The High Sierra

  Insterstate 80 passing through The High Sierra with its high country snows...

  You’d have to hang around her a bit to learn that she ain’t from around here. 

  You might think that at first, that she’s a New Mexican, but she’s not, she’s a Californian, a northern Californian.  She’s from the land of high mountains, tall pines, deep snows and blue lake waters.

  And if you read her stuff on The Facebook she’d like to go back, back to around Lake Tahoe.  I reckon things made more sense to her there than Albuquerque.

  The High Sierra…what with miles and miles of mountains and pines it’s the kind of place that appeals to my inner Boy Scout.  But after my “Florida adventure” I ain’t pulling up my roots no more to go to a place where I don’t know a soul and I have to start all over again.

  I’ve passed through the High Sierra when I was a trucker.  About all I ever knew about it was that Lake Tahoe was up there and the story of The Donner Party.

  The Donner Party was a bunch of folks in a wagon train headed to California in the winter of 1846.  They got stuck in deep snow, I mean probably 8 or 12 feet of the stuff, ended up snowbound in the mountains and ate their dead to survive.

  I passed through the High Sierra westbound on Interstate 80 back in the early summer of 2002.  Westbound means a long downhill grade, about 25 miles I recall, all downhill, one long downhill ride from the tops of the Sierra Nevada to the lowlands around Sacramento.  Did I write the word “downhill” enough?

  I drove an 18-wheeler for a year.  It’s something I always wanted to do.  I saw the country from coast to coast, I didn’t get to see the far northeast like Maine and Vermont nor the far northwest like Washington, Idaho, those states.

  I grew up in the mountains so I had heard many a tale over the years of truckers losing their brakes going down long mountain grades.  Who knows the exact cause of those wrecks but it was said it was usually an overconfident or inexperienced driver who took the grade too fast, lost his brakes and went rocketing down the mountain and off the road. 

  Sometime when I was a kid trucker escape ramps appeared alongside steep mountain grades…usually a bit of road engineered right up a mountainside.  With the up angle and the soft bed of sand or gravel they spread over the ramp that would “safely” stop a runaway truck.  I put “safely” in quotation marks because I drove an 18-wheeler off-road one time, it was not a smooth ride.  I could see that if a trucker had to use one of those ramps he’d get the hell knocked out of him inside that cab, kinda like an egg-beater. 

  In the mountains you could usually tell a trucker was courting trouble when you could smell the hot brakes, a hot metal smell.  My dad said it was hot asbestos, the stuff on brake pads, but I never knew that for sure.

  So I had been warned about the long downhill stretch of I-80 and a section of I-5 heading up the Pacific Coast called “The Grapevine.”  Use your “jake brake” and take your time.

  The jake brake is also known as an “engine retarder.”  It makes that loud noise you hear the big trucks make as some of them slow down for a stop.  It’s because of the loud sound that towns put up signs that say “TRUCKERS DON’T USE YOUR JAKE BRAKES AROUND HERE” or something like that.  The jake brake slows the truck down without using the brakes by cutting engine compression. 

  So there I was riding through the High Sierra of Nevada and California back in June of 2002.  Mountain tops, tall pines and snow.

  Snow in June.

  I thought it was really cool, remnants of the previous winter’s drifts.

  Snow in June.

  I was in the company of my co-driver Frank, a dude from the Caribbean country of Trinidad.  Frank was at the wheel as we rolled into California and began the long roll down into Sacramento. 

  After seeing enough of the tall pines and mountaintops I decided to have a doze and went back to my bunk.

  Something woke me just minutes later.  It was the sense that we were going too fast and Frank was braking a lot.

  “Use the jake brake Frank,” I said loudly from my bunk.

  “I will not use the jake brake,” said Frank very matter of factly.

  “Use the jake brake Frank,” I said.  I read in one of those self-help books years ago when I was in college that you keep repeating your point to get it across to dumbasses like Frank.  Nowadays there’s Dr. Phil and the internet.

  “I will not use the jake brake,” said Frank.  “It is illegal.”

  “WHAT?” I said.  I got up, went up front and buckled in to the passenger seat.

  “What the hell do you mean it’s illegal?”

  “There was a sign back at Truckee that said ‘USE OF ENGINE BRAKE PROHIBITED,’” Frank said.

  “Frank,” I said as calmly as I could, “That was for the town of Truckee.”

  “The sign was at the state line, it is for the whole state of California.”

  “Frank, the sign is at the state line because Truckee is at the state line,” I said.  Then I looked in the rearview mirror down at the wheels.  Wisps of smoke were blowing out from them.

  “Frank, you’re burning up the brakes.  Look in your rearview mirror down at the wheels, look at the smoke.  USE THE DAMN JAKE BRAKE.”

  As we thundered downhill from the top of the Sierra Nevada Frank looked in his rearview mirror.

  “That is engine exhaust,” said Frank.  “I will not use the jake brake.”

  “Pull over Frank.”

  Frank looked at me.

  “Pull the rig over, Frank.  I’m gonna show you something.”

  Frank pulled over.

  I got out and motioned for Frank to come over to my side.

  All the tires had smoke coming from them.  And there was that hot metal smell.

  “Is that still exhaust Frank?”  I wanted to call him DUMBASS but discretion is the better part of valor as they say, or whatever they say.  “And does that SMELL like exhaust?”

  “Okay,” said Frank.  “I will use the jake brake.  But if I get a ticket for using it I must insist you pay it.”

  “There’s not going to be a f#@king ticket, Frank.”

  We got back in the rig and rolled on down the road.

  A couple of miles further there was a big sign, “MANDATORY BRAKE CHECK AHEAD.”

  “Be sure to pull over up ahead, Frank.”

  “I will not be pulling over, it is a waste of time.”

  “Frank, pull over at the mandatory brake check.”

  “I will not.”

  “Frank, let me tell you what will happen if you don’t pull over at the mandatory brake check…just beyond the mandatory brake check there will be a California Highway Patrol dude waiting and if you breeze right by that mandatory brake check he will PULL YOUR ASS OVER AND WRITE YOUR ASS A TICKET.”

  “How do you know this?”

  This was a phrase Frank asked me often, particularly when it came to life in the USA…remember, this is a dude from an island off the coast of South America.

  “From living in the good ol’ USA.  If they say something’s MANDATORY they will most likely enforce it in some way.”

  The mandatory brake check was a pull-off on the interstate.  No one else was there. 

  Frank pulled over.

  And he sat.

  “Frank, get the hell out and walk around the rig and get back in.”

  Frank gave a huff, opened his door, got out and walked around the rig.  He got back in and we took off again.

  Just about a half-mile beyond the mandatory brake check a cop had an 18-wheeler pulled over.

  “See?” I said.  “There’s a dude who blew right through the brake check and look what happened to him.”

  “You do not know this.”

  “No Frank, but there’s a pretty damn good chance that’s exactly what happened.”

  And so we rolled on in to Sacramento without hardly saying another word to each other.

  Frank and I remained co-drivers until later that summer.  I got tired of his bull-headedness, like the time in Ohio when I woke up to find us parked in the parking lot of a highway porno shop, Frank insisting it was his “right as a man” to stop in such a place even though the company we drove for was notorious for being owned by a devout Christian. 

  “Frank, can’t you just hear that phone call?” I said when he got back in the rig.  “Some busybody calls Chattanooga headquarters and says, ‘You’re not a Christian company.  I saw one of your trucks parked at a porno shop in Ohio.  Here’s that truck’s number…”

  I also got tired of him getting us lost and him waking me up during my sleep time saying, “Grant, wake up, we are lost.”

  Years later, just for the hell of it, I looked him up on the internet.

  Frank was promoted to trainer in the company.

  I leaned back in my chair and laughed out loud.

                                                                -30-