I am a Winner

July 4, 1996, Mill City, Nevada, Burns Brothers Truck Stop.  A day that I will never forget.

 As Brentley and I walked out of the restaurant, I pointed to the four slot machines on the north wall.  They had the Harley Davidson motorcycle sitting on top them. “Did you put any money in that machine last night?” I snipped.

“No,” he replied timidly.

“Well how do you expect to win me a Harley if you do not play one of those machines?”  Brentley reached into his pocket, pulled out his last $10 bill, and begrudgedly put it in the 3rd machine in the line of four, one dollar slot machines.    A couple of pulls on the handle and he had won $90.  “Cash it in, Cash it in” I pushed, “You’re ahead.”

“It will take a lot more than ninety dollars  to put me ahead.” he replied as he routinely kept hitting the Bet the Maximum button with his left hand  and pulling the handle with his right.
When the machine had one hundred and fifty dollars worth of credits, I again started coaxing him, “Cash it in. Cash it in.” Ignoring me, he pulled the handle again.  All of a sudden, everything began to move in slow motion. The Wild Cherry symbols started to line up,

one,

two,

three,   all in a row! 

“The Jackpot!  That’s the Jackpot!, Lookie there, you hit the Jackpot.  The Harley, you just won the Harley, Brentley.”  He was dumbfounded. He just stood there like a deer caught in the headlights. As the machine was ringing and dinging and flashing and shaking, people began crowding around.  The casino employees, other gamblers, truck drivers, many were his friends.  “Congratulations, Brentley, it’s about time you won something!”


 We had been dating for several years, when we began driving truck as a team in January of 1996. Being confined day in and day out to the small quarters of a truck cab and sleeper, can cause two people to question this existence.  You will either really like each other or begin to really hate each other.  We had already finished half the year and had not yet decided which way our relationship was going.   

This day would change our lives. 

Brentley had always teased me about winning a Harley.  He would say,” If I win a Harley, I would take the money, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course not.” I would reply, “ I would love to have a bike.  That would probably be the only chance I’d ever have of owning one.  I would not give up that chance.”

“But just think what that money would do for you and all your bills? That is about as much money as you made in a year before you started working here. ”

 From the time he and I had first met,  Brentley was amazed I was able to raise my family on the mere $12,000 a year that I made.  It was not until I started running team with him that I began to earn a decent wage.  I had lived on a budget so long, I would not waste money.  I seldom gambled.  I hated to lose money.  That was not Brentley’s theory though.  “Someone is going to win.” he would say. Brentley enjoyed gambling. 

When the Casino employee asked him if he wanted the money or the bike, Brentley looked at me like I was supposed to help him answer the question.  I knew better than to say anything.  If I had answered that question, from then on, it would always be my fault. Right, wrong or indifferent, it would be my fault.  Instead, I casually asked the kid, “How much does that bike book for?”

He told Brentley, “$17,101 but if you take the cash you will get $11,500  today, right now.”

Brentley heard the difference. Seventeen thousand was quite a bit more than eleven thousand.  “I will take the bike.” 

We discussed the option of selling it outright.  If we advertised it for sale in the Boise paper, we could have easily sold it for $20,000.   The Fat Boy was tough model to get at that time.  You had to put down a good deposit in most places to get on a waiting list for the hard to get models.  The time of the year was on the seller’s side,  it was just about one month before Sturgis, many would be looking for a bike to ride. 

The day the bike was won, Brentley and I were on our way to California with food in our truck.  There was no way we could put the bike in there with that food.  But, within the hour, many of his buddies,  were standing around not believing that they really knew someone who had won a motorcycle.  Brentley had driven for Montana Express for 25 years.  This was a regular fuel stop for most of them.  Noel Thacker had a load of rock in his truck and was headed for their home base of Wendell, Idaho.  The bike could ride safely in his truck with no concern that it might contaminate the load. He would take it to Brentley’s house in Wendell.  The bike was loaded in to Noel’s truck from a small, old commercial loading dock behind the truck stop.   After all the paper work was completed, we left for California and Noel and the Fat Boy headed for Idaho. 

Brentley did manage to get the owner’s manual to take with us.  It was like a dream.  Was it real?  He just kept going through the manual page by page. Everybody we came in contact with, he had to tell about his $10 Harley.    By the time we had reached California, he had decided to keep the bike for a while.  He would ride it around the block, once really slow, just to see if he could do it. To see  if he liked it before he decided to sell it.  In August, Brentley took two weeks off the truck to play with his new toy.  He decided to keep it.  He liked it. 

After he returned to work, every town we passed though with Harley dealership, we had to stop and buy something. He needed a helmet, leather coat, goggles, chaps, new pipes, new seat, on and on and on.  By September of that year, Brentley had ordered another bike.

On the last day of 1996, I got off the truck for good.  I quit the job, and it was not because we needed to get away from each other.  I had decided to come home and look for a good local job. I had girls to raise. While job hunting,  that spring, I signed up for the first motorcycle safety course that I could get into.  I purchased an older, 1984 Yamaha 360 that I began riding around town. I landed that good job I was looking for in June of that year. 

It was not until later that summer, Brentley brought the bikes to Billings. I began to ride the Fat Boy.  As of right now, I have put over 22,000 miles on that Fat Boy, and it is not the only bike that I ride.  

Brentley quit driving over the road in 1998.  He came to stay with me while looking for a good local job for himself.  We were able to get some road trips on the motorcycles that year,  before he returned to the work force.  We found we enjoyed traveling with each other on bikes too.

In the year 2000, we  moved him to Montana   and sold his house in Idaho.

Brentley and I, we are a lot a like.  We have a lot in common.  We can be in the same space 24 hours a day, day in and day out.  And to this day, we still like each other.

We were finally married in December of 2004.





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