Chris Hanly

The Trucker’s Nightmare

I had been cursed with the sweet blessing of being raised up and surrounded by a family of English fanatics. I am not exaggerating in the least when I say this. My great-grandparents on my mother’s side, both sets of my grandparents and my Mom and Dad were extremely well educated and made it a point to drill the proper vocabulary down my and my poor brother’s (Scott) throat…daily! Our parents would cringe whenever I would say “I don’t got no…”, which would bring an immediate correction. My Grandpa and Grandma Carter were the absolute worst at correcting us. It had become an ongoing battle of wills between all of us as they tried to raise us. I would make a statement using the word ‘ain’t’ in a sentence, and of course my Grandpa would respond faster than lightning with the remark, “Ain’t ain’t a word. If it isn’t in the Webster’s dictionary then it doesn’t exist.” At the fine young snotty age of thirteen, I carried a Webster’s dictionary from school over to my Grandpa’s house, opened it up and pointed. He read what I was needing him to examine, then he closed the book, nodded at me and said, “I ain’t gonna argue with you on that one anymore.” It was the only time I had ever outsmarted him.

To give you another example of the torture that I was subjected to, my grandparents were so versed in the English language they would come up with elaborate statements to say the simplest things to each other. Here is one example: “Please extend your digital appendage to extinguish the illumination.” Ready… Please turn off the light. Think that is bad, try this one… “You are a gentleman and a scholastic scholar. A judge of fine wine, women, horses and song. Erudite beyond all recompense and I am not being perfunctorily perfidious in my didactic declamations in so declaiming, avowing or averring, sir. Say that three times fast. Maybe I will tell you what that means later.

Now, to confirm just how badly I have been warped by this upbringing, here is what my own voice mail says – this is actually done to drive people crazy. I really don’t talk like this at all. Here it goes… Please expand and pressurize your diaphragm to enunciate the dialect produced from your cranium through your esophagus, which creates vibrations emanating from your voice box, which enhances the communication process of my voicemail. In other words,… leave a message!  … Yep it actually says that if you were to call me.

A few years back while driving down the highways in my big rig, with my imagination running in full gear (which it usually is) an idea began to develop for a possible short story, involving a truck driver. I thought it was pretty cool and me being the type who would forget it pretty quick, I simply grabbed my pad of paper and pen and began writing the basic ideas of it down. Yea, don’t tell anyone about the fact that I was still driving own the road, BUT… if it is any conciliation to you, I was doing what I call blind writing. I used to practice it in school to see how well I could write without looking. Going down the road it was messy but still legible when I went to write the actual story out, while not going down the road. Two days later, another idea came to me. This went on for some time, until I realized that I could possibly have enough for a book. So I called my brother Scott, the computer genius, and asked him to get on the internet or whatever it is people do and find me a typewriter so I can get this going. After he caught his breath from laughing so hard, he informed me that as far as he knew only Stephen King still used a typewriter and that I was going to have to buy an actual computer. I could have died right there. At forty-seven years old I had never owned a computer, other than the stupid smart-phones. With those I only called, text and once in a while would watch a video someone sent me. No email, Facebook, webpage, skyping, tweeting, myspace, video-calls, or any other tech stuff that people do.

Two days later, I called him up and explained that he was going to have to talk to this guy I was approaching to make sure that the computer I was going to buy from him from out of the trunk of his car would be exactly what I was going to need. Yep! I bought my first computer EVER out of the trunk of a man’s car. After that, my brother taught me everything I needed to know from turning the thing on…no joke, to being able to run windows, send and read emails (seriously), to everything else involved in using a computer. And he did it all over the phone! He is a great teacher.  

So, along with that kind of chaos…plus the deep desire in reading and add to that my crazy imagination, which to some could border on the insane, I have now been able to publish my first book in a series of at least three called the Trucker’s Nightmare. The second will be published soon as well, along with the third which is more than half way finished. I also have an idea for a novel which I am hoping will turn out to be a little unique from other books out there. By the way that crazy statement above simply means… Thank You!