Louis Dumkowski hummed along with the nasal country song being played on the radio of the 18-wheeler in which he was riding.  He was somewhere north of Texarkana, Arkansas, having been picked up south of St. Louis, Missouri, by Buck Tergen, the driver, who was on his way to Carthage, Texas with a load of oil refinery supplies.

     Such luck didn’t usually happen to Louis, so he was willing to ignore that the incessant country music playing on the radio was actually driving him a bit crazy, preferring jazz or, in a pinch, hip hop,  himself.  If it hadn’t been for the fact that he was getting tired of standing beside the highway with his thumb out trying to hitch rides, he would have turned down Tergen’s offer of a ride.  The twangy guitar and nasal whining about missing an ‘old country home,’ along with Tergen’s thumping on the steering wheel in time with the music was driving him crazy.  And, then, there was him humming along – he never did that to other music – which he could neither stop nor avoid.  But, it beat walking, so he endured it.

     Buck Tergen didn’t talk much, which was just as well with Louis, as he had a horrible southern accent that Louis found difficult to follow.  For instance, when he stopped to pick Louis up, he said, “Wheer yall bound?”  This made no sense to Louis, so he just stood there with his mouth open, and his thumb pointing south.  “G’don in,” Buck had said.  “Um gonna Ca’thage.  Yall gonna thet fer?”  Now, Louis did recognize Carthage, the town just to the north of where his mother’s relatives lived, so he nodded and hopped into the cab next to Tergen.

     Louis had a hard time understanding the thick accents he encountered as he traveled farther south, but he enjoyed the outgoing friendliness of the people.  Tergen, even went past the oil refinery in Carthage to which he was delivering supplies, and drove another ten miles south on U.S. Highway 59 into neighboring Shelby County to drop Louis off at the road leading to his relatives’ farm.  “Twudn’t no problem,” he said.  “Compny’s payin’ me fer mileage, so I makun extry few dollahs.  Yall take keer now, ya heah.”  And, after Louis jumped down from the cab, he tipped his John Deere cap, made a U-turn and in a squeal of tires drove off.