Laramie, WY

When I first started driving, good god we were poor. We had spent every dime we had to get me through trucking school and out on the road so training was mostly a PB&J affair for me while Stace and the young-one cut every corner they could manage at home. The pressure to make it through training was intense because we didn’t really have a back-up plan. The pressure may have been grinding and the cash was non-existent, but I had wanted to drive for years so I was happy to be learning a new skill and was looking forward eagerly to the big new bucks I would be making once I got out of training. Finally… we would be moving up in the world.

My trainer, being the kind-hearted woman that she was, used to pretend she was too nervous to walk into a truck stop alone at night and would “bribe” me with a free meal if I would walk in with her. It was taken for granted that I had no problem walking anywhere even in the middle of the night. I’ve always been relatively fearless in that respect and she knew it. Now she was a tiny little woman, but before we met she had been a solo trucker for three years, so I found it hard to believe she couldn’t bring herself to walk through a truck stop at night alone. I tried to refuse the offer the first few times but then she would just sit in the truck and eat peanut butter with me. So while I hated to take her charity… I didn’t want to be the reason she missed out on a meal, either. And I sure did appreciate the meals. Thanks, Michele.

Steer with set of lugnut covers

Anyway, the point is we were hurting for cash so when I got my own truck I was woefully unprepared to buy all the crap you need when you first start trucking. Things like a cb, cooler, Trucker’s Atlas, fuel finder and the like. Somehow I managed to get the most urgent things, but there was no way I was going to spring for the extras… even though I wanted them.

One of the extras that I really wanted but couldn’t afford was lugnut covers. You can see some on the steer tire in the photo to the left. They aren’t really any big deal just little chrome colored things that snap on over your lugnuts and make the truck look more fancy-pants.

Now I know it may be kinda shocking to those who only know me now to find out that at one time I wanted my truck to be all fancy-pants looking. I mean, while we try to keep the inside clean, these days we rarely even wash the outside of the truck unless Stace suddenly decides it’s a good idea. Anyway… trucking is kinda old-hat now and it was all new and exciting back then and I wanted my truck to stand out due to it’s obvious awesomeness.

No-talent artist's recreation of Hedon's ultra-cool lugnut covers

Well… one night I was at one of our company’s terminals and I made an amazing find. Back by a dumpster in the corner of the lot was an entire set of steer tire lugnut covers. But they were in a shape I had never seen before. Each one looked like a tiny little top-hat. They were pretty rare. They were also pretty rusty. Hmmm. I hated to pass them up, but rusty lugnut covers weren’t exactly the look I was going for on the fancy-pants front. In the end, I picked them all up and tossed them in my side box hoping Fernando would come up with an idea.

On the way home that trip, the idea came to me. Good old Fernando. One afternoon at home the young one and I cleaned them all and used her paints to paint each one. We went with rainbow colors so each wheel had two per color and the center was the purple. It was pretty fun to paint them all with her.

And when they were all installed they were utterly unique. The company I was driving for at the time had about 7,000 trucks but I was the only one with rainbow lugnut covers. As far as that goes, there were probably a bazillion trucks on the road at the time… but I was still the only one with rainbow lugnut covers. Cool, huh?

And not only were they flashy, they were also useful. Combined with the rainbow air freshener hanging from my airhorn cord, they told all but the most dense drivers to knock off all the flirty crap cause we weren’t playing for the same team. Worked pretty well and usually got nice comments. Oh sure, there was the occasional nasty reaction, but I never worried too much about that.

Then I drove into Laramie, WY for the first time and had to stop for fuel. With rainbow colored lugnut covers. I tried really hard to avoid thinking. But I just couldn’t keep Matthew Shepard out of my head. As I drove by the rural Wyoming landscape I kept wondering, “Was that the fence?” even though I knew that it couldn’t have been right next to the interstate. I kept seeing that poor kid beaten and lashed to a fence in the cold Wyoming night… and for the first time I regretted my flashy truck. For the first time I was sort of afraid.

I was nervous even though I knew that it was utterly silly to only be nervous in Laramie, WY. I mean I fully agreed with the lyrics of the song*:

We hit snow on the road to Laramie
We all heard about that mess
But that town ain’t nothing different
Than the rest

Poor man do the bidding for the rich man
Those rednecks just doing
What the classy fucker’s thinking
And tolerance it ain’t acceptance
I know you wanted it to be
When you’re out in Laramie

And yet there I was standing in the fuel island of the Pilot with my keys held just so in my hand and looking around constantly to track every single person who was out and about that night. People probably thought I had some sort of nervous disorder by the time I was done fueling and was safely back in my truck so I could relax. What’s funny is that Matthew Shepard had died three full years before I was there but for me the feeling was still as strong as if it had been the month before.

That feeling of fear was so unusual it kinda threw me for a loop and made me really evaluate the risk I was taking in being so blatantly out on the road. It made me think about all the times I was parked alone on a deserted stretch of road and how my lugnut covers might be a red cape waving in front of the rednecks… and the classy fuckers, too. It was a daunting thought.

In the end, I decided to keep the rainbows. Tolerance may not be acceptance, but the GLBT community wouldn’t even have tolerance at this point if it weren’t for all the brave people who came out in spite of huge personal risk. I was only running with rainbow-colored lugnut covers. Pretty minimal risk. And how could I do any less? How could I not stand up and be counted to pave the way for the young ones coming up behind me… especially when the suicide rate among the teen GLBT community is thought to be two to three times higher than it is for other teens?

Every confused and terrified kid hiding alone in their room at night wondering how they are ever going to come out needs every single one of us to stand behind them. I know most of you that will be reading this aren’t in the GLBT community. But have you ever thought that maybe one of your kids is? Or perhaps a niece or nephew? You’re obviously fairly cool on whole the subject if you keep dropping by to listen to Stace’s and my constant blathering. Please make sure your kids know that. If nothing else, just make it clear that you aren’t going to run screaming from the room if they ever do come out to you. Even if you’d secretly cry yourself to sleep for a month afterward.

Tolerance may not be acceptance, but it could be just enough.

*Laramie by Amy Ray