Plumbing at Wal-Mart : How to Make Do When Your Internal Plumbing Gets Too Enthusiastic

My internal plumbing seemed to be over the worst of it, but I was still going to need a little extra help. Barely functional after spending three days virtually comatose at a truck stop in North Las Vegas, I asked our company dispatcher to find me a load that would bring me back toward Montana if she could.

I needed to stop by the clinic at Drummond--52 miles east of Missoula--to pick up a prescription for antibiotics as soon as possible. A Registered Nurse who happened to be my kid sister ran the clinic at that time, and our family doctor stopped in a couple of mornings a week to take care of those folks who needed his attention.

The dispatcher, Peggy, found me a load that would work (Thanks!). It was time to head back up I-15.

Which was slightly easier said than done. Pam used the plumbing in the truck--

Oh. Right, you probably don't know about that. See, my girl is a true road warrior. She's not about to cost her driver precious time by demanding he pull over at every rest stop in sight. Instead, she took one of those giant foam insulated mugs and used it to pee in.

What? No, it didn't stink up the cab--not with a piece of duct tape sealing over the hole designed for the straw.

No, no, you take the whole lid off when you use the thing! Duh!

Anyway, that was all the plumbing we had inside the cab. She took care of business...standing up...while the truck was moving...and then promptly went seriously to sleep in the sleeper, the first time she'd been able to relax in four days. She'd pulled me through, we were on the move with a load and a destination; time to snooze.

It was now up to me.

Anybody who's ever piloted an eighteen wheeler over the highway knows that time is money. Literally, since most of us are paid by the mile. Time is also your job or lack thereof; be late on too many deliveries and you'll find yourself updating your resume.

There are theoretically a limited number of hours any driver can drive without pulling over to get some rest. Find me an experienced driver who believes that...and I'll find you a driver who's either lying like a rug or stuck with a company using electronic logbooks and barely earning minimum wage. If that.

Hammer time.

We needed to be in Drummond by the time the clinic opened in the morning. Pam slept. On up through Utah we went, then into Idaho. Deep in the night, snow coming down, Pam still sleeping and me reaching the end of my tether.

Rest stop, central Idaho. The plumbing in the restrooms is frozen solid. I give the facility a little something more to freeze and return to the truck, set the alarm clock, grab one hour and twenty-two minutes in the driver's seat with the engine running to keep us from freezing up like the plumbing in the restroom.

Onward, into Montana. Pam still sleeping.

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Success, sort of. It was early Monday afternoon when we left the southwest with that last load and Tuesday morning when we stopped in Drummond, Montana, to pick up the antibiotics--which my sis and the doctor had waiting for me. The plumbing in the clinic was not frozen up; Pam and I both took full advantage of the flush toilet with the nice warm seat.

It was now Tuesday evening. The load had been delivered (for the life of me, I can't remember where) and it was time to go get another one. The deadhead route took us through Spokane, Washington--wait! Stop! Must. Get. Antidiarrheal. Stuff. NOW!

Just entering the Spokane area, we spot the miraculous lights of a Wal-Mart from the freeway. It's always scary, wheeling off into streets which may harbor tight, tricky traps designed to jam your 72-foot-long tractor-trailer combo in a corner from whence there be no escape--but Wal-Mart layouts tend to be relatively trucker friendly. I leave Pam in the rig wa-ay out at the edge of the parking lot with the engine running (in winter, the engine is always running) and hike to the Lights of Salvation.

Immodium A-D, generic form, cheap enough to get a lot...and the very first month this product had become available.

Thanks are given. My internal plumbing is properly corked, the antibiotics are firing up their magical microbe-killing skills, and away we go.

Never mind that after courting Death a few days ago, I'm as weak as the proverbial kitten and have slept precisely one hour and twenty-two minutes in the past 36 hours. It's all good, right?

Stop to eat?

No. Snack from the in-cab stores, behind the wheel, on the move. We have yet to loop down into Idaho at Lewiston-Clarkston, then back up to a tiny town to pick up a load of dried peas in the a.m. Early in the a.m. We can sleep when we're dead.

Which shouldn't be long now.

I take a wrong turn. This is an unfamiliar road, at least in the snow at night. Pam suspects that if I continue on this wrong road for another mile, I'll hit an intersection that will put us right back on the proper course. She turns out to be right, but do I trust that? I do not.

Instead, I whip a U-turn, whoop-te-do down a sort of unpaved frontage road that passes in front of a farm house...and spin out in four inches of slush with ice on the bottom. Time to chain up.

Which would be no big deal, but remember, I'm not up to my usual strength. In fact, I can barely lift the relatively lightweight chains to throw them over the drive tires.

They don't have to be tight--they'll be coming back off a hundred yards or so down the line--but they do have to hook. One won't. I don't dare let Pam help; with her disabilities, that's asking for serious trouble. I struggle to hook that final chain for...long minutes. Not sure how many.

Then: Yet another miracle. The farmer sees our problem. It's around 8:30 p.m. when he exits his home with a flashlight, coming to see if he can help. Something about him holding the light and being there to care gives me enough support that I make one mighty, final effort, and the chain is latched.

Off we go.

When I pull the chains, I relieve myself in the snow. Outdoor plumbing.

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There are no more wrong turns, but this late at night, finding our shipper's facility is not easy. Not even in a town this small. The layout is weird. There are hills, and snowdrifts, and I'm not sure that wasn't Bigfoot that just ran across the street under the streetlight.

Ah. Found it. I must have the truck here when they open in the morning.

But there is no place to park. We must hunt.

Across from a grocery store some three miles distant, uphill and across town, we find a place to hunker down. I've not had to chain up again, despite the snowy streets, and that's a good thing. We are parked in front of a small feed store, a ranch supply outfit. They'll smack us silly if we're here when they show up for work in the morning, but we'll be gone long before that.

We both sleep fitfully in the seats for nearly four glorious hours.

Five-forty a.m. Time to roll. Turning back onto the street, the truck spins out and I chain up.

Back at the shipper's facility, I attempt to pull through the alley, discover the turn is just a little too tight to be possible. While backing around, I stick the rig firmly in the snow. Twenty minutes later, we're clear of the drift, but the single chain that flew off during the process is never found.

By us, anyway. Someone no doubt found it it the spring after the snow melted.

We get positioned, the shipper shows up, we get our load and head for southern California. We haven't begun to plumb the depths of what a trucker goes through on a daily basis; this has been simply "same stuff, different day".

Truckers are plumb crazy.