Word: goodrum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this raw, gusty winter morning, Mary Goodrum is wishing she were someplace else than the cab of an 18-wheeler on an abandoned Texas airfield...
...Goodrum is hunched over the wheel of a Freightliner, straining with all her 106-lb. might to maneuver 61 ft. of tractor-trailer into a parking space that doesn't look large enough for two Corvettes. Like most novice truck drivers, she is confronted by too many tasks demanding simultaneous attention: eyeballing six side-view mirrors, working a gargantuan steering wheel and a muscle-wearying clutch pedal, and monitoring an instrument panel befitting a 727. Goodrum eases the rig back until . . . kerplunk, she mashes into a barricade of tires...
Disgusted, Student Goodrum, 49, jumps out and watches an instructor effortlessly slide her rig back into the hole. She joins other dejected novices who have flunked the backing test. "This is grueling," she sighs...
...bookkeeper and a county jailer. Even a computer programmer. People with lives gone sour or careers on hold. People treading water, looking for a break. For them the open road beckons as a great new beginning. "I'll make my husband's $45,000 within two years," whispers Goodrum. She and a friend have enrolled so they can travel the country with their trucker husbands. An appliance technician is here because "there are too many technicians in Fort Worth." The pilot "wants to see life on the ground" and sock away a retirement kitty...
...second week a dozen trainees have dropped out. But dozens of others like Goodrum, undaunted by failure, have hung in and passed their tests on the second and third tries. They swagger about the smoke-filled coffee room with all the bearing of veteran road hogs. Their bravado is largely superficial. "Deep down, these guys realize it isn't B.J. and the Bear out there on the highway," says a recruiter. The real road is tougher than the school, but at this point, who wants to tamper with romantic illusions? "At the jail, all I learned was about...