

 I said my goodbyes to some friends in the days leading up to my departure. I also wanted to say goodbye to my now ex-girlfriend and the kids, but they were nowhere to be found, so I never got to. That bothered me because I wanted to hug the kids one last time and explain what I was doing and why. Cell phones were not a thing back then, and neither of us had one, so that option was not an option. They weren’t home, so there was nowhere to call anyway. I drove around town but never found them anywhere I thought they might be. I had to leave. I couldn’t take another night in the woods. So, I left. But before I hit the highway, I had to stop by a friend's house where he was storing the rest of my Mom and Dad’s belongings they left behind when they moved to Wisconsin a few years ago. All of them, their most precious family heirlooms, they couldn’t take on the plane. That was a hard visit with him.

We’ve known each other since we were kids. We were close back in the day, but life got in the way as we grew up, and we didn’t get to talk as much as before. Between the jobs, wives, kids, school functions, and me being gone for a year in Iraq, which didn’t help, we went our own ways but stayed in touch whenever we found the time. You know how it goes. We had to do that adult thing. I wished I was better at it, but here I was, saying goodbye to my old friend to start life over again. He and his wife helped me load the truck, talked about some old times, and had a final beer and a few laughs before I hit the road. I’ll miss him, but even he was not enough to keep me here. There was nothing more I could do. One final check around town to find my family was a bust. They just seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. Why now? Why tonight of all nights?

The back of my pickup was a lot more full than I had expected it to be. There was not much room left for anything else. My stuff barely took up much more space than a single suitcase and my duffle bag. After my savings ran out, I sold most of it to have money to survive on. With no other money coming in, I had to do something, so… It’s only stuff. And I figured if God wanted me to have more stuff later, he’d make sure I had the means to get it. It did hurt my heart to see most of my belongings gone for good, with no way to get them back again. But I kept a few precious items I couldn’t part with, mainly from the Army, a few childhood memories, and a bag of civilian clothes. The rest got sold, or I left with my ex. Like I said, it’s only stuff. None of it mattered anymore. This life is over now; it's time to find a new one. As much as I hate to lose it, it’s my time to go.

It was after 11:30 PM when I finally got on the highway. It’s best to leave later at night because there’s little to no traffic, primarily big rigs. You can travel a good distance in a short time; I’ve done it a million times. I’ve been a CDL driver for over forty years today, but back then, I had been driving commercially for ten years. I was educated in the Army Corps of Engineers and stayed with them for eleven years. But I also had some serious cabinetmaking skills, which helped me when I transitioned to making furniture. I had two careers simultaneously, which took up most of my time, but I always had plenty of money. I had all the little luxuries of life that any humble man could want who was never at home to enjoy it or the free time to spend it. I was working all the time. I wasn't wealthy by any definition, but I did okay and was happy. I was doing what I loved and getting paid to travel. I had money in the bank, bills always paid, a house, a new car, and a mattress so comfortable I could fall asleep looking at it. Life was good until it wasn’t. And just like that, with the blink of an eye, it’s all gone. Suddenly, I find myself driving an old beat-up rust bucket of a truck in search of a way out of the life that failed me so that I could begin again somewhere new. Everything I owned in the world, including everything my parents left behind, fit in the back of my ride. Life is funny. One minute, you're on top of the world, and the next minute, it's passing you by. What are you gonna do? Some days, you're the dog, and other days, you're the hydrant.

I had seven states and 1200 miles to travel. Halfway through the second one, the truck started having problems. It ran fine, but I couldn’t reach highway speeds; thirty-thirty-five at best. It started out well enough, but the further I got, the slower it got. So, I hobbled into a rest area and parked next to a dumpster. Without knowing what was wrong with the truck, I figured the weight I was hauling was too much for it to handle. Now, I had a hard choice to make. Choose what items to toss into the dumpster or end my trip right there in the parking lot. I was determined to succeed on my journey, so giving up so soon was not something I considered. I had to make it further. Buffalo was still another three hours west, and I had to get past there to have a chance of finding work. At this point, Wisconsin seemed like a pipe dream.

I took everything out of the truck and stared at the pile before me. I started to feel the effects of being at my wit's end. Some items I had to keep, like my mom's century-old cedar chest, passed down to her from her mom, and her mom before her. It was filled with her and Dad's memories from when they were first married, her wedding dress, love letters from Dad when he was away in the service, and my sister's stuffed bear. She passed away years ago when she was just a toddler. The bear was her favorite toy. Many other memories are contained in the chest, which they entrusted to me for safekeeping and to bring to them one day. It was all the stuff they couldn’t bear to part with when they moved. Like me, they, too, had to sell nearly all of their possessions to have money to get by until they found work. I knew they wanted their most cherished heirloom back as much as they wanted their family whole again. I made it my job to make sure it happened.

I couldn't throw away my dad's guitar or his Navy uniform. He used that guitar when he played with The Dukes of Dixieland band in New Orleans before he and my mom married. He was a musician at heart. His uniform held a lot of sentimental value from his time in Korea. My mom's electric keyboard was another precious item the dumpster would never see. Dad got her that because we couldn’t afford a real piano, and Mom loved to play. A pile of books from my parent's library took up a lot of space and weight in the back of my rust bucket. I went through each title and had to determine which ones to keep. A couple of suitcases of clothes and other items took up more space and weight.

I made the difficult choices and reloaded the truck, trying to keep most of the weight off the rear axle. Now, I needed to rest, so I climbed back into the cab out of the cold, sprawled across the bench for a nap, and prayed that my actions would help get me out west. When I woke up, the sun was shining; I made the sign of the cross and left. I could get the truck to go forty-five miles an hour now, tops, but that was just enough to keep me from being a hazard to the other vehicles out there, so I continued. I prayed through every state, freezing my tail off as I went. I reached the Wisconsin border two days later. Having never been there, I still found the correct exit and made it into my new town without a hitch. Oddly enough, my route took me right to my parents' doorstep. I didn’t take a shower or shave for four days, so I stayed in a hotel the first night to freshen up before I called to tell them I was there. On my way through town, I bounced over a set of railroad tracks, causing the rear leaf springs to break off in pieces. There was no bounce left in the truck, and it was at the hotel that I broke down. I made it. Let the new life begin.