Heading South from Tuscaloosa, Alabama we pulled off the highway at a truck stop just over the border into Mississippi. With an old toothbrush and some biodiesel, I scrubbed the fuel filters, brushing out the particles of food from the metal screen. Alan spun off the final filter and replaced it with a fresh one. Nando grabbed the long handled squeegee/brush and wiped the gray highway dust from the windows. Jenny slept inside the bus, having just finished her shift behind the wheel.
“Whatcha got goin’ here?” a truck driver asked Fernando. The name “Joey” was stitched into the breast of his faded blue stripped shirt.
“We’re a sustainability education non-profit touring the country on this bus running on vegetable oil,” Nando answered pointing toward the bus with the dripping brush.
“You’re really running on vegetable oil?”
“Yeah, we use waste cooking oil from restaurants.”
“I want to buy y’all some dinner. They make a mean burger and fries here. The name’s Joey.”
“Fernando.” The two shook hands.
After waking Jenny for dinner and washing up we found Joey slowly carving away at his rib eye and picking at fries.
“Order what y’all like. The burgers and fries are good,” he repeated.
Yielding to local wisdom, we had Joey order four cheeseburgers with fries. We asked him about his route and his home over sodas. The waitress soon brought our dinner. Sinking my teeth into the burger I remembered I am an omnivore and how much I miss eating meat. Joey shared with Nando and Alan his experiences as a truck driver.
“Well I’m from ‘round the Gulf, least my folks are but I been haulin’ all over the country. My folks lost their home in the flood, but my wife and my step son live up north ‘round by here. My step son’s goin’ through a tough time. There ain’t much for him to do but get in trouble, and I’m tryin’ to help my folks out but they got me haulin’ so many miles I can’t be around as much as I’d like.”
“I appreciate what y’all are doing with global warming and all. We need to get off oil.” He said that he’d sure like to see some of those green jobs come to Mississippi.
His family lived in the Gulfport region and Katrina took their home. His parents were older and losing health and he worried for their well-being in a post-Katrina gulf region. After exchanging a few stories, Joey put down his fork and knife,
“You know, you guys are all right”, Joey stated. “What are your plans for Thanksgiving dinner? We aren’t terribly rich or anything, but my wife does cook a mean turkey and we’d love to have you all over.”
Before we could answer Joey’s generous and considerate invitation a lone uniformed soldier sat at the table next to us. The young man looked curiously at the odd assemblage of people at our table.
“Would you like to join us?” Jenny asked.“Sure,” he replied.
There were two conversations going at once. Alan and Nando spoke with Joey. The other conversation was between Jenny, Jake and me. Jake asked what we are up to and we told the BioTour story.
“Where ya headin’?” I asked.
“I’m driving back home to Alabama in a few days. I am driving my mom’s gas guzzler SUV, 93 octane. Gas is damn expensive!”
“Where have you served?”
“Most recently I was in Guam. I’m on leave right now. Don’t know where I am heading next. Maybe back to Iraq. I don’t know. What about you?”
“We’re heading to New Orleans from Tuscaloosa.”
“I served in New Orleans too, during Katrina. It was crazy.” He began telling the story in an excited mechanical fashion with the authoritative manner that I’d seen before when listening to soldiers tell their stories. “I was one of those guys on the bridge telling everyone to turn back. I’m sure y’all heard about it on TV.”
“What bridge was that?”
“It was a bridge New Orleans residents were trying to cross so they could get back into the city to search for their missing relatives. We were there to prevent them from going back. You know, I understand why they wanted to get over that bridge. I do. It’s family and they’re missing and possibly dead. But, if I let them go back in then there are more people missing and that makes our job harder. So I am on the bridge saying,” his tone became stern as if giving military orders, “‘I am here to keep you alive. I cannot let you cross this bridge.’” He paused for a moment. “New Orleans has gotten a lot better since I was there. People don’t often see the improvements. But, it’s still got some ways to go.”
He broke away from his story to take a sip from his root beer.
“What made you decide to join the military?” I asked.
“I was in ROTC when September 11th happened. Then one day, someone put a pipe bomb in school. Right then I enlisted.”“The guy who planted the pipe bomb, his mother was a Muslim,” he said with matter of fact tone, as if to imply, ‘Not all Muslim’s are terrorists, but…’
“I have done some reconnaissance missions for a few weeks at a time in Iraq. I don’t know if I’ll be ordered back or not.”
The conversation shifted to lighter topics. We all sat and talked life. During a pause in the conversation Jake put down his burger and said,
“You know, thirty-five years ago you wouldn’t have seen this: a soldier, a truck driver, and a bunch of environmentalists all sitting down together for dinner at a truck stop in Mississippi.”
‘It’s even a rare scene today,’ I thought to myself. I then looked to the table next to ours. There, a large black man, also a truck driver, sat alone. He kept his eyes away from our table and his demeanor sent a message of ‘I’m fine alone.’ Nando asked if he’d like to sit with us. He kindly refused. I got the feeling that some boundaries still remain strong in the South.
