Back in the Day...

Old Pictures..

I was digging around in some old files the other day and I came across this.  This brings back some memories.  Not the big burger (it was called "the amigo)...but the tone of the times.

Back in the day things were different.  I envy those old farts.  I'm JUST old enough that I barely missed out on it.  

I'm an introvert and an anti-social hermit so it's my own damn fault...BUT.  Sometimes I feel like the little kid standing out in the snow looking in the window at the other kids at the High School Prom.

Back in the last millenium the last truckin company I was leased to was a whole nuther animal from what we have now days.  They worked hard and they played hard.  No one got hurt.  The cops knew this and pretty much left everyone one alone. In fact some cops acted like real people and the old truckers kinda liked them.

Back in the day that truck terminal off of Sheldon Road in East Houston was known as "Party Central".  All the old truckers would try their damndest to arrange to wind up there for the weekend.  It's a frickin HUGE lot.  I"ve seen fifty trucks parked there.  

Come Friday night the party would start.  They had a permanent Bar-B-Que Grill set up under the old oak tree.  (frickin' HUGE tree)...They grill dead animal flesh and drinks lots and lots of beer.  The bathrooms was right there and when people were done they'd go sleep in their trucks.

.......and then there were they guys who wanted something stronger than beer.  They went to the bar.  The bar was just down the road a bit near Ernies (the place where I got the Amigo Burger), so they'd walk.  The old truckers (young guys in their prime at the time)  would drop a wad of money drinking beer, flirting with the girls and having a high old time.

Come quitting time they'd all walk back to the yard...as a group.  Truckers ain't stupid (well not REALLY stupid) so they formed a line along side the road. They walked on the shoulder between the bar ditch (actually a freaking CANAL back then) and the blacktop.  There must have been a dozen of them...

...........with a police escort.

That's the deal.  Back then cops were real people.  They took their motto serious "to serve and to protect".  Friday nights they "served and protected" some drunk-ass truckers by giving them a police escort for their quarter mile walk back to the yard.

I can just see...in my mind....a dozen or so truckers...hootin' and holering...and staggering toward the yard.  One behind the other, forming a conga line...with cop car behind them driving slow...with it's lights on...alerting traffic.

"Ya'lls is almost at the gate now drivers...it's time  to be thinking about turning.." the cops would say over their PA systems from inside thier car.  Nice of them....it's easy to miss a turn when it's that drunk out.

There was an alligator (or more) that lived in that Canal.  It'd swim along beside the Conga Line every Friday. It like the singing maybe?  

ONe day a driver fell in the canal.  Three more jumped in to help.  They was afraid FOR the poor old gator...they didn't want it to be traumatized.

The cops finally threw them a rope...or something...and drug em all out.  I dunno how bad it shocked the old gator...

All gone now.

Cops are the enemy...Ernies is closed.  The ditch is almost dried up and the Bar-B-Q grill is gone.

Dreams of a finer time...