Cherry St Toronto ON

 

October 5, 2024

I had just dropped an empty trailer at a warehouse on Cherry St, we usually did a drop and hook from here. These loads were always heavy, and normally went to the east coast. This one was going to Baie Comeau, QC.

This is a town on the north shore of the St Laurence River, and it was awkward as hell to get to. Highway 138 is an asshole of a road, it is extremely twisty and turny and you get tired of turning the steering wheel. Too, the American Appalachian Mountains peter out there, and there is a spot where the road goes from basically flat to a 17% up grade, in like, right now. This goes on for perhaps half a kilometre or .03106 of a mile, but you get to the top of that in low range grossing 100,000 lbs. I ended up picking up over by Asbestos, QC, where they were either going to, or already have, renamed the town because of the mistakes surrounding Asbestos. The Quebec town formerly known as Asbestos has changed its name to Val-des-Sources. The name change was approved by residents in a vote held in October 2020 and became official in December 2020, according to CBC News and Global News. The new name, meaning "Valley of the Springs," reflects the town's location near the sources of three lakes, reported by CNN and The Guardian. 

The town was originally named after the asbestos mineral mined there for over a century. The mine closed in 2011, and the town began to explore renaming itself to distance itself from the negative connotations associated with asbestos, says the Network in Canadian History & Environment and The Guardian. I got rolls of paper for a mill down in South Carolina, U.S.A. Then over to Freightliner in Mount Holly, NC. for Frieghtliner in St Thomas, ON. Then over to Windsor Salt in Windsor, ON. That was going to Chicoutimi, QC. We got our dispatch through satellite messaging, the messages were generally canned, meaning the information was fill in the blank standard forms. Sometimes at the bottom of these there were notes, where you received special instructions.

In this case, the message was a bit cryptic, “check dispatch before departure”. So I called dispatch. That seemed a bit of a waste of time, checking the address in Quebec. And then I was asked to hold for the boss. That threw me a little, I was certain that I had not done anything wrong, and if I had, I would be talking to safety, or HR, but not likely the boss. The first thing he said to me when he came on was, “Relax, you're not in trouble”. Alright, so what then? Your wife. What about my wife? She was here today. Why? Well she was demanding a lot of information about you that we cannot share with anyone, except in rare cases with law enforcement. So, what you're telling me then is, get her under control and, the office is not a social club. Sorry she has done that boss, I don't quite know what to say about it. So he let it go at that, light soft touch, no worries. Trucking is hard on families, he got it. And I held up my end of the bargain, I stopped in West Lorne on my way past, and I spoke to her about it, and tried to be sympathetic to why she did it. And she lied to my face, and said she would never do it again.

I mean let's be honest, there are plenty of reasons as to why your spouse might be at your place of employment, with or without you. But there are no reasons as to why she or he, would treat those occasions as a social thing. I mean it was fine when I walked in with a coffee, and one for Ben say; I worked there, certain social niceties were ok. It was not ok for her to do that, intending to bribe people through niceness, to obtain information about me. The company ran every continental U.S state, and 10 Canadian provinces, plus 2 territories and was trying to figure out how to run the third one, Nunavut. Problem there was, there were no roads to get there, everything was shipped in or out of there by water or air. And that made stuff really expensive up there for the people, trucking it in would help that some. My best idea was to create an all weather road north out of Cochrane, ON, use the existing infrastructure around Moosonee, go up the west coast of Hudson Bay to Churchill, MB. Two things really bothered me about the poverty of the Canadian indigenous population, one, that it existed at all, the other that it was enforced by lack of resources, transportation playing a huge part in that. It was not up to private companies to build all weather roads, much less the winter roads that they did build. On the most part the boss avoided those, preferring to keep us “safer” on sea ice, as opposed to fresh water ice, because its denser, and will stay frozen a “little” longer. I believe that works out to be like half a degree in temperature to its salt content. In other words, a bunch of complicated math, that does not really work.

I did not spend a lot of time in the oil sands of Saskatchewan, and Alberta, the guys who called Edmonton or Saskatoon home, seemed to manage that. As far as I was concerned they could have it. The one load that I had taken up there, I had sunk axle deep in prairie gumbo, I had needed two bulldozers to pull me out of there. I was not anxious to repeat that. It had been while in the midst of that when my cell phone rang, it had startled the hell out of me. I had just finished sending a satellite message to the effect of, Help! Stuck!, Sinking Fast! I had been stressing hard about it, little did I realize that Rick, and Warby dealt with this daily during the summer up here. Tracie, our girl in HR had been on the phone. She had been a little terse with me. And before the conversation had gone too far, I had told her to stuff her attitude, and please calmly explain what the problem was.

She was nice enough to actually apologize, seems that people managers, can have major issues with, people. So it seems that the leprechaun had been at it again, this time, she had followed one of our guys through the gate, a couple of hours before the office opened, and had sat in wait of Chrissy, our payroll manager. This taking place at 0400 in the AM. The leprechaun had been verbally abusive towards Chrissy. The company had come within a pubic hair (her words) of pressing charges for trespassing, assault, and something else I do not remember. I was firmly reminded that I had talked to Jeff a few months previous about similar behaviour. They were well aware that I was not the issue, and that the problem was my spouse. This behaviour was highly disruptive, a hair's breath from being dangerous, and if I did not rectify it immediately, they would have her arrested, charged, and banned from the property. There was no threat to my employment, but they now had reason to begin building a case against me should I start fucking up. Gone were the days of, well we'll just over look that, it'll buff out. I shit myself, swore, and had to work to find enough spit so I could talk. I apologized to her, the company, and personally to Chrissy if on the phone

.

When I got back to Wallaceburg, ON, I went and had a sit down with Tracie, the HR girl, and I told her straight out, that I had no idea of what the fuck was wrong with the leprechaun. I told her that I had spoken with the leprechaun on the day in question, and that she had given me the silent treatment. I told her that, I had no issue at all with the company arresting, charging, banning, and whatever else the leprechaun, should anything like this ever happen again. And yes I was well aware that I had no voice in those decisions. It was Tracie's opinion that the leprechaun needed a mental health intervention, and though she was not allowed to say this professionally, she could as a friend; she hoped my husky did not end up like the bunny rabbit in that movie. Boiled in a pot. At that moment I found myself considering her cleavage, she was a few years older than I was, but still a nice looking girl. She was right, I really did need a new girlfriend, one who wasn't psycho.

Girls say that guys are always looking at their chests, I had always been at pains to prove them wrong. Except for now, I looked, and did not much care if they caught me looking. I missed tits, and porn was not an answer, I missed the feel of them, the warmth, softness, and shape. The intimacy of a woman giving them to you. The leprechaun had needed when younger, a double mastectomy, and she had recently had them reconstructed, The reconstruction and her failure to follow up with the plastic surgeon, had caused the whole effort to go bad, real bad. She looked like frankentits now. When I got home to West Lorne, it now being 4 days since she had trespassed, I layed into her hard, and I was so angry with her that, yes, I called her Frankenstein, barley avoiding calling her frankentits. Though calling her that would have been so true and so apt. As angry as I was, I had to wonder, had she pulled shit like this with her ex husband, was that why he called her the titless wonder?

Her response was still, the silent treatment. Had I understood anything about narcissism, I would have realized that, she was trying to find a way to reassert power and control. But not understanding that, it just seemed that, 1. She did not care enough about it to answer me and 2. That her actions had endangered my employment, and our well being, and that did not matter to her. The Husky's response to my arrival home was, I thought a bit odd. He of course did his thrilled to see me routine, with all the twinning, kisses when allowed to. But too, there seemed to be a relief in his body language, something I had never seen in him before. This would be the same when I would arrive home after she had returned to full fledged alcoholism. I believe this was the first real sign of that happening.

So she was either another Glenn Close, or what was happening was, she was drinking, blacking out, driving to my work place, then having no recollection of it because she was blacked out. Her go to had always been the silent treatment, now it was more than ever necessary for her, because now, she had to find ways of hiding her alcoholism. And especially, hiding stuff she did not remember doing. The implications of this scared me, it was going to affect my relationship with her family, because I was not them, who would pour booze down sinks. I knew better, that does not help. She was a weak swimmer, drowning in the pool was a strong possibility. Setting the house or herself on fire with untapped out cigarettes was a good possibility. As evidenced by the holes burned in the sheets on our bed. Or fucking up lighting the wood burning stove. I had had to put my dad out a couple of times. He had woke up with painful burns a couple of times. Some of the murderous looks that I had got from him, causing me to growl at him, maybe if your drunk wife was not passed out, maybe it would be her stood here, the fucker hadn't hadn't liked that comment.

Oddly he never pushed back on that. The leprechaun though was ugly enough to, and did. Much of the linen and bedding I shared with her, had to be thrown out because they were badly burned by cigarettes. Many a time she burned herself, dropped the damn thing, and I would catch it, and put it out. She in a drunken stupor would minutes later realize she did not have her smoke, and would then, light another. Then with drunken lack of coordination, proceed to singe her eyebrows, hair, pillows, then light her smoke halfway down its length. Her response was still, the silent treatment. Had I understood anything about narcissism, I would have realized that, she was trying to find a way to reassert power and control. But not understanding that, it just seemed that, 1. She did not care enough about it to answer me and 2. That her actions had endangered my employment, and our well being, and that did not matter to her. The Husky's response to my arrival home was, I thought a bit odd. He of course did his thrilled to see me routine, with all the twinning, kisses when allowed to. But too, there seemed to be a relief in his body language, something I had never seen in him before. This would be the same when I would arrive home after she had returned to full fledged alcoholism. I believe this was the first real sign of that happening.

So she was either another Glenn Close, or what was happening was, she was drinking, blacking out, driving to my work place, then having no recollection of it because she was blacked out. Her go to had always been the silent treatment, now it was more than ever necessary for her, because now, she had to find ways of hiding her alcoholism. And especially, hiding stuff she did not remember doing. The implications of this scared me, it was going to affect my relationship with her family, because I was nothing to them to start with. My lying for her, or seeming callousness towards her was going to fuck with them. 

 She would then curse me out for taking the other one away from her, oblivious of the fact that she had just set herself on fire. It was terrifying to watch, and it filled me with disdain for her. Contempt is probably a better word.

Money was a huge concern, I had been in financial chaos since meeting her, there was nothing in the budget for her booze. Neither had there been my fathers' he had found it by depriving me. I had wore underwear with no elastic, jeans that were more holes than pants, and too small. Shoes with holes in them, and too small. Winter coats that were too small and too worn. I Had slept in the same bed from 6 years old to leaving that place when 17 years old. Winter boots that were too small and holed, shoes worn in their place, but had holes in them. I knew something about depravity, and I was not afraid of it, but I was pissed off at myself for staying with her, and allowing it to continue in my life. The hope of my home in West Lorne had long since turned to ashes.

I want to stop talking about her, but the scars are deep. You can see by the chaos she created, trying to grow spiritually was near impossible. All that I could do was, sanitize that place in preparation for, true growth. And that seemed a herculean task.

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