Hummingbirds and CB’s

Well yesterday, the 10th of May, our Hummingbirds finally made it back here to spend the summer with us.
As I sat playing frisbee with JT I had a female hummingbird sit upon the clothes line just to the left of where I was sitting. She looked healthy and I was glad to have just hung fresh sugar-water out for them. The Apple Tree is what I go by. As it had started to look as if it would burst forth in gorgeous blooms, I readied their feeders.

Up here in New Hampshire we have the Ruby Throat variety of Hummingbirds and an occasional Hummingbird Moth visit us. You know I love these little fighters though, I keep learning more amazing facts about them.

So did you know I had just one tattoo? It is in fact a life-size Hummingbird and this was also what I used for a CB Handle. Now the handle was used when traveling cross-country in the tractor-trailer we never used our own names? Did you have a CB and a Handle? I was trucking when Burt Reynolds made Breaker 1 9 pretty famous. Many songs, mostly country ones, have been done all about trucking, highways and roadie. I loved Convoy’s line “Crash the gate doing 98 and let them truckers roll!”

I had some wonderful times driving the night hours out there on the quiet roads of America. I usually drove after we had our evening meal and kept laying down the miles till it was time for breakfast, when the ex and I would switch. He did not want me, a greenhorn, in all the rush hour traffic he figured at night with just other rigs on the road what could happen.

Well let me tell you one of the stories from so long ago. I was heading west and in Kansas and had stopped to grab a coffee to help get me through my 12 hour shift. The road was dark and filled with many wild animals you had to not only watch for but to avoid as well. While filling the thermos for my evening run I was talking with fellow drivers who would be going the same way, WEST. So we followed each other out and got our trucks rolling down the interstate and chatting on our CB’s we all introduced ourselves and they thought Hummingbird was awesome! I told them it was because I was FAST! They loved it and off we went hammer down, (pressing the gas pedal). We gabbed for hours with each of us keeping our eyes peeled for the police as we were not doing 55. Then someone who had the lead suggested we try something he had all his lights on and if you have traveled the United States you know what I mean, LOTS OF LIGHTS on his rig. We truckers have a special name for ones like this, Chicken Hauler. Yes we have lots of nicknames like our CB Handel’s, like your personal car is called a 4 wheeler. So with truck out in front fully covered by tons of lights and the one in the rear of our convoy(a group of MANY RIGS) with its lights on, all of us in the middle had just our marker lights on NO HEADLIGHTS! Yes not to swift, were we night riders of our countries highways, mostly hell raisers and non conformists.

So mile after mile with our radar detectors working over time ever mindful of State Police we continued this way for miles and miles at a very good clip! Then we hear the bird dogs go off(radar detectors had names too) as a trooper was headed east and running his radar and capturing us all speeding but also us dummies in the middle of the convoy running without headlights. Now they run CB’s as well and had been listening to us talk and I was a very young female and they were all experienced truckers and who do you think the cop came for, yes ME! I saw him go into the medium strip and it was such a dip I saw his headlights shining on the sky above. He then came flying up the highway behind us and by now yes all of us had our lights on and speed to about 60 mph but he had locked on to me he said in the end.

So my trucking CB buddies were gone, I was alone except for ex in the bunk sleeping. I was in big trouble! This officer walked up to my driver’s door and told me to come back to his police car. As I opened the door and started down the ladder of our cab-over Freightliner he saw how young I was and ordered me to go back in and get all my PAPERWORK! License and registration book and my Log Book! OH NO I was really in trouble I hated doing logs as I could not do them the correct way as I had been taught to in tractor-trailer school not with the ex.

So with all of this placed on the floor of the cab I climbed down then reached up for all of this and headed back to the waiting officer. I am ordered to get into the back where upon he proceeds to read me the riot act about how I could have been killed. I told him if I had to pay a fine on the spot he would really see me die, at the hand of my ex-husband yes really young and dumb! I was not to speed or play around and I had a CB and Radar machine so there would be no fines! In the end this trooper was very nice and gave me a $20 fine I mailed to them from home. Sadly this was not the last time I drove FAST, like my little Hummingbirds! I too had places to go and people to see.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you Mom’s! I am going to have my best one yet! It is also JT’s birthday!