I'd been driving long enough for the initial excitement of rolling forty tons of steel down the highway to fade. I'd learned that it's a darned lonely job, just you and the radio for company. This was one of my first trips to Philadelphia. Truckers call it 'Filthydelphia', and parts of it are just that, filthy. The same can be said for any major city, though; they all have their scummy side.
Part of the job is learning how to get from point A to point B. We had our trusty Rand-McNally road atlas, the CB radio, and our fellow drivers to rely on for directions. No GPS, no Google maps, no cell phone, just fly by the seat of your pants, your sense of direction, and the aforementioned resources.
It was late at night, pushing two a.m., and traffic was thin, almost non-existent. I was on I-276, getting close to my destination. My eyes were heavy, my back was tired and my ass was numb, just another long trip almost over. I was looking forward to some sleeper time, a chance to stretch out in my bunk. It was a deluxe two-inch thick mat laid flat on a steel deck perched over top of a very hot diesel engine. Only the finest for our nation's truckers.
Up ahead I could see tail lights, red as a pissed off possum's eyes in the dark. I was about a half mile back, business as usual, when I noticed that whatever it was, it's going pretty slow as I'm quickly overtaking the vehicle. As I got closer I could see it swerving from lane to lane. It's a big old black Cadillac, a major barge of a car. I backed off the fuel pedal, thinking it's a late bar patron slaloming his way home from a night at the taproom.
"Bet that sumbitch gonna have a big head in the mornin'," I muttered to myself.