Danger on Beaver Lane
By Erik "The Professor" Koenig
Dangers by their very nature are concealed surreptitiously. Once these dangers are discovered by poor happenstance, then the effected parties or survivors, through their altruistic nature embodying every nuance of the Golden Rule, endeavor to warn other more fortunate individuals. You can rest assured that for every warning sign or label there was a poor soul who found out the hard way about the very specific nature of that danger.
As a long haul trucker moving through all the many byways of this great country it has been enlightening and sometimes entertaining to witness the varied road signs erected to warn errant travelers of specific dangers. Some signs indicate a danger that a reasonable person would view as laughable and obvious. But rest assured it has been posted because somebody, probably voted "least likely to have a brilliant idea", has passed through that area and been seriously injured, maimed or tragically killed doing something so inherently stupid that it staggers the imagination. Let us take for example a particular stretch of highway between Little Rock, Arkansas and Texarkana, Texas. As I drove southwest down the blacktop one fine autumn day about ten years ago, I saw that I was entering a construction zone. In Arkansas, which is infamous for its highway construction, they engage in warning motorists with optimistically cheerful signs. They tell you how your tax dollars are being wisely spent and how the workers appreciate all the courtesy and attention you extend to them by driving safely through their work zone. I know they must appreciate it because as I drive through slowly, weaving in and out of lane markers, barricades, flashing orange signs, I see the workers as they lean diligently on their shovels and watch one guy who I assume must be the most junior state worker sweating in a ditch. It appears that they are making constructive commentary as they look up and smile when I pass by. Even the inevitable highway patrol officer, dutifully parked somewhere in the construction, is polite as I nod in his direction. He either was waving his book to indicate a pleasant greeting or he was brushing an annoying fly that dared to interrupt his latest spy novel with persistent circling around his "Smokey the Bear" campaign hat.
This particularly beautiful afternoon, the construction was closing down all the lanes running in my direction to one very narrow lane. To reinforce the idea that everybody had to move over, the orange rubber cones turned into orange barrels with reflective tape to insure their visibility and they were filled with water to discourage drivers from knocking them over. Then as all the lanes merged it became written in stone, literally. Concrete barriers lined the lane marker. As I drove the requisite speed, I had to use extreme caution that my bumper didn't get too close to the barrier, because my right side tires were off the road and asphalt. Since they were in the dirt at the edge of the road it was shimmying my front end around alarmingly. I geared down again and up ahead I saw an orange construction sign off to the right side of the road. Since a tractor-trailer rig is so wide naturally truckers are very conscious and concerned of how close things get on the other side of their rig also. As I approached the sign I stared in disbelief at what the sign said. In big, bold, distinct letters it read "Do Not Pass". "What?" I thought. "You've got to be kidding." There wasn't enough room between the concrete barriers and the drainage ditch on the side of the road for one vehicle my size. Why in the world would they think they had to erect such a sign? Then I started laughing when I remembered what an old "yard dog" had told me once. "Son," he said "they only put up crazy signs because people have done even crazier things and they have to try and get through to them before they do something else stupid." As I chuckled in disbelief I remembered an incident that reinforced his words and humbled me somewhat since I had fallen into the trap of following a stupid thought process and almost had an accident over it.
A few years before this, I was travelling in a very liberal state up north when I had an experience with a road sign that was intended just for me. It was in the middle of summer and as a flat bed operator who loves being outside it was the perfect warm day. I had my window rolled down and I was in no real hurry to get to the shipper to pick up my load. It was a Saturday, and although the factory I was headed towards was only open until one o'clock, I was on time and looking forward to a wonderful leisurely weekend. The load I was picking up wasn't going to be hauled by me to its final destination. Instead, I was just picking it up and then taking it to a truck stop fifty miles away. The driver who was going to meet me to exchange loads was using this load to get home, where he would take some time off. The load he was bringing me was headed way out west and had some wonderfully long miles attached to it. However, I wasn't expecting him until Monday afternoon at the earliest as he still had to pick up my load at the company's drop lot. Since I had just talked to my dispatcher, I knew he hadn't picked it up yet and so I would spend my weekend driving a grand total of fifty miles and then sitting around doing laundry, getting my truck washed, oil changed and just run-of-the-mill "around the house" chores. That was okay though because I knew that once I got my load it was going to be some very hard driving to make my delivery on time. It would be best if I just soaked up this relaxing day while I could. I've always been a firm believer in "stopping to smell the flowers."
As I ambled along the road, I glanced down at the handwritten directions clamped to my dashboard. It took some work deciphering my own script while maintaining a visual of the road. I had copied them down when I called the shipper for an appointment. The directions were a little bit unusual. If I understood the warehouse manager correctly, I was going to be routed a different way approaching the factory than I would when I left. I didn't understand the reasoning behind this. This is something that a shipper will do if you are hauling something hazardous. Once you are loaded with hazardous materials, depending on what they are, you then have to follow a designated "hazmat route". To my knowledge, I was picking up some steel cable. Innocent enough, I thought. Up ahead I saw a sign for a rest area and I thought it might behoove me to take a quick break to "squirt the dirt" and then take a closer look at the map. It wouldn't be the first time that I've gotten bad directions.
Once, I delivered a load in Chinatown, in San Francisco. The directions I got would have led me down a dead end alley, where it would have been impossible to back out of without knocking some serious gouges in the walls on both sides. When I stepped down out of my cab and reconnoitered the route I quickly saw the danger. I then got the receiver on the phone and had him come to my location to check out the route with me. When he saw my 18-wheeler, he said "Ah, you have a truck that bends in the middle." But that's for another story.
There was a big whoosh as I pulled my air brakes once I had came to a stop across from a kiosk that displayed a small map with designated scenic views and a brief history of the region. I pulled out my motor carrier atlas and studied it carefully. The way they had me routed in to the factory was a lot further then the way they had me going once I picked up my load. I could see no reason for this on the map. The way they had me returning was shorter, and there were no low bridges marked. It wasn't restricted to trucks either way according to the map. I figured there must have been some mistake on the part of the warehouse manager. I mean, he doesn't drive a big rig, so why should I assume he understands our unique needs for space and distance and time management. Right then I made up my mind I would go the shorter route to and from the shipper. It would save me another hour at least, and although I wasn't pressed for time, I spend my hours as frugally as I spend my money. Judging from the thrice patched overalls I was wearing, the message should be pretty strong to anyone who didn't know me. After a quick restroom break, and a "tire check", I poured myself a cup of hot coffee from my old, scratched, much worn Stanley thermos. I pushed in my air brakes and eased out the clutch.
A few miles down the road I saw the sign for the road I needed and I took the exit, letting my Jake brake bark out a warning to everybody in hearing distance. I rolled to a stop at the four-way intersection, flipped on my turn signal, and after making sure it was clear, I headed off down Beaver Lane.
The road was just like I had pictured it after looking at it on my atlas. It was wide, straight, flat and smooth; a trucker's dream. I couldn't figure out why the warehouse didn't want us taking it on the way there.
After about twenty minutes of leisurely driving along at about fifty miles an hour, I drifted around a slight bend in the road. Ahead there was a road sign signally some type of special need. The familiar yellow diamond had a symbol that clashed with the evidence stretching before me. The sign said "Dangerous curve ahead". I obligingly slowed down to about forty five miles an hour. I could see no sign of any curve in the road whatsoever. It stretched before me straight and narrow. The road was flanked by woods on each side, and the trees stretched high towards the sun. Their canopy filtered the bright light and the pattern of the sun, outlined the various branches and leaves in confusing geometric patterns on the road. I was starting to believe that the sign was put there as a joke by some enterprising juveniles, when I saw it repeated again after a few miles. "Dangerous Curve ahead", and then an ominous "Truckers slow down", another sign within a few hundred yards indicated that "No Jake Brakes", indicative of a residential area. This had to be the case now because I could see a tall, wooden slatted fence on the left hand side of the road. The fence had to be almost ten feet tall and the thick planks would give complete privacy if someone were standing still. However, as I drove along slower and slower, perplexed at the nature of this impending danger I could see clearly like some old movie running through a projector that there was some kind of resort on the other side of the fence. Once again a sign on my side of the road indicated that this dangerous curve was imminent. I strained to see ahead through the confusing display of light and shadow, but I could only discern a slight, gradual drifting bend to the right. Surely this couldn't be the dangerous curve the signs all warned me about? As I began to enter the curve I slowed down again just to be sure and grabbed one more gear. As I was getting ready to thrust the shifter knob forward into the next gear I glanced off to my left, through the fence. I looked right into the eyes of genuine danger.
Now it is the nature of a diesel tractor that the gears are not synchronized. This necessitates a trucker to match their road speed to the revolutions of the engine for a smooth gear change. Truckers pride themselves on matching them perfectly after hundreds of thousands of miles so that they can even "float" the gears, or not use the clutch when shifting. Well, I picked the wrong time to shift.
As I glanced over to the left through the fence I saw a group of young girls playing volleyball. The sand pit that their net was stretched across was right up against the fence. What made this view uniquely dangerous was the amount of skin I was seeing.
It is a phenomenon of nature that during any kind of accident, time seems to slow down and you feel like your trying to move through very thick soup. Your brain is trying to process the images you see and it's like you're in an opium induced coma. This is what I went through when I saw all that young, exuberant flesh jumping, and stretching in all sorts of erotically enticing ways. My brain was trying to fathom that I wasn't hallucinating and that I was actually seeing about ten completely naked women playing volleyball just a few yards from my now completely unmanned truck. My hand had arrested in its movement on the shifter knob and now the RPM's and my speed no longer matched and my truck was out of gear, drifting to the left of my lane. My eyes stayed glued in the direction of all that frolicking when my brain caught up to what was actually happening to me. I reluctantly tore my eyes away from the sirens of disaster and my head snapped forward with an almost audible pop. Then my eye lids did their best to try and reach the top of my bald head as I looked directly in front of me at a semi barreling towards me in the lane I was currently occupying. I quickly glanced to my left and realized I had neglected to take the gentle curve after all and the nose of my truck was pointed directly off the road. I was in opposing traffic. I jerked the wheel to the right and then stomped my foot down on the accelerator, trying to return to my own real estate on the other side of the road. However, this is where the importance of being in gear began to rear its ugly head and nibble on my keister. When I punched the accelerator the only thing that I accomplished was in revving the engine. I was coasting slowly towards the shoulder of the opposite lane and my road speed definitely didn't match the screaming decibels that were my current RPM's. The sound the engine made was quite similar in pitch and intensity with my blood curdling scream though. I quickly realized that I had to change strategy. It was not in my best interest to get back over to my side of the road while coasting in an eighty-thousand pound vehicle that was rapidly losing momentum to the inevitable pull of gravity. I then jerked the big rig's steering wheel sharply to the left and off the road I went, bouncing and bucking on the uneven surface of a faint dirt track. It was probably left there by the last trucker who got an eyeful on Beaver Lane. Thankfully I hadn't been travelling too fast and when I punched my boot down on the air brakes I was able to get my truck under control and safely stopped. I sat there for a good ten to fifteen minutes while I tried to swallow my heart back down to where it belonged and stopped hyperventilating. My fingers ached terribly and it took almost superhuman effort on my part to open my hands and remove them from the steering wheel. I climbed down from the cab to survey the damage that the rig had sustained. As my foot touched the ground and I released my grip on the handrail, I felt my knees buckle and I felt faint. I went ahead and eased myself onto the cool, kind of wet sand of the dirt track and then realized that this vantage point was perfect for seeing how deep my drive tires were buried in the soft earth. Shaking my head in wonderment, I reached up into my cab and extracted my cell phone to call for a tow.
It didn't take long for the tow truck to arrive and begin the complicated, embarrassing process of pulling an enormous tractor- trailer rig out of the sand. Highway patrol officers stopped traffic to allow the tow truck enough purchase to drag my truck onto the highway. One very courteous trooper with a smirk on his lips took my statement and did his report. When I got to the part about why I got distracted he just nodded.
"We get a lot of that around here. That's why we put up all those signs, hoping people would get the hint and watch the curve really close." He said.
"Well, what in the hell was that I saw?" I asked.
"That's a nudist colony populated by the kids from a local college around here." The trooper said as he copied the information from driver's license and examined my logbook. "We obviously don't advertise their location or why this curve is so dangerous because then we would have every raging hormone in the country trying to stop and take a peek."
"Why in the heck are their outdoor activities so close to a road?" I wondered. "It would make sense to put that volleyball court further away so they don't attract so much attention."
The state trooper looked at me from beneath the brim of his campaign hat. "The way I figure it, people get nude to draw attention to themselves. They're trying to make a statement. Everybody gets naked in the privacy of their own homes. It's those people who do it in other places where it's sanctioned that make them a nudist."
I had all the attention I could at present deal with. Due to the temporary road closure I caused by my errant driving, I got plenty of jeers and hand signals that demonstrated the local public's opinion of my driving skills. They obviously thought that I had to be an absolute moron to have missed this curve. Or maybe they thought I must have been a pervert. They must be aware of the local flavor just on the other side of the wood fence behind me. As I glanced in that direction I thought for a split second that I detected a pair of delicate eyes peering out at me through a knothole in the fence. Just as suddenly they were gone, leaving behind the tantalizing echo of her self-satisfied laughter.