I had met Willie a few times as I worked with his wife, Elvira, for a number of years. I didn’t really know him that well at that point, but I felt like we would get along based on our common goal. I had no idea that we would form a bond that lasts to this day. It’s rare to not at least text or talk almost every day. I had no idea of the adventures that lay ahead of us from that first day…

Willie is a veteran, and a good man. He likes his coffee black, and he is far from lazy. He is a redneck and proud of it. I recall a time we got creative with our headlights to avoid a ticket until we could get it repaired properly. After I teamed up with Freckles, the identical problem happened, and I told him we did the exact same thing. It was useful when we rolled through a weigh station 5 minutes later.

He said, “It’s good to know a redneck, huh?”

I replied, “Well, I have some redneck tendencies as well, but it’s good to know a full-blooded one.”

My training was certainly not complete, and Willie was game to teach me. I didn’t realize how much I was learning at the time, as he treated me like a co-driver and yet was willing to wake up from valuable sleep to help me with whatever new way of getting into trouble I discovered at the time.

I am from Florida, and snow was something I saw when the Christmas movies came out every year on TV. It snowed maybe one time in Florida my whole life, and the entire region shut down. No school, no work, but thousands of 6″ tall snowmen were born as that’s what Floridians had always wanted to do.

I was driving through Oregon between the towns La Grande and Pendleton. This stretch is known as “Cabbage Hill,” and it’s a somewhat dangerous stretch of I 84 in the winter. The weather was mild before I reached this stretch, and I had no concerns as I had driven it many times already. As I climbed to the higher elevations, it started to rain and very quickly morphed into something different. The rain seemed to fall and then make an almost 90 degree turn into the windshield and splat. As it got heavier I started to feel like I had entered a scene from Star Wars (it was night and dark). It was crazy looking. My headlights were not helping, and I was growing concerned. I didn’t want to, but I had to wake Willie up. This was new, and I didn’t know what the the hell it was.

He woke right up, took one look and said, “That’s snow, dude.” Well,  I was embarrassed, and we laughed for a bit, and he stayed up with me till we got through it as always: without complaint. This is just one of so many humbling things I have experienced, and to this day I find myself saying, “duhhh I, I, I didn’t know.”

There are quite a few stories I will share from my time team driving with Willie. But I wanted to introduce him properly, as without him I would not be here. The owner of our trucks was important, but I could have started anywhere. Without Willie and Elvira, Glowplug and Freckles wouldn’t have made it. We love them, and it is evidence that all family doesn’t have to be blood.