Pop’s story entertained the drivers spending a rainy day indoors at Red Elam’s Abilene trucking lot. You can’t dispatch trucks to move a drilling rig when the farmer’s field turns muddy. Fellow drivers called him ‘Pop’ because he was the oldest.
Pop also had logged more interstate miles—he once drove his truck twice-a-week between Texarkana and El Paso. Back when Pop said he had a wife in both cities. Back when Pop had a wreck at Big Springs, sorta halfway in between.
Highway patrol notified Pop’s wife in Texarkana.
Big Spring hospital called Pop’s wife in El Paso.
“When I woke up they were both standing at the foot of my bed, ‘aglaring’ at each other and me.”
“What did I do? Closed my eyes, went back to sleep.”
Somehow the youngest daughter at our house heard the tale. And remembered in college, after she was rushed to the hospital for a ruptured appendix.
When she awoke two law students stood at the end of her hospital bed. Both members of her church group, ‘beaus’ she dated who didn’t know they had a rival, they were glaring at each other.
“I remembered the story Pop told,” Mickey said. “Closed my eyes and went back to sleep.”
