Too Local: The Iowa 80 Trucker Jamboree
This is an article I talked so in depth about writing that Swiss had a Mandela Effect moment when I told him I didn’t write it because my little brother never sent me the pictures. And it is kind of painful yet joyous, so I avoided it. So, why not write it a year and a half too late sans pictures?
My dad was an over the road truck driver. He lived it, he loved it. His dad was a driver, one of his brothers was a driver. It was in his blood. In the mid 90s, after driving for almost 20 years he convinced my mother that being an owner operator (owning your own truck and leasing your services out) was a better option. His first truck he bought used from his boss at the time on a friends and family type of deal. That was the birth of 7K ent. My dad’s own trucking company.
As kids, my dad scheduled his loads (get your mind out of the gutter) so he could be home on weekends. Once a year each of us 5 kids would get a chance to spend a week on the road with dad. The business worked well enough that my parents felt confident to move on from the used truck they bought to trade it in and buy a brand new truck. After signing the loan my mom had to vomit; but they did it. My siblings and I continued to get our chance to travel with my dad. This was our life.
But, simmering underneath all of this was a time bomb. In 1988, before my dad had ever bought that first truck, he had been diagnosed with something we had never even heard of, Multiple Sclerosis. My parents understood their children were intelligent, and sat us down and talked us through it. We all accused each other that they would become the official ass wiper one day.
My dad was a truck driver, through and through. For depreciation reasons the family business traded in that first new truck for another and he kept driving. Then, on a run to the west coast (from Wisconsin), the left side of his body just stopped working. He was able to drive back, because he was good at what he did. But with stakes like that, it was decided he wouldn’t do long runs anymore. He started doing in-state local routes. When he couldn’t do that anymore he taught driving (and how to fake your log books). Then, when I was in Las Vegas for college he slipped and fell on ice at work. There was a blood clot, he was stuck in the hospital, immobile. Couple that with the MS, he declined quickly.
One thing I never realized until I grew up is, my dad was a nerd. He was always the Americana cowboy boot wearing former high school football player truck driver with a bald eagle screaming in the background. He was man’s man. When my older brother came home drunk without telling my parents where he had been my dad woke him up at 6am and made him chop wood (my parents were cool with underage drinking, they just wanted to know where you were, this is Wisconsin after all). When that same brother got pulled over in the family Suburban doing 100mph in a 65mph zone and my mom expected my dad to come in and help scold him he said ‘I didn’t think it could go that fast.’
But, my dad loved Star Trek. Growing up I didn’t realize that was a ‘nerdy’ thing until other kids started calling me a nerd for liking it to. We went as a family to two Star Trek conventions in our area in the 90s. The only movie my entire family went to see in the theater was Star Trek VI. The only movie my dad ever took me to, along with my little brother, was Star Gate. NERD!
My dad declined quickly after the blood clot. He couldn’t work and was mostly immobile. I dropped out of college to move home and help care for him. Once home I commuted 70 miles each way to complete my degree while caring for him. He died in 2014 due to an infection from his superpubic catheter. He survived a car crash with a train in his 20s to die from his own piss at 59.
My dad had always wanted to move to Montana for retirement. If he couldn’t retire there, he wanted his ashes spread there. So, with some of the life insurance money we bought an RV and we took the sons and daughters, now grandkids and packed in to the RV and drove to Montana to spread his ashes.
By 2024, that had been a decade ago. At the time of the first trip most of the grandkids were under 10. By 2024 they barely fondly remembered that trip. So, I devised a plan. It just so happened that the Iowa 80 Truck Stop, the self proclaimed Biggest Truck Stop in the World, was having their annual Trucker Jamboree the weekend of 10th anniversary of my dad’s passing. It’s like a car show for trucks. I also realized Riverside Iowa, the real town where the ‘fictional’ Captain James Tiberius Kirk will be born in 2233 was near by. The perfect fusion of my dad’s diametric reality. So we took the RV down to the local shop for repairs and started planning our trip a month in advance.
A few days before the trip we contacted the shop where we left RV because we hadn’t heard any progress reports. “Yeah, about that…we didn’t, um do that. We think it’s irreparable.” Thanks for letting us know in a timely fashion, jackass. But we soldiered on, and re-planned the trip with cars and hotels. Everyone had a grand time. One last hurrah for my dad. Two years later the Iowa 80 t-shirt my nephew owns is one of his favorite and his sister has an Iowa 80 bumper sticker on her car.
I don’t know if anyone will find this piece entertaining. But I found it cathartic. It’s not the entertaining travel piece I intended to write in 2024, but hopefully it makes you think about how you connect with the ones you love and how you live your life.
P.S. Swiss Servator adds; I really did think we had this piece before. While editing it, I realized that when CPRM and I were on the Zoom, we had looked up maps, and I have been to Iowa 80 many a time (my son went to U of Iowa). Hence my vivid recall of this story.
I don’t know if anyone will find this piece entertaining.
I loved it. I’m happy it was cathartic for you.
Your dad sounds like a great guy.
Seconded
This was a great story and don’t worry about no pics. It’s also a serious and very personal story, so I can understand the mental trickery, hesitation. And fuck those lazy, swindling RV layabouts, but great job truckin’ along Iowa 80. Big bonus for passing that legacy on.
Stargate is not a Perfect Movie. It just ain’t. But damn. I love the fuck outta that flick. It’s just so fun! Oddly(?), James Spader is kinda perfect in the lead role. Kurt Russell is.. well. Perfectly Kurt Russell. (Which is perfect in Stargate.)
Hear, hear!
On both counts.
Good job CPRM – I think it’s a great piece. My dad passed in 2021, 2 terrible years after a stroke, and my mom last summer. Still working things out. To echo your last sentence, lots of things nowadays make me think hard about those kind of connections, and what we do.
A wonderful story.
I have stopped at that truck stop. It’s the first convenient place to pull over and get the pistol out of the lock-box after driving through Illinois.
My father turned 90 last November. Still in good health and sharp witted. We play golf most weekends in the summer.
But I know the end is coming. I struggle to be prepared for it.
We are trying to get our affairs in order, to make the transition as easy as possible for the survivors. I had a serious talk with my kids last fall, they were grateful afterwards.
No one wants to broach the subject but it’s something that’s inevitable and shouldn’t be scary.
Been past the Iowa 80 many times, driving from Ohio to Cedar Rapids, but never stopped. Great story, CPRM.
Thank you, CPRM. I have MS, and this is both what I need to read, and what I fear.
Seriously fun story, your dad sounds amazing, and a nerd!
/One of us, one of us!
My mom was a nerd too.
That’s how I wound up at a midnight showing Star Trek: The Movie when I was 10 years old and fell asleep twenty minutes in.
20 minutes? That’s impressive stamina for that movie.
lol I was already a big fan of the show so I was enjoying the oohs and aahs from the viewers but yeah… the movie is deadly dull.
Born ’87, Mom took me to see Willow when I was 2. It’s still one of my favorite movies, but her decision was not a wise one. Ev the Toddler was both way too into it and was asking questions very loudly about everything.
“Who’s that guy? What’d that guy say when I said ‘Who’s that guy?'” IIRC, she had too much and took me home early. So much shit in that movie is just bang-on. As in, all of it. “I don’t love her! She kicked me in the face!” And Sorsha. Oh, my goodness my, oh me. She and Kilmer got married, I think.
Your Dad sounds like the guy every kid wants for a Dad.
I (we) can only hope my(our) kids will have memories and stories like this. In our later years my brothers and I would reminisce about some of the family memories.
Thanks, CPRM, for inviting us along.
Thanks for sharing. I’ve always enjoyed learning the backstories of the people here.
I moved to Tennessee in November to be closer to my parents. The long drive from Florida for holidays became intolerable. I’ve taken a lot of long road trips, and I don’t hunger for travel anymore.
They’re in their 70s now and have the health problems typical for that age. Every few weeks, they tell me someone they know died. All my grandparents made it past 70, 3 made it past 80, and 1 made it past 90 despite a lifetime of terrible habits, so I suspect that my parents, my siblings, and I will all live long.
If welding doesn’t work out for whatever reason, my back up plan is trucking as that is also taught at the local trade school. I don’t want to be a truck driver, but in the words of the cement mixing pelican from the Flintstones “eh, it’s a living”.
They are firm about not wanting to be in a nursing home, so I suppose at some point I will become the primary caregiver for one of them. I’m OK with that.
In American culture, living far from your parents is often seen as a mark of success. Historically, that view is an aberration. In a big country with easy transport, it’s understandable for people to spread out. The spirit of the pioneers lingers on. “Go west young man, go west.”
slogan from a 90s car commercial: life is a journey; enjoy the ride
“It’s not the destination, it’s the trip. Enjoy the scenery”
The cemeteries are full of graves that are never visited. My wife and I have been accepted into the UMinn Med School donation program. I’ve been bragging,
about finally getting into med school.
The Texas Body Farm is an intriguing option. Let detectives learn about human decay from you!
https://www.txst.edu/anthropology/facts/labs/farf.html
“I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck… maybe even a ‘recreational vehicle.’ And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that? No papers?”
I wanted to do all of that, and wound up doing none of it. Except the marrying a round American woman part.
Great post.
Those catheter infections are brutal. Every time my dad got one I thought it was the end. He always pulled through, so the cancer got him instead. Getting old sucks.
CPRM, thanks for a great personal story. The trip was a great way for the family to remember your dad. It makes me want to go see both of my parents this weekend.
My grandma was a huge horror movie fan. She would baby sit my sister and I. We would watch the late night movies, Twilight Zone, and Outer limits with her in the dark while my grandfather was out at the club all night. Later in life after she had a stroke and mild dementia (while in her later 80’s) I showed her how to find the Chiller channel at my parents house. She was happy as hell, but once in a while a very gory flick would come on and scare the great grand kids.
Ha that’s great. Yeah, my mom was a big horror fan in addition to sci-fi.
Like mother, like son I guess.
Nice story. My Dad passed almost 10 years ago. Still have conversations with him in my dreams.
It’s the Mengele effect.
/X-files
Yes, good story. Thank you. Hope writing it down helped. Remembering what he was like before things went south, his stories and adventures. his life experience. And thoughtful to have your grandkids on that trip to pick up more memories.
I had the great good fortune to not only been with my parents at the end but to have worked with them up until the end. Both were Greatest Generation, he was a bombardier, she was a Rosie the Riveter. Tremendous life experiences, travels, tales. He was 85 and she 95. she might still be here were it not for COVID.
My dad was also a truck driver. He took me on a few of his routes. I had to hide in the sleeper at weigh stations because kids weren’t allowed. He made me pee in orange juice containers. Can’t stop. won’t stop. Then he would throw the full orange juice containers at on coming traffic.
He broke the jaw of a dock manager because he wouldn’t unload my dad right away. He stole from his loads: we had a 5 year supply of soft soap and picknick french fries. He intentionally swerved into a disabled vehicle to take off their open door.
My parents divorced when I was in the 3rd grade. He has only recently tried to reconnect. My little brother is having none of it. I am more open, but taking it cautiously.
Pillsbury (the last company he drove for) gave me a $1,000 scholarship to college (not because he drove for them, but because I was such a great
wordsmith) bullshitter. It got me a semester.I realized I would have to work my way through engineering school.
Hrm. Secret no one knows: My biggest concrete goal is to outlive both of my parents. As you guys know, I play hard and in odd ways. I reckon a good hook to my jaw, an airbag, and all sorts of things out of my control, could suddenly punch my clock. If not, could easily send me to ‘Must wear helmet’ status.
I’m also kinda Wolverine and I don’t know how real those fears are. Uh. Well. Kinda best to play safe. *kicks pebble* (I’m not great at that.)
“Life’s a journey; Enjoy the ride.” <– That's kinda always been my thought. I only have so many trips 'round the sun and I don't believe in anything after. I wanna see and do as much as I can. So far, so good, in my own way. (There's much more I lack.) I figure now's the end of Act II. Kinda stuck in Carbonite right now, as it were. But Big Things loom. Would be lovely if MN Munchkin and I team up. But onward and upward. Tomorrow awaits.