When I sit looking at this picture I can't help but think about one of my great-grandfathers. His name was Telesphore Brouillette. He was from Quebec. He migrated to the Mississippi River valley in the mid-1800's in search of a better life.
In 1869 Telesphore had had his fill of his home filling with rattlesnakes each time the Mississippi River would flood, and government kicking doors in and confiscating bibles. He wasn't going to let them have his Bible, and once again he headed out looking for a better life.
Mr. Brouillette was obviously a fearless man with deep-rooted principles who treasured his freedom. Today people migrate for the same reason..a better life and personal freedom. Some travel from other countries, some legally and some illegal. Some merely migrate from state to state and city to city trying to find a better life. However, in those days having to transport a wife and 11 children in a covered wagon on a 2,000-mile long road for the sake of having a better life would have been a phenomenal feat to say the least. No restroom facilities. No kitchen. No TV. No cell phones. No truckstops. No Starbucks. No motels. Not even a fence to climb!
I've put myself in that wagon many times. Even today if I had a wish I would be there for that trip. It's hard to even imagine a trip like that must have been? Coming around a hillside to find another river to cross, 11 kids to feed and no propane for the barbeque, having to build a tire to replace the one that hit a boulder. There would only be the noise of birds singing, horses tramping and the wagon wheels rolling. No jet planes roaring overhead. No police sirens. No boom boxes. No ice cream trucks.
And the sky? Can you even imagine how close they must have been to the sky. I would guess the sky was their guide for their every mile, and with polution not yet in existence I can only imagine the sky was probably a deeper shade of blue than we know today and the sunsets
must have been amazing. The scenery would have been mindblowing to say the least. No blacktop. No signs. No stoplights. No freeways. No high-rise monstrocities. No bridges. Nothing.
A covered wagon on the road where there was no road, trucking over mountains, crossing rivers and suffocating deserts, and finding their way through miles and miles of forestland just to get to a better life in the Northwest, a place they had only seen drawings of, a place they had only imagined..and everybody survived the trip? What a proud accomplishment this must have been for Mr. Brouillette. I wish I could have shook his hand.
Like my great-grandfather I have also taken to the road trying to find a better life. I can't even count the times in my lifetime when I left Oregon looking for something better but I always came back! I usually would hit the road for Los Angeles because of its continuously blue sky, better jobs and music, lots of live music which I craved.
Now I ask you. Where else other than LA could you sit in the 3rd row listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing? Where else could you go to a private party to find the one and only Ray Charles pounding out his songs on the piano? Where else could you spend every weekend night sitting next to the bandstand listening to the Ramsey Lewis Trio? Well, LA was my better place or so I thought.
As much as I loved LA I hated it too. The smog was more than I could deal with not because it was eye-burning but because I could never see the blue sky. The violence was mindblowing. Vietnamese gangs were kicking doors in and shooting everyone in sight. People were everywhere. There was no privacy. There were no trees, no mountains, no rivers running by, no birds singing, and the beaches were covered with the tar of passing ships. I hated L.A.
I had a great job. I was managing the west coast warehouse for the second largest floor tile company in the United States. It's home base was San Antonio. I was making $70,000 a year,
one helluva lot of money in those days. I had a company car. We loaded 4 trucks a day going to 41 west coast distributors. I loved my job. One morning I headed out for work. I got 2 blocks down the street to find it cordoned off with police banners. A man was laying dead in the middle of the street. He had been shot. What a mindblower that was but I got through the day.
The next morning I decided to go a different way to work. I drove a block down the street and turned the corner to find a similar scene only this time it was even worse. One guy was laying in the front yard and one was draped over the curb in a pool of blood. Both men were dead. They had been shot. Two blocks from my house. TWO BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE!
I drove to work. I went to my phone and called headquarters in San Antonio. I told them I had
enjoyed working for them but I had a family problem that required my attention and I had to return to Oregon. I left the car keys in the desk drawer and briefed everyone on what needed to be done until a new manager would be hired.
I called a cab and went back to the house I was sharing. I wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table. I packed everything I could get in my little ol' Volkswagon bug and I drove until I found
the I-5 freeway, and once again I headed north back to Oregon. I knew there was a better life than this, and I kicked myself for having left it in the first place.
Nevertheless there I was..on the road again buzzing up I-5 just like the trucker I'd always wanted to be. I got as far as Dunsmuir in Northern California when all of a sudden my bug decided it was only going to go 4 miles an hour. I was crawling along on the side of the freeway contemplating my options when a trucker whose truck we had just loaded the night before yelled at me on his CB radio. "Hey Rosy, ya need some help?" I was never so glad to have my CB as I was that day.
Keith was on his way to Seattle but he told me to follow him into Dunsmuir because he had a solution to my problem! I followed him to the Coors Beer warehouse. I wanted to tell him I didn't think a cold beer was going to bail me out but I kept my mouth shut. He backed his truck and trailer up to their loading dock. I sat there wondering what the sam hill this guy had on his mind. He came over and asked me to get out of the car. He asked for my car keys. He got in the bug and drove it up their loading ramp onto the dock and right into the back of his trailer! He jumped down off the dock and said, "Okay, lady, get in. I'm taking you home!"
Hours later we were about 20 miles south of Salem when Keith touched base on the CB with a Convoy driver. The two trucks drove into the 76 truckstop together. The Convoy driver put his ramps up to the back of Keith's trailer and Keith climbed up the ramp, got into the bug, drove it down and stopped it right in front of me. He got out, handed me the keys and gave me a hug and said, "Thanks for a great trip. I hope I've been a help to you. See ya, rosy!" Before I could even answer he got back into his truck and he was gone. I still had to drive 15 miles back home at 4 miles an hour but I made it.
Keith, the trucker, had saved my life big time with a 600-mile tow..well, not really a tow..a haul. I had no fear and it turned out to be a great ride. But more important to me I was finally getting to sit in a truck going down the road..a dream come true. It was thrilling. I felt like a queen. I was hooked. In fact, riding in that truck was a feeling like I'd never had before, an undescribable feeling of freedom probably similar to what my great-grandfather often felt as he traveled cross country in his wagon. A freedom like never before.
When my great-grandfather stopped on top of Rex Hill he stood in awe of the great Willamette Valley below him. He had found his better life and he lived his life profitably and in freedom. As for me, well, I had made it back to the same valley but had I come back to a better life? Without a doubt, but unlike my great-grandfather who built one house and lived in it most of the 92 years of his life, I ended up having many houses. Little did I know then that at a future point in my life..another chapter..I would be in another truck and back on the road again!
In 1869 Telesphore had had his fill of his home filling with rattlesnakes each time the Mississippi River would flood, and government kicking doors in and confiscating bibles. He wasn't going to let them have his Bible, and once again he headed out looking for a better life.
Mr. Brouillette was obviously a fearless man with deep-rooted principles who treasured his freedom. Today people migrate for the same reason..a better life and personal freedom. Some travel from other countries, some legally and some illegal. Some merely migrate from state to state and city to city trying to find a better life. However, in those days having to transport a wife and 11 children in a covered wagon on a 2,000-mile long road for the sake of having a better life would have been a phenomenal feat to say the least. No restroom facilities. No kitchen. No TV. No cell phones. No truckstops. No Starbucks. No motels. Not even a fence to climb!
I've put myself in that wagon many times. Even today if I had a wish I would be there for that trip. It's hard to even imagine a trip like that must have been? Coming around a hillside to find another river to cross, 11 kids to feed and no propane for the barbeque, having to build a tire to replace the one that hit a boulder. There would only be the noise of birds singing, horses tramping and the wagon wheels rolling. No jet planes roaring overhead. No police sirens. No boom boxes. No ice cream trucks.
And the sky? Can you even imagine how close they must have been to the sky. I would guess the sky was their guide for their every mile, and with polution not yet in existence I can only imagine the sky was probably a deeper shade of blue than we know today and the sunsets
must have been amazing. The scenery would have been mindblowing to say the least. No blacktop. No signs. No stoplights. No freeways. No high-rise monstrocities. No bridges. Nothing.
A covered wagon on the road where there was no road, trucking over mountains, crossing rivers and suffocating deserts, and finding their way through miles and miles of forestland just to get to a better life in the Northwest, a place they had only seen drawings of, a place they had only imagined..and everybody survived the trip? What a proud accomplishment this must have been for Mr. Brouillette. I wish I could have shook his hand.
Like my great-grandfather I have also taken to the road trying to find a better life. I can't even count the times in my lifetime when I left Oregon looking for something better but I always came back! I usually would hit the road for Los Angeles because of its continuously blue sky, better jobs and music, lots of live music which I craved.
Now I ask you. Where else other than LA could you sit in the 3rd row listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing? Where else could you go to a private party to find the one and only Ray Charles pounding out his songs on the piano? Where else could you spend every weekend night sitting next to the bandstand listening to the Ramsey Lewis Trio? Well, LA was my better place or so I thought.
As much as I loved LA I hated it too. The smog was more than I could deal with not because it was eye-burning but because I could never see the blue sky. The violence was mindblowing. Vietnamese gangs were kicking doors in and shooting everyone in sight. People were everywhere. There was no privacy. There were no trees, no mountains, no rivers running by, no birds singing, and the beaches were covered with the tar of passing ships. I hated L.A.
I had a great job. I was managing the west coast warehouse for the second largest floor tile company in the United States. It's home base was San Antonio. I was making $70,000 a year,
one helluva lot of money in those days. I had a company car. We loaded 4 trucks a day going to 41 west coast distributors. I loved my job. One morning I headed out for work. I got 2 blocks down the street to find it cordoned off with police banners. A man was laying dead in the middle of the street. He had been shot. What a mindblower that was but I got through the day.
The next morning I decided to go a different way to work. I drove a block down the street and turned the corner to find a similar scene only this time it was even worse. One guy was laying in the front yard and one was draped over the curb in a pool of blood. Both men were dead. They had been shot. Two blocks from my house. TWO BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE!
I drove to work. I went to my phone and called headquarters in San Antonio. I told them I had
enjoyed working for them but I had a family problem that required my attention and I had to return to Oregon. I left the car keys in the desk drawer and briefed everyone on what needed to be done until a new manager would be hired.
I called a cab and went back to the house I was sharing. I wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table. I packed everything I could get in my little ol' Volkswagon bug and I drove until I found
the I-5 freeway, and once again I headed north back to Oregon. I knew there was a better life than this, and I kicked myself for having left it in the first place.
Nevertheless there I was..on the road again buzzing up I-5 just like the trucker I'd always wanted to be. I got as far as Dunsmuir in Northern California when all of a sudden my bug decided it was only going to go 4 miles an hour. I was crawling along on the side of the freeway contemplating my options when a trucker whose truck we had just loaded the night before yelled at me on his CB radio. "Hey Rosy, ya need some help?" I was never so glad to have my CB as I was that day.
Keith was on his way to Seattle but he told me to follow him into Dunsmuir because he had a solution to my problem! I followed him to the Coors Beer warehouse. I wanted to tell him I didn't think a cold beer was going to bail me out but I kept my mouth shut. He backed his truck and trailer up to their loading dock. I sat there wondering what the sam hill this guy had on his mind. He came over and asked me to get out of the car. He asked for my car keys. He got in the bug and drove it up their loading ramp onto the dock and right into the back of his trailer! He jumped down off the dock and said, "Okay, lady, get in. I'm taking you home!"
Hours later we were about 20 miles south of Salem when Keith touched base on the CB with a Convoy driver. The two trucks drove into the 76 truckstop together. The Convoy driver put his ramps up to the back of Keith's trailer and Keith climbed up the ramp, got into the bug, drove it down and stopped it right in front of me. He got out, handed me the keys and gave me a hug and said, "Thanks for a great trip. I hope I've been a help to you. See ya, rosy!" Before I could even answer he got back into his truck and he was gone. I still had to drive 15 miles back home at 4 miles an hour but I made it.
Keith, the trucker, had saved my life big time with a 600-mile tow..well, not really a tow..a haul. I had no fear and it turned out to be a great ride. But more important to me I was finally getting to sit in a truck going down the road..a dream come true. It was thrilling. I felt like a queen. I was hooked. In fact, riding in that truck was a feeling like I'd never had before, an undescribable feeling of freedom probably similar to what my great-grandfather often felt as he traveled cross country in his wagon. A freedom like never before.
When my great-grandfather stopped on top of Rex Hill he stood in awe of the great Willamette Valley below him. He had found his better life and he lived his life profitably and in freedom. As for me, well, I had made it back to the same valley but had I come back to a better life? Without a doubt, but unlike my great-grandfather who built one house and lived in it most of the 92 years of his life, I ended up having many houses. Little did I know then that at a future point in my life..another chapter..I would be in another truck and back on the road again!
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