Charlie's Truck Stop

Facilities-wise, and sanitation-wise, they range all over the map. At the major portals, you have the gleaming Pilot and Flying J super-centers - micro trucker-oriented Wal-Marts with whole walls of CB and in-cab accessories, showers, layover lounges, 55 gallon drum refills for soft-drinks and coffee, fast-food restaurants, slow-food restaurants, and lanes and lanes of auto-feed, hi-tech fueling stations for the huge, chromed and lighted ships that have lowered their flaps to take on provisions.

Just north of Paso Robles, CA, Charlie's Truck Stop sits under a tattered, barely lit, faded yellow plywood sign at a section of California State Highway 101 that has been downgraded to a mere rural highway. With cross-streets. Charlie's sits at one of the cross-streets. Four pumps and vast expanses of dirt on which to park.

That's what I'm there for - I'm on my way from Half Moon Bay to Lake Castaic, and I need to put in a night's sleep and a day's work before moving on. The vast expanses of dirt are great places to set up, lock on the satellite dish, and spend a day's work.

All of this works fine. I didn't need fuel, but as I finally finished work at 7:00, I realized I was getting hungry.

I was in luck. Charlie's also has a restaurant.

Hmph. Well, what the hell. I'm here. I shut down the truck, grabbed my writing box (this machine), and headed in.

The place is dingy formica, vinyl and linoleum. There are three people seated at the counter - whom I will describe shortly - but suffice it to say for now, that none are without tattoos. There is also a waitress. She looks like Kathy Bates in one of her more psychotic roles. I stop at the head of the counter and survey where I want to plant myself. Somewhere where I'm inconspicous. Somewhere where I blend in. The far corner of the "L"-shaped counter looks like it. I want to be inconspicuous, but I want to keep an eye on everyone, too. I'd sit at a table, but they're all unoccupied and taking one might be interpreted as elitism in this place.

Nobody takes notice as I stake out my position. That's good. The waitress doesn't take notice, either. That's less good.

I ease onto the stool and slip the computer case alongside the base, at my feet. Don't think I'll pull that out, tonight, nosirree. I scan the clientele more closely.

Two seats on the other side of "ZZ-Top" is the person I thought was the enormously fat woman, which it is not. It's an enormously fat man. He looks like something out of the seventies gone bad - like the ghost of disco past. Long black wavy hair down to his shoulders, and a grey mustache. He's short-ish and has squeezed his youthful figure into a child's-size, orange, sleeveless tee-shirt, under which a walrus tummy deigns not to be concealed.

He's involved - he's alternately singing out to the waitress in a high, thin voice, and yucking it up with "ZZ-Top" (who remains silent, in a Manson-like way), waving his arms operatically and rotating about his stool to point that slice of belly under the orange tee-shirt at various corners of the restaurant.

That belly-button looks loaded.

To my left, a comfortable distance away (about 6 stools), is a big man in a white windbreaker, white hair and white beard. He looks like "Burl Ives". He's huddled over his plate and is muttering to it - loud enough to be heard, but verbiage is incoherent.

I put on a brave face and stare back up at her. "Yup!"

She nods and lifts back off her palms. Apparently, my response was acceptable, because she didn't reach over and pinch my head off the shoulders. My comfort is momentary, though - she's grabbed a menu from the adjacent station, slapped it down on the corner and leaning forward on her palms, again - back to scrutinizing the bug that has seated itself in the most prominent corner of her counter. "Yawannadrink?"

Yes, please. Ice tea. No, that's not quite right: "Yup! Icetea'llbegood!"

Nobody takes notice of me or the exchange. I'm blending in rather well in my Target-brand psuedo Patagonia sweat-shirt and grey ski-cap. The ski-cap is a nice touch, I think.

She nods and lifts off her palms. I've passed, again. But as she wanders away, she hollers back over her shoulder in that exasperated tone that you know means she shudn'-a-had-ta-ask: "Sweet or unsweetened?"

Oh. "Unsweetened."

"Bates" comes back and takes up the palms on the counter pose, yet again. She wants answers and she wants them, now. "Baked meatloaf!" I bark, and slap the menu down. One more approving nod and she walks away.

I'm blending in.

No one else notices - he's blending in...

"ZZ-Top" eventually strikes up a conversation with the waitress as he hunches over his pork-chop and eggs. He's taken off his jacket and exposed steel-cable wiry arms that sport more florid tatooes. He has only one form of past-tense per verb I notice. As in, "Ya' have that tabasca hid away, back there?" or "Didn't I told you that?"

More scanning. There are no women here. I don't think any woman has set foot in here (other than the waitress). Ever. No husband-wife teams come to Charlie's. They stop at the big, shiny Pilot's and Flying J's. Not only has a woman not set foot in here for all time, none of these guys look like they've been within a quarter mile of a woman in about as long. This is a real-man's trucker joint.

By the time my dinner comes, "Burl Ives" is convulsing violently in his chair, and shouting at his plate in sharp, broken sentences. It appears the plate is not getting the finer points. I have no experience arguing with plates, so I can't help him, even if I would.

Nobody notices, anyway.

Now, if I had congratulated myself on avoiding Charlie's crank-case oil in some fried delicacy, that self-congratulation was short-lived: Wily, nefarious, old Charlie had simply congealed the crank-case oil with some strange outer-galactic substance,and disguised it as gravy! And had smothered the baked meatloaf with quarts of it! Dark, brown, shiny and coagulated. The EPA would have a field day with this stuff! I tasted it.

Sugar. Well. That's an improvement, I'm sure.

As I observed "Disco-Past" putting sugar in his fresh Coke, it all fell into place. Charlie's was a crank-case oil, battery-acid, and sugar dumping station. These were the trog-aliens that came out at night, to feast on the waste. And I am among them!

Blending in!

I shrugged and ate. Through the first course of the dinner, "Burl" shook and railed at his plate, "ZZ-Top" yucked it up in imperfect past-tense phrases with the waitress, and "Disco-Past" sang out in his high tones and pointed his belly slice indiscriminately.

I continued to eat in silence.

I managed to get about three quarters of the way through dinner without incident, when "Burl" decided he was done and stood up to leave. He had to walk past me to to get to the register. My shields went up, fork hovering over the plate in anticipation. He folded his paper, picked up his hat...

... and turned into a perfectly respectable gentleman! Nodded at the waitress, slapped "ZZ-Top" on the shoulders in a friendly farewell (it was the first exchange they'd had, but they apparently knew each other), paid his tab with the correct change, and sailed out the door like Fred Astaire with a wave. "Ta, tah!"

I sat astonished. The only thing I could figure was that "Burl" had come to a reasonable understanding with his plate, and all was well. I jiggled the congealed gravy-covered meatloaf with my fork and wondered if I would be so fortunate.

But, I did finished. I paid my tab, and left Charlie's in wonder.

This is surely how Rod Serling must have gained material for Twilight Zone episodes. As I put Charlie's in my rear view mirror, I thought I could see it shimmer a bit, and then suddenly blink out into some other unseened dimension. It must materialize in front of road-weary travelers, suck them in, feed them congealed crank-case oil in various forms, battery acid, and sugar - and turn them loose on the road again. Somehow altered. Some of them may quickly call Art Bell on their cell-phones with tales of an alien-abduction scheme of sinister proportions. One aimed specifically at the nation's truckers.

I'm not sure. But as I run down the intergalactic black-ribbon to the next stop, I think it'll need to be a Pilot or Flying J. I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to take a long, hot shower and get rid of this sweet, black, crankcase-oil-ish substance accumulating on my skin.