We filled up
with cheap gas, then pulled forward to park near the main entrance of the
travel center, two-thirds of the way between Portland and our home in the
northeast-corner of the state. The sun was setting, and the McDonalds and
Subway restaurants inside had just finished the dinner rush. We ushered our
children through the glass doors and made our way through isles of cell-phone
accessories, car parts, salty-snacks, Confederate flag ball caps, audio-books,
DVDs, stuffed animals, shot-glasses protruding from the mouths of rattlesnakes,
and T-shirts that said “Mess with me and you mess with the whole trailer park.”
My wife took the baby into the women’s room, and I took the other two, both of
them shuffling under my outstretched arm as I held open the men’s room door.
Like the more
traditional greasy-spoons with trailer-filled tarmacs, the ubiquitous
travel-center still caters to truckers, but you’ll also find Greyhound buses
and plenty of all-American SUVs and minivans. The public restrooms – which are
the one spot in the travel center everyone is sure to visit – is therefore one
of the last remaining places offering a true cross-section of American society
at a glance. Upper-middle-class suburbanites mingle with blue-collar bus riders
and rough-and-tumble long-haul truckers. And it’s all smiles and nods and
taking turns. The interstate travel-center restroom is the last place in
America where all people are truly equal.
As my children took
turns on the potty, an automated message came over the PA system: “Shower customer number…one-hundred ten,
your shower is ready. Please proceed to shower number…nine.” By the time my
children were finished, the music overhead had been interrupted by two more
calls for shower customers. We ushered out of the stall, washed everyone’s
hands, and turned for the exit.
There, holding
the door, was the ultimate stereotype of the long-haul trucker. Over six-feet
tall. White handle-bar mustache. Tank-top with ragged seams. Bulging biceps.
Thirty-year-old tattoos turned blue-green with age. He looked down at my
children with a smile. I gave him a smile and a nod. Yes, they are cute, aren’t they.
But as we
shuffled past him, back into the aisles of travel convenience and sorry-I-missed-your-birthday-again
kitsch, I wondered if the trucker’s smile meant something different. After all,
what does a tough guy like him care for the cuteness of small children? Maybe
he admired their comparative innocence. Or perhaps (now the writer in me was
coming out) seeing my children brought back memories of his own past, an
earlier time when he was a family man, before the children grew old enough to
resent him and the wife grew tired of never seeing him. Maybe that look in his
eyes, that tightness in his smile, was a recognition of what he had lost, or
what he had never had, or what he had knowingly given up.
We led our
children outside, slid open the minivan door, and began the arduous process of
strapping everyone into their child-seats. And I realized it was entirely
possible the trucker in the bathroom had a loving wife waiting for him at home,
only a few hours away, and seeing my children reminded him of his own
grandchildren, whom he saw regularly, pockets filled with small gifts. Maybe he
was even a faithful follower of Jesus, having turned from the life depicted on
his tattoos, using his image to reach the unreachable for the Kingdom of God.
Or maybe I
needed to embrace the inconceivable. Maybe he wasn’t a trucker at all. Maybe he
was a man of more-than-moderate means on a family vacation, waiting for his
wife of thirty years to emerge from the restroom, waiting to link up with the
grandchildren in the parking lot. Maybe he was the very embodiment of the American
cross-section, the incarnation of the essence of the modern travel center.
As we pulled
away from the parking lot and peeled off toward the interstate, accelerating
eastward, I realized it was entirely possible that the man was climbing into an
SUV for the return trip to his house in suburban Portland. After all, the
travel center had an entire aisle of Confederate flag and trailer-park themed
merchandise even though most truckers today make too much money to be “trailer
trash,” even though the culture of the Northwest is almost the polar opposite of that found in the Southland. Even in my town
of 500, in my county of 7000, I can operate a smart phone on a 3G network, and teenagers look just the same
as they do in the inner city, whether Seattle or Atlanta.
How often have I
been judged to be a successful, connected, wired, got-it-together professional
simply because of my haircut, glasses and polo shirts, when in fact I am hardly
any of those things? Why assume I’m a follower of Jesus just because I shave
regularly and don’t use swear words? Why did I assume the man in the bathroom
was a pagan just because he was big, wore a tank-top, had tattoos, and happened
to be at a truck-stop? If the world is full of clean-cut men and women
worshipping Mammon, why can’t it also be filled with bikers, rednecks, and
truckers pursuing Christ?
Imagine the
glory of such a man being redeemed by Jesus despite his appearance. I’ll give
him the benefit of the doubt, even though, odds are, he climbed into the cab of
a semi and thundered off toward the state line.
