Experienced RVers will not believe that after we staked our claim on the far corner of the parking lot, the neighbors who moved in during the night were all silent: no RV generators, no diesels running all night, and no Thermo-King refrigerators cycling on and off, driving you mad.
Those all stayed on the other side of the parking lot, and the sleeping duel was averted. Maybe sleeping at a truck stop--rather than any driving experiences--gave a young Steven Spielberg the idea of making "Duel."
Although truck stops have some practical advantages they are smelly, oil-slickened hurly-burlies, with poor food and dirty floors. But think how we romanticize the stage stops and train depots of the olden days. I wonder what people thought of them then?
Years ago I was driving on a business trip in the company car, which was actually a base-model pickup truck. I stopped for breakfast at a greasy-spoon cafe in a truck stop. Since it was early in the morning there were only a couple other customers.
I walked up to the jukebox and selected some slow ballads by Patsy Cline. How haunting and moving they were in that deserted cafe in the pre-dawn hours, at that greasy truck stop! In fact they affected me more than music ever had--or was it the time and place?
