Chapter 4
(Floundering Gears At LCCTC Trucking School)
I'll never forget watching my Federal Parole Officer Dean Pasquale get all in a tizzy at my acceptance letter from OVR magnetized to the fridge. I was boring to him but that letter saying it would help fund trucker school was a big game changer. I knew deep down inside I surreptitiously gave him a chuckle when I sent him those text messages about how I felt about his Hard Core republican boss still trying to portray me as some kind of terrorist. In my entire four and a half years in incarceration I had not once become violent (which is unusual) but I'm sure the BOP psychiatrist would agree this Inmate never hesitated to get crazy with the pen. My writings went all over the place and some of them even were aimed at Washington DC once some bumpkin inmate finally told me the address. I didn't like my parole officer's boss so I finally let those text messages fly. "Your boss doesn't have the balls to speak up and talk truth maybe HE needs to see the bird doctor!"
I ended up get a two word reply but I knew off the books he had a chuckle.
"Very inappropriate." Was all I got back followed by a serious visit and a threat back to the clinker. It got to the point where I was saying things so bizarre and off the wall that my parole officer at one point gave up threatening me in return by recanting his signing of a warrant and eventually spun the table on me and let me finish flapping my wings. I don't remember what crazy talk was being said but eventually Dean gave up and stated "You know what. We are here to serve you." After we met on middle grounds like that I think I finally eased up with taking things right to the line. Especially when I learned his pay grade wasn't in the really big boy digits like I thought it was.
Things were different now. I was sitting in the front row at a top of the line trucking school about 40 miles from home. I always made sure to sit in the front row because I've noticed something about myself. When I'm on someone else's dime I tend to try harder than if I was on my own dime. I knew those brick layers that got up at the butt crack of dawn each morning would give me poopy pants faces and speak bad of me at the bars I wasn't allowed in if I made a complete joke of the OVR program.
Even before incarceration I usually had a second job to help pay rent so I knew a thing or two about what hard work was like. I knew that until I got into a serious relationship I was wasting my time thinking I could make a career in construction that's why I stayed at the textile mill those four years because I was smart. We got our forty hours knocked out in just four days and the three day weekends felt more like four because I always worked the second shift. I knew construction could land me some good dollars but they must be crazy if they think I'm crawling out of the fart sack at 4am, then digging a hole along the road before daylight with my ice sickles hanging down from my earlobes. Crazy. No pep in this guy's step at that hour of the morning. Even this one dude called "Stan the Man" had warned me why I needed to stay away from construction workers when I found a part time job directing traffic.
"And if you come across any construction workers stay the hell out of their way. Those guys only like two things. To get drunk and fight."
With a daydreaming problem and a history of reading books at learners speed, I knew if I wanted to thrive in truck driving school I had better take notes. Even their school clerk named Sandy didn't appear that she was pushing for me to go very far. I had to meet with her a few weeks before I even began class but I can clearly remember her words too and our brief conversation.
"You mean you're here for your class B?"
"No mam. I'm here for my class A. I go ALL the way."
My feelings were slightly hurt that she just couldn't picture me driving that big thing around. (Or maybe it was that she could, she just couldn't picture me putting it properly in the hole ha ha.)
But if it's one thing that really grinded my gears during those first few days of school was the one lady that was sure to boo hoo and whine about how unemployment checks weren't enough to live on and they should be paying her more.
Really? I thought to myself, At least you're getting a UC check! Try living on only food stamps where you have to surrender half to buy baby formula to convert to cash just so you have gas money to make it to school! I thought to myself. She may have even had a hubby to shoulder lean on for a while till things got back to normal. I didn't know her situation but I did know that I was gainfully employed prior to my Federal abduction and not anywhere close to being in jeopardy of losing my job at the mill. The LAST thing I wanted to hear was somebody grousing about free money where I have to sit in on weekends and write books rather than go out on the night for town. Was she serious? Really? They should be paying her more free money on top of what she was collecting?
I ended up doing really well at the school. The only part I really struggled with that I clearly remember was trying to come up with cover stories as to why I wasn't going up with the group to the DMV for my Hazmat Endorsement like the rest of the class. I ended up basically telling everybody that I found the extra thirty questions just too much to learn and didn't feel I would need it. I think I ended up just telling the group I would get it at a later date or something like that. Getting a Hazmat called for a stringent background check and some FBI fingerprinting. I'm told as of this day that I will NEVER be allowed a Hazmat endorsement because my crime involved an IED and the law said I was barred from a Hazmat permanently.
If it's one thing I was learning about truck driving school was that everyone was going to graduate as long as they kept trying. We definitely had some stragglers in our class but I am proud to say that I was among the first four to pass my road test on the first try. In reality the written part was a lot more harder for me than actually driving the truck. After high school before I got the job at the mill I used to work at Valley Proteins in Terre Hill PA. My sister used to date the trucking managers son so that was how I got in at the company plus I didn't have a criminal background then to deal with other than my very long juvy record but those things were hard to discover. Back then (and I think even now) the newspapers aren't allowed to print your name if you are under 18 years old. Because I grew up in East Earl and was constantly a hell spawn the papers tried circumventing those laws by referring to me as "The East Earl Boy" so people knew who was stealing their car plus swiping and hoarding up all the missing stop signs. The crimes I committed as a juvenile actually involved tangible victims at detriment despite my adult record portraying me as a mentally unstable terrorist. As I inch my way up to a forty year Old man I still feel more remorseful for the scare I gave people when I was between the ages of 13-16 and there's never been a doubt in my mind that my adult criminal record could have been avoided altogether if law enforcement and attorneys didn't have such an indelible history of stonewalling me. But who's to say it's only these Alphabet people that ignore me? I'd have to be a fool to really believe each and every person in government has it in for me when it could in actuality just be the way I carry myself. (Or I'm only changing tunes in this bullshit before you toss this book down as the paranoia negativity greatly impedes the inspiration in this book ha,ha).
Convicted felons tell the churches cute little “Turned my life around” stories all the time before they relapse and sponge off the tax payers once again. It was rare that we saw the boss man Vance very much at the school and I knew better than to get too chummy. I had no doubts in my mind that if my convictions weren't bad enough, my mental history would only heighten the redness in the flag so I played the role of "Blended Citizen" when Vance came around. I kind of suspected that at least one or two of the trainers might know my history but if Mt. Joy was anything like Grab yourself by the bootstraps Lancaster County I'd be opening one big can of worms by mixing the words "weapons of mass destruction" with "big rigs".
But the hardest part of the five week schooling? Keeping quiet.
People get suspicious when you keep too quiet but what was I to do or say? There was one HUGE hole in my life where the only words I now knew was "fall back sons", "You outta pocket b" and before I got fired from Turkey Hill cuz the fat lady felt uneasy around me Zack used to pick on me cuz I could no longer pronounce "fifty" when I made change at the cash register. Instead it always came out "fiddy" and people were getting curious where this lingo came from when Lancaster County was mostly nuthn but John Deere country!
I was very excited when my drivers license finally said "CDL" and class "A" on it. When I finally got my credentials from the school I giggled at the paper which gave me my grade of 94%. But that wasn't the part I was giggling at. I was giggling at the bottom left of the other page which listed the class of equipment I had graduated from. The paper said "Class B".
Evidently Sandy had left her mark.