*The following is from an upcoming book of Wali-G’s Drifter Radio memoirs to be published this fall 2025.
Fired Jan 31, 2003
In the morning, I report to the main office for “retraining” and a piss test. Perhaps I might still have a job by the end of the day. The piss test will be clean and I should be able to fly through the retraining material.
I resolve not to go down without a fight for this job even though it has not worked out the way initially planned. Who do these insurance companies think they are to be so hard on new drivers.
This is a main reason there are a shortage of new drivers in the US:
the insurance companies are pretty tough on new drivers in their first 9-months.
At the end of the day, I am sent into an office to speak to an old man. I figure, at this point, I’m going to get a lecture. Why else would they have me retrain?
“Have a seat.”
I sit down in the chair in front of his large desk. He goes over the accident in Gettysburg.
“We are going to have to let you go,” he says.
“Why?” I protest. “Because of the insurance companies?”
He looks at me sternly, “Son, if you keep driving you are going to kill someone.”
I have nothing to respond to that and just kind of shake my head in agreement. That’s about a sound of argument he could make on why I shouldn’t keep driving. I have no rebuttal because I’d rather not continue driving at this point and find out he was right.
“You can catch a ride back to Memphis with one of our drivers. He leaves tonight at midnight.”
The five hour drive back to Memphis, I just stare at the highway without much to say. The old truck driver drops me off at the lot where my brother’s car is parked at 5-am. There is frost on the ground and car. The temperature is well-below freezing. The sun won’t be up for a moment. The trucker heads out.
I try to start the Dodge Shadow, but it is a no-go. I haven’t slept since the other night, so I am a bit tired. It is too early to call Chris and Nicole, so I just climb into the back seat and pile clothes on myself for warmth and take a most uncomfortable frozen nap until the sun comes up.
When I wake up from my frozen coma, I try to start the car again in slightly warmer freezing temperatures. It still won’t start. It doesn’t seem like the battery is dead; it at least has enough juice to turn the engine over. What is the problem?
I remember that my brother told me, “you might have to reset the computer because I put a racing chip in the car. Just unplug this box, wait a few minutes, and plug it back in.”
I try this and say a little prayer.
It fires up. I drive back to the house to pack my things.
Chris and Nicole have been kept in the loop of my last week’s adventure. They are not surprised that I am moving out. This is the end of the road trip Chris and I started last spring. Another tear.
I don’t have much to pack. Never had the money or chance to buy a bed or anything for that matter. Everything I own is able to fit into the trunk of the Shadow. I’m packed and ready to head north at noon for a 9-hour drive to the Madison, Wisconsin area.
Ice Fishing in Stoughton, Wisconsin
Moving to Wisconsin in the winter is one of the last things I want to do, but I need go home and regroup. My goals and dreams have been crushed once again in life. I’m not sure what the next plan is.
In Illinois, I decide to stop at a truck stop and call my buddy, Doug Bible since I will be passing by the Madison area where he lives. Bible is a good friend that has a good way of framing up life and getting a person’s head straight.
Bible is happy to hear from me. He is going ice fishing with his girlfriend, Amber, and two of his good friends from high school are going ice fishing this evening. When he says going ice fishing, he means he is going to go party at the ice shack his buddies have built. This sounds like an excellent way to return to Wisconsin. I tell him I will get ahold of him when I cross the Wisconsin border.
Before heading off from the truck stop, I buy some coffee. At the check out, I see some trucker-pills at the counter. I buy a pack of two. I don’t like taking any pills, and I have never taken trucker-pills (which are probably some barely legal of amphetamine), but if there is one thing I have learned is that falling asleep while driving through Illinois is realistic possibility especially since I haven’t had more than a couple of hours of sleep since Thursday.
The miles zip by as I am I wired awake. At one point, I wonder if my heart is going to explode. In no time, I’m back in Wisconsin.
Around 10pm, I call Doug to find out where I need to go. He tells me to take the belt line of Madison west and then take the Stoughton Road exit south on US-51. Doug warns me that a winter storm is coming it. With temperatures hovering around the freezing point, freezing rain and icy roads might make travel difficult. If there is one thing I learned from Nashville, you would be safer to have snow at 10-degress colder than rain that turns a city into an ice skating rink.
I am able to find the boat landing to park just as the freezing rains come in. Bible’s plan is to sleep at the shack because of the incoming storm and the incoming beer drinking. Doug meets up with me and we walk out to the large homebuilt ice fishing shanty. It is good to seem a familiar face and my thoughts and emotions of the past week dissolve.
Still wired from the pills, I am far from tired. The evening has little to do with catching fish and everything to do with blasting music, drinking beer, and smoking weed. Since I have only smoked herb a couple of times in the last months while truck driving, it really kicks my ass. It feels good to have a late-night session with this friendly Wisconsin group.
Around 1am, Doug’s girlfriend wants to go home. None of us are in any condition to drive. None of us are in any condition to suggest that this is a bad idea. The roads are frozen over. Sober people should not be out and about let alone people partying. Since I seem to be in slightly better shape, I offer to drive them home. Everyone piles into the small Dodge Shadow and head back north.
As we come up to the belt line, the city is silent because of the weather. I decide to show-off a bit with what this junky looking car can do.
“This my brother’s car. He likes to put turbo chargers on everything. He put performance chip in. This car is faster off the line than a stock Mustang,” I tell the car load of people.
I turn on to the on ramp and hammer down on the gas.
The car jolts forward and then bang!
Something mechanical gives and the drive train loses all power. I pull the car over to the shoulder and tell everyone to get out.
“I need to take the plates off the car!” I say. My brother had mentioned about how the car might not be exactly licensed correctly and told me to remove the plates is I ever have trouble.
The passengers are freaking out, “take the plates off? Is this car stolen?!”
Everyone gets out and start walking towards the nearest telephone which happens to be a Denny’s still open. They wait for me at the end of the ramp. I look under the car to figure out what went wrong. I can’t seen anything in the dark, so I walk across the road to join them and figure it tomorrow.
As I reach the group, out of nowhere a state trooper pulls up behind my car with its light on. Great.
I decide to go back and talk to the police to find out how long I can leave the car before it gets towed. The group watches me in wonderment. I don’t know if I’m visibly drunk, but it is somewhat of risky move.
I wander up to the patrol car as the trooper sits with the car running and and driver window down. I am careful not to get too close incase I smell like alcohol. The trooper is running my plates.
“Good evening officer,” I say. He doesn’t even bother looking at me.
“Is that your car?”
“Yes. It had some mechanical failure. Not sure what,” I say. “I just moved back here from Memphis tonight. Everything I own in the world is in that car. How long can it sit here?”
“48-hours,” he says. “Go home. You shouldn’t be out here in this weather. It is dangerous.”
“I will be back tomorrow,” I tell the officer. “Thank you.”
So many questionable life-choices in 1 week. This is the second police officer I’ve had to talk to in a week.
I walk back to the group. They are amazed that nothing happened.
We wander to Denny’s and call a cab. There are hardly any cabs out and about, but they can send one over in 45-minutes.
When the cab arrives, Doug’s friends decide they want to got back to the ice fishing shack and spend the night. I decide to join them rather than heading to Doug’s house. Given the adrenaline and the trucker pills, I definitely don’t feel like sleeping yet. The cab heads south again and drops us at the boat ramp. Doug and Amber head to Sun Prairie.
The three of us that stay at the shanty party till the sun comes up. At which point, we decide to go to a supper club bar on the lake shore for more drinks. I have one mixed drink. This is the last thing I remember.
Cue up Peter Frampton’s song, “Do You Feel Like We Do.”
The next conscious thought is waking up in a completely dark basement room. I have no idea where I am, how I got here, what time or even what day it is. Where did my party companions go? I crawl off the couch and crawl my way around the room looking for a lamp or light switch.
Finding a light switch near the basement steps, I see there is a bathroom. I head over to do my business. Turning the light on and looking in the mirror, I see I have blood crusted to my nose. I have a small gash between my eyes. It looks like someone or something tried to carve out my third eye. What the hell happened?
I go upstairs and realize I am at Doug’s house in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.
How the hell did I get here? Where is Doug?
I turn on the TV to figure out what day it is. The news says its Monday morning. Doug must have gone to work. I don’t have anyway to call him since my phone is dead and I don’t know any numbers to use the landline.
Oh shit! I still gotta get Dave’s car back to the house! Where’s my jacket?
With no jacket, I head out into the Wisconsin winter in a sweatshirt and a general idea of where I need to walk from the Sun Prairie suburb to Madison. I am about 15-miles away from the car with no buses to get there. No money for taxi.
This route hardly has any sidewalks because this part of town you need a car to operate. The weather is in the high 20’s F with snow and ice being part of the struggle to get to the vehicle. I could wait until Doug gets home, but I feel like this hike is the exercise I need for my own personal penance for partying too much this weekend. Walk it off!
Plus, my brother Dave will be pissed if the car gets impounded.
A few hours of walking later, with much stumbling over the frozen crusted landscape, I arrive to the HWY18/HWY 51 exit. Strangely, there is a 20-something guy in a black trench panhandling for money with a sign hanging out on one of the ramps.
I walk up to him and say ‘hello.’ I share my story of the past 48-hours. He wishes me luck. I head over to the car to try to figure out what went wrong with the car and the next plan to get it back to Doug’s house. This has been one long week on the road.
Hitching a Car Ride
Inspecting the Dodge Shadow, I realize I threw a drive shaft in this front wheel drive car. The upgraded torque was too much for the drive shaft when I hammered down.
The drive shaft hangs broken.
Everything else looks fine with the vehicle.
Why can’t these cars drive with just one drive shaft when one breaks?
(Power balance between wheels is probably the answer, but I’m not an engineer.)
With my limited gear-head knowledge, the car looks fixable. Need a tow and an auto-store.
Might as well just panhandle for a tow.
I need options.
Walking back to the panhandler, I ask, “Do you know where I can get a tow? I need to get it back to Sun Prairie today.”
“Yeah man,” he says. “I know a guy in Madison with a tow strap. I can tow you with my car.”
“Let’s go!”
Good enough answer. Never thought a panhandler would help me out, but here we are. We walk back to his beat-up, bald tired, old Toyota Corona in a parking lot near the ramp. We head to the center of Madison near the University of Wisconsin campus. He knows an old hippy mechanic that might have a tow strap. He is also rumored to have some of the best weed in the city.
Cue up the song “Midnight Rider” by the Allman Brothers Band.
A mix of snow and rain starts falling. The ride is fairly unnerving as the guy drives the questionably road-worthy car like a race car. The wiper on my side of the car does not work, so I get just enough visual field to be nervous on if we will make it without an accident. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.
After a harrowing ride, we make it to the old hippy’s garage. He hooks us up with a thick nylon car tow strap. He also hooks us up with an 1/8th of weed and wishes us luck. We head back to the car for the next risky stage of hitching a ride: tethering two questionable cars together and heading down the highway.
Back at the Dodge Shadow, we hook the strap to the most solid part of the frame of the cars. A Corona towing a Shadow has a certain celestial highway poetry to it.
We hop in our cars and head up the ramp. The Corona is not made to be a tow car. We need to get on the interstate and head north. We have 15-miles to drag the Shadow home with most of it being highway and interstate. I wouldn’t be the least surprised if we get pulled over or something else breaks. Yet another risky venture for the week.
The driver of the Corona knows we need to get to Sun Prairie, but we never discussed the details of how to get there and where in Sun Prairie we need to go. I realize this as we are cruising down the belt line and he starts making hand signals. We do not have phones, CB’s, or the common sense to stop to talk. We just use hand signals.
We are cruising pretty well together at a top speed of 45-mph, just barely fast enough to be legal on the interstate. Fortunately, it is a Monday afternoon and rush hour has not started yet. Things go our way and we flow to Sun Prairie and take the ramp.
We just about made back to Doug’s before our only incident happens. Pulling up to a stop sign, the tow cable goes slack and the falls off my car. No big deal. Just need to re-hitch and go. However, while underneath the car a local police officer stops to check on us since we are in the intersection. How many cops do I need to talk to this week?
She just wants to make sure we are OK. We tell her we only need to go a few more blocks and thank her for stopping. My overall experience with the police and state troopers has been a good one in my travels.
We get the car back to Dougs. We have a smoke. Mission accomplished. Thank you Jesus.
What the Hell Happened?
Doug comes home shortly after the mystery driver takes off. There are many questions still open including what happened between noon on Sunday and waking up in a basement on Monday morning. Doug has his own questions about this blacked out time.
“Doug, how did I get home?” I ask knowing I probably don’t want to know the potentially embarrassing information.
“My cousin Miles brought you home,” he says.
“How come Miles brought me home? How did he get involved in this? I haven’t seen him a couple of years.”
Doug laughs. “Yeah, he races RC cars with son on Sundays not far from where your car was at. He came out of the building to go home and saw a group of cops standing over a guy sitting on the ground in the parking lot. He realized it was you! He came over and told the cops he would take you home and they let you go!”
More cops!
“What!? How did I get back to that area? I would have had to walk 8-10 miles from the lake!”
Unbelievable odds that Miles found me.
There are over 200,000 people in the Madison area. I know two people: Doug and Miles.
Dougs has no answers to how or why I stumbled black out drunk 10-miles. He calls his buddies to get more details. All they said was I was sitting there drinking and then disappeared around noon. They tell him my jacket is probably at the supper club. They have have no idea why I had cut between my eyes since I wasn’t getting wild or fighting. Perhaps I just hit the wall and passed out in my mixed drink.
I give Doug the run down on the story of my day in getting the car back to the house. He is not at all surprised by any of it. He knows what kind of adventures I would get into when we played foosball in La Crosse.
What a crazy 7-day period in life. They happen.
Fortunately, things worked out in the sense I didn’t hurt anybody, didn’t hurt myself, didn’t go to jail. Now I just got to figure out what’s next for work and drifting. Might have to play some more foosball regardless of what happens in the work world. I’m feeling lucky.
