Freighter Blues

By Sparky Goldman

Johnny Vetter, a veteran trucker is pushing himself to the breaking point in an effort to help his elderly parents pay their taxes.

When he gets approached by a palm sized star freighter captain, Johnny is certain that his mind has snapped.

After being assured by the pint sized man that his mind has not, "slagged it's thought processor" Johnny agrees to help the space freighter captain.

If Johnny thought he'd seen it all before this night, he was badly mistaken.

Closely following the palm sized space freighter captain are his competitors. Some of them will stop at nothing to sieze the cargo on his ship or blow him out of existence. They could potentially go after anyone assisting him.

Johnny Vetter just might become collateral damage!

Buckle up, you're in for a rough ride!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sparky Goldman
• Release date: May 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393434962

Sparky Goldman

I'm a character that was created in one of my own stories. So who's writing this? That's what I'd like to know! I like to tell all kinds of stories. From space men to ghosts and many things in between, I have quite the interesting imagination! Seriously, I'm a former over the road trucker who loved trucking. I gave it up to care for my parents after my father had a massive stroke back in 2010. He used to look after mom because her health wasn't all that well. My health has started getting worse since becomeing my mother's caregiver back in 2017. She has dementia. I on the other hand have devoloped PTSD because she has fallen so much. Writing my stories are an escape to me. I hope they are a pleasure for you to read! I won't lie, I need the money too.  I live with my parents as their caregiver and due to being their caregiver I can't find work because I need to be here for them. My state doesn't pay family members to be caregivers. And due to my health, there's not a lot I can do anymore. So I'm trying to make some money with my stories. I have many of them to tell!  My biggest fear is becoming homeless. Mom's dementia has progressed far enough that she needs to be in a rest home. I'm not certain how long we'll (my father and I) will be able to keep up with the bills.  Here's to hoping my stories are good enough to help my situation!

Book preview

~Freighter Blues~

Streaks of red and green light lit up the night alongside the road Johnny Vetter drove his old Peterbilt on.

He didn’t know what kind of phenomena was taking place but it was interesting to watch. 

If he looked close enough he could see blue and reddish hues of illumination from where the lights flashed from.

Sometimes, he saw little explosions. Occasionally he saw big explosions.

It was all happening so fast that he started going off the road a time or two because he kept watching the debacle.

With all the movies, pranks and stunts he’d read about on the internet, Johnny was certain this was someone trying to get a reaction out of him. Or possibly making some sort of internet movie.

Still thinking someone was pulling a prank on him, he looked in his driver’s door mirror.

He didn’t see the lights of any vehicles following him. That didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Crazy fools might be following me while wearing night vision goggles while other people control those things. He thought.

Johnny had been pushing himself too hard again. It wasn’t for the fact that he loved to run a big rig that had him pushing so hard this time. It was a matter of great concern to not only him but two other people. His mom and dad.

His parents were in a dire way with taxes. If they didn’t come up with five thousand dollars in another week, they were going to lose their home. Both of them were retired and unable to work anymore.

They had a nice little home on the outskirts of Temple Texas sitting on two acres of land. It was nice. It had some trees all around the place and even had a little babbling brook that flowed through it.

Johnny was bound and determined to make enough money to help them pay those taxes. Two weeks ago, he’d already made enough to pay the bill off for them. Then tragedy struck. While trucking over a couple of mountains called, ‘The sisters’ on a backhaul out of Salt lake City Utah, his Cummins motor experienced a catastrophic failure. That’s a fancy way of saying he threw a rod through the side of his motor block.

He’d known the motor was in a bad way for two months before it went belly up on him. Without any warranty left on the motor, Johnny had to pay out of pocket for a new one. He lost time and most of the money he’d been saving to help his parents.

Thinking a new one would help him save fuel and would be covered under warranty, Johnny got right back into the game after the motor was installed. He had to make some money quickly.

With barely enough cash to fill his tanks full of diesel and get a small bite to eat, he went racing to his next customer.

For one week, his new motor ran like a champ. Then it started experiencing problems.

It started getting terrible fuel mileage. There were times it lacked power to race up a steep grade. Johnny had checked the filter for the air breather on the truck twice, thinking that was the problem. Both times, the filter was clean as a whistle.

Then his truck started having another annoying and dangerous problem. The engine would shut off for no reason.

When he took it to a truck garage at a truck stop, the mechanics told him that his ECM was bad.

Figuring it was under warranty, John told them to put a new one on.

A wary mechanic who worked behind the counter from time to time got curious and ran the identification numbers on the motor. When he saw where the motor came from, he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. That shop was in a lot of hot water for selling refurbished motors that had faulty ECM’s.

All an ECM is, is a computer that holds software which tells the motor how to operate. Without it, the motor won’t run properly. That poor guy looks like he’s been running himself ragged trying to haul freight and deal with an inferior piece junk for an ECM. Now I have to tell him that the shop that sold him this motor is using some creative wording to get out of warranting this piece of equipment. Sometimes, I really hate my job. The mechanic thought before going to tell Johnny some bad news.

He’d taken it well enough. Even after calling the shop that sold him the new motor which turned out to be refurbished. They gave him the verbal run around citing a hidden clause in the contract that had been carefully worded in.

The ECM Johnny needed was going to run him almost a thousand dollars. Since he was between pay settlements from the trucking company he worked through, he didn’t have enough money for it. When he called and asked them about an advance, they laughed at him and hung up.

Seeing the bad run of luck Johnny was having, the head mechanic got one of the shop techs, an all around great man named, Marvin to mess with the ECM which went against shop regulations.

Marvin told Johnny that it was a temporary fix at best. It would be a miracle if the ECM held onto the programming for a week, two tops.

Still determined to help his folks he went right back to hauling freight. For the next week and a half, he worked tirelessly.

He’d haul one load out of Texas over to Colorado, deliver it, then pickup a back haul of adult suds heading back to Texas or into Nebraska or Iowa.

As soon as Johnny made his deliveries, he’d put in for another one. This started eating into his time to sleep so he could be well rested during his working hours. It was tough going when he only got three hours of sleep in a twenty four hour period. All he could think of was helping his parents.

It had been paying off, he was within five hundred dollars of having the money he needed to pay their taxes.

The current load he was on, canned goods bound for El Paso Texas, would more than get him past his goal of five thousand dollars.

Johnny was tired, bone tired.  With his goal almost within reach, he kept the hammer down.

Now he was seeing this strange light show taking place. It was almost as if the things making all those lights were following the road he was traveling on, highway 62 south west of Lubbock Texas.

Something struck him as odd. There seemed to be  lot more of those red streaks of light flying around than green ones. In the matter of a few minutes the number of red flashes diminished. The green one was still flashing along, although the frequency of them became less and less then stopped altogether.

Thinking that the strange light show made him think of Star Wars, Johnny got a little sad when it seemed to be over.

Swell, now my entertainment is over. He thought.

Reaching out to his satellite radio on the dash, he turned it on. Silence issued from the speakers.

No! Johnny thought in sudden realization.

He’d neglected to pay the monthly bill for it because he was trying to save money.

Rolling his eyes, he left the satellite radio on. The radio stations out in this area were few and far between. Reception would be terrible at best.

I just got that new wasteland audio book! Johnny thought. He’d had it for a month but hadn’t listened to it yet because he’d been listening to his satellite radio instead.

Reaching into a cubby hole