The Swedish Fish Truck Diaries, Part 1 of 2

Author’s Note:

I took a freelance job from a friend at a marketing firm. My job: to drive a Swedish Fish-branded truck from St. Louis to Kentucky, run a promotional event, and then drive it back to New Jersey. During my odyssey, I scanned local radio stations, rather than bringing music. To give an exhaustive list of all the stations I listened to would be boring, and to be selective would be ungracious. I have therefore omitted all radio station names. 

“Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?” – The Cars

Day 1

It’s my first time in St. Louis, but it’s just like any other city. Between the bumpy flight and the spitting rain as I waited for a cab, I couldn’t have been bothered to care. For the 20 minutes it took to reach St. Charles, MO, I politely answered the banal questions of my driver.

“Yes, I’m here on business. Yes, I’m in marketing. No, I consider myself a musician first, a writer second, every other calling a distant third.” And on it went.

Then he pulls into the parking lot at my destination and I see what I’ve come for, and my smile arrives unbidden. The last time I saw this squat, brooding hulk, it was bright yellow and had a persistent death rattle. Now, it’s brighter white, and astride its back is an eight-foot fiberglass fish.

If I’ve lost you, it’s because you don’t know that I’m in St. Louis to collect this vehicle on behalf of Cadbury, makers of Swedish Fish candies. That’s neither here nor there, though. This truck and I know each other. I remember very well his bulldog stance, his defiant…lump-ness. He’s a lump. A big lug. Like an ill-tempered dog that’s too old to bother barking but still gives you the stink-eye.

Previously, when we spent time together, he taught me a lot about himself: He won’t go more than 60 miles an hour, and if you try to make him, he will try to shake you until you bite your tongue off. He is thirstier than he has any right to be. The radio is crackly and harsh. The seats don’t recline. He is four wheels and a reluctant engine, and frankly, I love him. I nicknamed him Pellinor, after the legendary Knight of the Questing Beast. 

Pelly’s had a make-over since our last meeting, but the moment he starts up, I know all the changes were external. He’s the same rattling old curmudgeon he’s always been. Our quest: to drive from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport to Louisville, KY, and from there to New Jersey. It is a distance of over a thousand miles. 

Here we go. 

I take I-64 East. It’s daylight now, but won’t be for long. It’s overcast and misty. The roads are clogged until I get to the highway, and then suddenly I’m transported into some alternate reality where there are only four or five cars on the road with me. I-64 is built like our very own I-76–two lanes each way–but with crucial differences that sneak up on me.

As Natalie Merchant sings about being “one of the wonders of God’s own creation” on 95.1 FM, I am seeing the wonders of Man’s. Either side of the road, as far as I can see, it’s farmhouses, grain silos and endless expanses of tillable land. It’s lonely in a way I-76 couldn’t understand.

An hour or so of this and the sun has just about quit, and the radio speaks to my heart. It’s Springsteen, reminding me of home, crooning about the darkness on the edge of town. I can see the darkness, but not the town, and suddenly it feels like I’ll be gobbled up by it.

I pull over at a rest stop and have some strong words with my subconscious. It’s just shadows after all, and I’m all right again until the farmland gives way to heavy forestation and the land on my right becomes a steep drop. Pellinore handles like a wrought-iron suitcase. He’s as graceful as a three-legged cat on a lopsided skateboard. He’s a lump.

For two hours I surf stations, and I feel like I’m getting to know Indiana as I drive across her. If I had to judge the population of an entire state based on two hours of station-hopping, I’d strongly recommend flight. Nine country music stations (and not the kinds that play Johnny Cash but the kinds that play Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban) dominate airwaves that also feature a great deal of Journey and an alarming dose of Michael Bolton.

I settle onto a classical music station that’s fighting a brilliant rearguard action against this invasion of noise pollution. Brahms can really psyche you up for a drive, by the way.

I want to stop again, to stretch, but I’m stubborn, I’m tired, I’ve been awake for 20 hours and I’ve had exactly zero caffeine hits today and I just want to pull into Louisville before my stamina fails, so I tell my bladder to cool it and keep driving. This road has already done something to me, and as my headlights pierce a puny distance into the lampless blacktop before me, I find a certain calmness. I don’t know fear. I get extremely Zen for a minute or two.

Don’t ever do that while you drive. Two gentlemen from a national food distributor snap me from my trance with a vicious game of highway tag. They blow past me at 80 miles an hour. They change lanes so close that I can see footprints on their back bumpers. Then the pair of tractor-trailers and the two highly damaged brains in control of them careen up the highway to terrorize more unsuspecting yokels on this isolated stretch.

I let the time ease by and launch into my “driver” mode. It’s what allows us to do long hauls when we need to, and I’ve got a big one with only one break in the middle. Louisville is approaching, and I’m dimly aware of the pain in my right buttock where I’ve forgotten to take my wallet out of the back pocket. Ah, the road–it’s so glamorous!

Empty country roads give way to something more familiar–a crowded highway. Signs for the Kentucky Derby are already everywhere. Cruising through town on the hunt for a hotel for the night, I see a few things that illustrate how different we are: Chicken N’ Waffles advertised everywhere, a sign for something called a “truck pull,” and my favorite: the drive-through liquor store. Seems counterintuitive, but it works. It’s still quite pretty, but I’ve been to Europe and it felt closer to home than Louisville, KY.

I’ve found a hotel. I’ll write more tomorrow. For now, I’ll let the darkness on the edge of town be obscured by the darkness on the edge of my vision, and slip into blessed slumber for a while. I put Pellinor in PARK, and tap the scan button on the radio. Somehow, I lock into a local blues station, and Keb 'Mo's chocolate rasp tells me what I'd already figured out:

"There's more than one way home. Ain't no right way, ain't no wrong."