So it was back in August of 2017 that Hurricane Harvey came in on the coast of Texas, and as it sat over Houston, it laid down around 53 inches of rain. I have (in past stories) spoken of what I have seen at this occurrence, as well as the countless other disaster scenarios that I deployed to. During this “happening,” a group of five of us fuel transport drivers were parked just outside of the city limits, awaiting two things: 1) for the water to subside enough to get to where they wanted to position our transports. And 2) for the word to come down from FEMA telling the main fuel contractor (that we were assigned to) to get us rolling and staged. During those first long days of sitting in a shopping center parking lot, I decided to finally take the leap of faith and start writing stories for this book.
The title, “Keeping My Balance,” came from two main sources. The first source was the picture that I wanted to give folks of just what kind of “balance” I was trying to show. When I was a kid, I taught myself how to ride a unicycle. When you learn to ride a bicycle, there are two main ways you can crash. You can either lose your balance and fall to the right or to the left. As you get more experienced (or brave, or STUPID), you can fall off the back (as you are trying to do a “wheelie”), or you can go forward (and over the handlebars) in an attempt to do some daring jump stunt. (And yes, I got skinned up doing both of those things!)
On a unicycle, I found out quickly that there were many other angles and ways to crash and burn. As there are 360 degrees on a compass, there are at least that many ways to find yourself kissing the cement of the sidewalks, or the very rough texture of the road base! We went through A LOT of bandages as this “fun machine” was being learned.
Later on in life, and as I was learning the techniques and all that came with driving big rigs, I found out that there are risks involved on SO MANY FRONTS! If I had to take an office trailer (that was quite “light”) across one of the many Tampa Bay bridges, I would have to check on the winds for their speed and which way the wind was blowing. On at least two occasions, I had to call out on the C.B. radio and ask for a heavier big truck to hold a certain lane and act as a wind block so that I could make it across safely. On one delivery, I was bringing a wide-load office trailer, 12 feet wide and 60 feet long, across the Howard Frankland bridge, when a wind gust hit the side of the trailer, lifting the right wheels of the unit at least a foot off the roadway. I recall that the passenger with me was white knuckled (from fear of going over the side of the bridge), and didn’t ease back in his seat until we were 1/4 mile from that bridge!
Many years later, on my first load of gasoline, I had a young Colombian girl (on her cell phone) NOT SEE THE SIDE OF MY TRUCK, and hooked her fender into my right wheel assembly. As I was slamming on the brakes, I remembered my boss telling me, “If you’ve got a bus load of nuns dead in front of you, DO NOT SWERVE HARD, or you will flip, and EVERYBODY in that accident will burn to death!” I had watched her car finish its spin, hit the concrete divider wall, then start to head for the underside of my left trailer wheels! I cut just a little bit more, and with the good Lord’s help, she only bounced off the side of the wheels (as compared to GOING UNDER THEM)!
Another aspect of the balance in the job was what we drivers had to do with regard to our driver logbooks.
The drivers on the C.B. radio would call them “comic books” because when the D.O.T. Officers would pull you over and look through your logbook, they would often say, “Is this really what you drove?” With a smirk on their faces.
Now, we all have had to take some kind of risks in our lives; it’s just that some people are more prone to having bigger and more dangerous risks in their lifestyles than others.
So, this book is based on a compilation of stories and situations that I faced, so far, in my life. And I can give most of the credit for my longevity to the good Lord, and a faithful and PRAYERFUL wife.
If you do happen to go to the Amazon/ Kindle books section, it is available in (soft) paperback, as well as E-book.
AND, I’m taking a good portion of the derived funds to send them up to the missions working in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. I hope that Y’all have a blessed week, until we can do this again!
Steve Goodwin is a retired Christian conservative veteran (of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division), who still feels that “duty to country” did not end when the military uniform got hung up. He and his wife Cecelia live on the edge of a beautifully wooded tract of land just south of the bypass, and are involved in not only church activities, but also attend school board meetings and local community action events as well.
