RIP Double Trouble

There are goods n bads about visiting old friends that you haven't seen in a long time. One of the bads is catching up and learning that some people, who were at one time critical in your life, have since passed on. This was my experience this week as I visit an old friend I haven't talked to in 15 years.

Back in the mid 80's I had just graduated from high school and drove down south to visit my friend for the summer. As responsible as I was, a couple of hundred dollars still didn't last me long, and soon I was broke & out of food. Living alone in a house in the country while my roommate was working the oil rigs, I was unnerved when I saw some tall, lanky, dark haired stranger coming up my back walk. I watched him lean down to get a better look at me through the windows and I met him at the door in attempts to keep him outside, because we never locked our doors.
"Who are you?" I asked. He replied, "I'm more welcome here than you are." I highly doubted that, but since he was my roommates friend, I let him in after introductions. His name was Terry and I figure he was a little more than 10 years older than I was. I must have been a sight, sunburnt and hadn't eaten in two days, and he noticed it all. Since my kitten was crying, I told him my woes of being broke and hungry. He proceeded to take me to the local convenience store and buy me enough cat food to last a week. After feeding the cat, he took me for a long drive in his old black Peterbilt.
It was a beautiful truck, all black with chrome, shiny and loved, with a triple wide sleeper. It had the old-style square nose, before they turned ugly and started to round the noses. "I'll teach you how to drive if you want to." *Well, how many gears does this thing have?* "Eighteen," he answered. "15 going forward and 3 in reverse." I remember the seats bouncing as we drove, and he told me he had the best shocks on those seats; other trucks were worse.
That day we went to some cafe in the middle of nowhere and he promised me they had the best food around. After eating a very large breakfast, I started on Terry's fries, all the while his dark eyes smiling at me as I could see his thoughts, "this girl can EAT!" He paid for our food and as he helped me back up into the truck, he leaned in for a kiss but I pulled back and refused. He smiled again and said he was OK with that. After stopping at his friend’s house, where I promptly fell asleep happy and full in the sleeper cab, he drove me home and remained a perfect gentleman. He would come by at least once a week to check on me, make sure I had enough to eat and that my roommate and his friends were behaving and minding me with respect. It was always a treat to hear that truck pull up out back and that drawl yell out "Blondie, I'm back! Where are you?"

So when I recently saw my old childhood friend, I had to ask, "Remember Terry the trucker? What ever happened to him?" Nonchalantly she answered, "Oh, Terry G, he died. I think his body just wore out."

R.I.P. Double Trouble