About six years ago I went on a long road trip to St. Louis, Missouri to attend a Vietnam platoon reunion, and it didn’t take me long to get sick and tired of spending the nights in lonely motels and inns. They were always too expensive, never seemed to have a good view (sometimes they didn’t even have a window), and they either reeked of cigarette smoke or harsh cleaning chemicals (or both). So, by the time I reached Salt Lake City on my return home, I had definitely had enough of dragging my road-weary self and all my belongings in and out of boring, lonely, smelly hotel rooms.
It was just past 10 p.m. when I finally motored my little truck all the way down from the high and rugged mountains which surround the eastern side of Salt Lake City. The seemingly endless descent was a beautiful sight to behold, with the valley floor that supports Salt Lake City sparkling with countless city lights for as far as the eye could see. But rather than pull into yet another parking lot of yet another yucky hotel, I decided to just go ahead and drive through the huge, sprawling city and out into the peace and quiet of the Great Salt Lake Desert. Not only would that get me closer to home, but I figured it wouldn’t be too long before I came across another one of those rest areas which had dotted Highway 80 every 50 miles or so ever since I had been on it. But, by the time I finally found one, however, it was almost midnight, and I was glad that I had at least had the good sense to fill up my gas tank before I left Salt Lake City.
The plan was simple. I would just pull into the rest area, turn off the lights and the engine, sprawl out in the front seat of my truck, and call it a night. It only took me a few minutes, however, to realize that my little plan would have to undergo a few much-needed upgrades. To begin with, having never tried to sleep in my truck before, it soon became very apparent to me that there was no possible way anyone other than a child or a contortionist could “sprawl out” in the front seat (my truck has no back seat). I tried any number of positions, but each and every one of them ended up with some part of my body crying out for help. I did come close once, but it required sleeping on my side in the fetal position with my backside being dangerously exposed to the gear shift should I have a bad dream, so I decided my only real option was to try and get some sleep while sitting up behind the steering wheel. That worked for a while, in the sense that I did nod off for a few minutes, but when I quickly found myself awake again, there was yet another problem to deal with – I was sweating like a pig!
I had locked both of my doors and rolled up all the windows just before I closed my eyes, somehow forgetting that I was out in the Great Salt Lake Desert in the middle of the summer, and although it was past midnight, it was still mighty hot outside. So, since I couldn’t sleep, I decided to get out of my truck and stretch my legs a little bit by strolling up to the rest area’s bathroom. And it was there that I encountered a man I’ll call Big Ed, a very friendly and talkative truck driver who was just about to call it a night himself.
“That your little truck out in front?” asked Big Ed.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“I thought I saw you in it – you spending the night here too?” asked Big Ed, whose giant rig (with no doubt a spacious sleeping area inside of it) was parked out back of the restroom which we found ourselves sharing.
“That’s the plan,” I said. “I’m on my way back to California and I figured I would sleep a couple of hours in my truck and then get a real early start tomorrow morning. With a little luck, I think I can make it all the way home by late tomorrow night.” And then I found out that not only was Big Ed friendly and chatty, he was also an expert on rest area crime statistics and desert rattlesnakes.
“Well,” said Big Ed, “I’m on this road a couple of times most every week and if you want some friendly advice, sleeping all by yourself in that little truck of yours in a rest area out in the middle of this desert probably ain’t the smartest thing you’ll ever do in your lifetime.”
“How so?” I asked him with interest.
“Well,” explained Ed, almost with delight over getting a chance to further ruin my night, “there are some really bad characters that pass through these rest areas in the middle of the night, and they’ve been known to rob and shoot people in the process – sometimes just for the hell of it. In fact, some of them are on drugs and just plain nuts. Plus, this area is really heavy in rattlesnakes, and they’ve been known to find ways to get right inside of a little truck like yours. Oh, and you sure don’t want to be getting up in the middle of the night to take a pee behind those bushes near your truck cause I guarantee you there’s whole families of huge rattlers nesting in some of those things.”
On my way back to my truck, I wasn’t quite sure if Big Ed had been jerking my chain or just trying to be helpful, but what the heck, like Camus once said, “Life, the real living of it, belongs to those who are willing to risk,” so instead of returning to my suffocating, upright sleeping-not position behind the wheel of my truck, I made myself up a nice little sleeping area in the bed of my truck, sprawled out to my heart’s delight, and fell asleep looking up at more stars than a person could ever possibly count. And best of all, when I awoke to the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen, there wasn’t a deranged highwayman or angry rattlesnake anywhere in sight, reminding me once more that life is never as scary as we think it is, and that the real fun of living comes when we are not playing by all the rules.