Tales from the Road Ch. 02

"It's still got the other half of the trailer hooked to it."

"Doesn't matter, just pull it around."

He rolled his eyes and went behind the machine shed. That should have been my first clue.

We were still going over a few things on the new trailer as I heard the truck come out behind me. Ro went wide eyed and her hands went to her mouth looking over my shoulder. Ro slumped to the pile of steel, and if I hadn't been standing beside it to grab ahold of, I would have been flat on my back.

The first shock was out comes this PINK truck with a large PINK sleeper, no, make that a HUGE PINK sleeper. I could make out something behind it, and when I realized what it was, that's when I about collapsed to the ground.

The reason Leon had driven slow was that there was a kiddie scrambler behind the truck with the sides folded out. It only had two tubs on it and the floor deck was not all there. I turned my head, "Günther... how?..."

He grinned and ducked his head a bit. "We cleaned up the valley a bit. It's not complete. Needs a motor, some seats, and lights. A few other bits and pieces... Now Matteo can plant a few more acres."

"More like ten!" Leon hollered out. Günther gave him the look, but everybody else chuckled so I would guess it was not far off from ten.

I was scared to look at the truck, but relieved to find what I did.

Yes, they painted it that god awful pink, but that was about it, and the sleeper wasn't really a sleeper.

They had a straight grain truck that had lift problems, and they did have an extra semi-trailer. It would get parked to the side at harvest, and if you had to wait a while at the grainery, you'd come back empty, snag the full trailer, and keep on trucking.

It was still a cab over, but a bit deeper and higher so not quite as much dog house in the cab. The 'sleeper' was a small refrigerated delivery box. It had a door on the back, and they had made a cut in the front wall to match up with the back window of the cab. Other than frame but not fasten a divider wall, it was untouched inside.

We framed the front for a twin mattress but would use our foam for now. It was a few inches short either way, but nothing a few rolled up towels wouldn't take care of. You should have seen Ro blush when I said having a few towels by the bed might come in handy.

Most of the other side from the bed and the back compartment got shelves. We left one shelf out inside so Ro could have a shallow counter. We had been using a fair number of 1x4 and 1x6 for all this, but I had paid for them.

I was sitting on an old mineral tub looking at the kiddie ride. We were going to be sending money back to pay for what he had done and more material to finish all season long, but I still had to just stare at it.

Matteo walked up beside me, not saying anything.

"I don't have the words Matteo."

"I know we've said it, but it really isn't that big of a deal. Some man hours yes, but all the steel came from the valley. A few bearings and gears were purchased, but nothing major. It still needs a motor and gearbox. The seats and probably a ton of other little stuff."

"Yeah, but still, all the time he's spent on it for an entire year. I have no idea how I'm going to repay you guys."

Matteo sighed. "Look at him Jerold, you going to tell him no?"

Günther and Ro had just come back from a foraging trip in the valley. There were five old campers of different types and vintages. The trailer behind the little tractor looked to have a number of things in it.

They got down and were talking and pointing to stuff in it.

Günther came away with a little sink with tubes hanging down, and Ro had a couple of roof vents.

"What do you see Jerold?"

I looked, but didn't notice anything. "What do you mean?"

He leaned down close, "Dad's not using his cane."

I turned my head back quickly, then realized I didn't remember him using his cane since we got back.

"I didn't notice it right away. But a month or so after he dug in, he stopped needing it." He stood back up. "He was getting grouchy and underfoot before all this. We'll probably clear some more steel from the valley. There will be things that will need to be purchased. But even if every cent came out of my pocket, it would be worth ten times that so see him like this again. It reminds me of him before his accident."

I turned slowly to look at him grinning. "And don't tell him I told you, but you should have heard him cussing up a blue streak when he realized he made four bottom braces and two uppers. He had to cut it apart and re-weld it. He was a real grouch for four days 'til mom slapped him on the back of the head and told him to get over it and go back to work."

He grinned, I grinned, then we both started laughing.

When we could talk straight, "Hell, he's got old Stefano half roped into making some mini rides for the church fund raisers and stuff."

Ro was slowly building her 'house'. She had a sink with a dual valve. Hand pump or pressure... all cold water. There was a piece of an old tractor fender cut down for a metal spot to put her rocket stove and not worrying about it burning something. Günther was fascinated with it. She asked about a way to put some heat in the back on cooler nights. I was sent to town, and Günther made a few phone calls.

I came back with a roll of heater hose and Stefano showed up with the heater from the back of an old school bus. In short order, Ro had two old men and six kids doing her bidding. Matteo and I just stayed out of the way.

She asked about a heat exchanger, so I had to explain what the shows did on the big generator. Both old guys were grinning and headed for the machine shed.

By the next morning, the bus heater and the heat exchanger were installed. No freshwater through the exchanger yet, but it was plumbed into the engine.

The shelves were just that at this point. Stuff just put up wherever. The little water barrel and the cooler near the front. We had an extra five gallon jug to tote water if we didn't have any place to hook up a hose.

By the time we got on the road, Ro had a very crude but livable house. There were twelve volt wires strung everywhere for little lights, and three of those yellow wire construction lights strung down the center for one-ten lights when we could plug in. It was strongly suggested I keep an eye out at the pawn shops for a little trickle charger. Use the twelve volt lights for too many days in a row and we could have problems starting the truck.

The first few months taught us how much we over thought things.

In order for the old bus heater or the heat exchanger to work, the engine had to be running and hot. Neither one of which was happening an hour after the truck was last started.

We had an extension cord for lights and eventually a hot plate, so the twelve volt lights and rocket stove didn't get used much.

Our fancy separate storage area for ride parts was so underused I cut a doorway between our bunk area and it. That was at the command of the Queen. Even though I went to all the trouble to get a clean five gallon bucket, put some blue stuff and water in the bottom, and a toilet seat on it, she made me go outside while she rinsed after sex.

By halfway through the season the only part of that dividing wall left was at the end of the bed. All the light bulbs for the ride were up high where ever they fit, a few extra ride parts down low because of the weight, and another thirty-five gallon barrel for more water and a piece of rubber liner for a make shift shower pan. No hot water, but we had enough water for a good five or six days. That meant we could fill up on the way in and not have to fire the truck up to go fill water tanks just to rinse dishes.

Now on my side of things with the ride, it was feast or famine.

The ride itself was wonderful. Setting up and tearing down was a breeze. We did it with three, me, Ro, and the sideshow guy. It could be done by two, but Ro didn't quite have the upper body strength yet for it to be just me and her. But we were getting there.

The famine side was Aldo's damn electrician!

Between getting the phases mixed and taking forever some days to kill the circuits and disconnect us, I'd had enough. I had bitched enough that Aldo finally gave in to giving me my own motor box. Two of them actually, 'Take them and make one good one'. One had been driven over, the other I'm not sure what happened to it. They weren't pretty, but they were now mine.

I had to beat and bang just to get the covers off.

The surprising thing was even though they had just cut the wires loose to get on the road. Once I got them apart, the inside connections were almost untouched. One of them had an end insulation finger that broke, but there was no way to know if it happened then or a long time ago. Hell, even the bolts holding the innards to the case came out nice.

Ro was getting a bit perturbed at me. I bought a five pound hammer and began beating on the motor boxes. I'd have them on the frame of the truck, and start pounding out the side and the dents.

A small town festival later and I had five welder connectors for the box. I had to mount them in single gang blanks and screw them to the big holes in the motor box, but it was coming along.

The main box was painted gray, and the matching open wire holes and my five sockets got painted their corresponding colors. If they were wrong it was on sparky, not me. Ro grinned when I painted the top cover her bright pink. And because the legs were trashed, it got mounted on the cheapest little dolly I could find. It was one of those flimsy orange and black bolt together jobs, but having two wheels and two casters under it came in handy from time to time.

A long morning with a borrowed propane torch and a new roll of solder to put welder ends on the ride power cord, and we were all set.

Even with his holes clearly marked with black, red, and blue, the kid doing electrical still got his phases mixed up every once in a while. But all I had to do was shut down and swap two of the phases with my welder connectors and I was in business. Even if he did correct it before tear down, it was a simple connection swap to put it back right.

At Ro's strong suggestion, I also wired in a little breaker and outlet box so we had a place to run a cord for the truck... once we got a small transformer. She finally accepted that just because it was close, two-o-eight three phase and two-twenty single phase weren't quite close enough. Even once I pointed out the difference between our motor box and the distribution boxes for all the concessions, she still wanted to say 'It's just one less wire. That should be easy to do.'

In reality, I should have just been able to take two legs and make it work, but the generator two-oh-eight wasn't the best quality, so a buck and boost would be in place before we pulled two-twenty for the water heater and pump.

The plumbing was not pretty, but we had the cheapest little thirty gallon electric water heater we could find and a small pump. Ro had hot water at the sink and we had an outside shower. We tried doing it inside but the piece of rubber membrane I found for a pan was a little too slippery when soapy.

And since we were able to tear down in half the time, the generator was still running when we were done so we could take hot showers. Granted they were quick with barely fifty gallons of water, but we could do it. Better than a tepid sponge bath any day!

We were glad we had a decent relationship with Casey and Molly. They had planned on adding a kiddie scrambler next year. They were still thinking about it until Ro related the story of Günther building one from scrap for us. As long as we kept our pace up, we would have enough for him to finish it about the end of the season. The steel wasn't the problem, it was the aluminum for the seat tubs. Even adding in some steel bracing, they turned out to be the most expensive part to make.

By Thanksgiving, the motor and gearbox were in. Nine of the twelve seat tubs had been made, and most of the decking was welded on. It was steel instead of aluminum, but it came from the valley along with the heavier hydraulic rams and pump. I had seen a few factory mini scramblers along the way, and the way Günther over built things, I would guess it was going to weigh at least twenty percent more than it needed to.

Leon said some of the kids were getting to hate it, Günther had them drilling holes in the light bar channel. Lots of holes. I was informed it would be up to me to wire them. Yeah, they'd hate it right up until it was time to go ride them.

At least this time we knew what we were coming home to, mostly.

Günther did NOT believe in building light. Just looking at it and you knew it was overbuilt. He built a drum brake for it from an old semi-truck rear end instead of the factory disk brake. It didn't get up to speed as quickly as it probably should have and took longer to coast to a stop.

And damn if it wasn't PINK!

The other fun part was I had to go down and take the test for pulling doubles. I ran our setup around the county roads to get the feel for it, but a neighbor let us use his truck and short grain trailers for my actual road test. I told Ro the rides weren't exactly what the road test was about, but I'll be damned if I was going to go into town and see people I know seeing me drive a PINK truck and trailers.

Ro got a bit of a rebuild in her house, and we got an actual shower pan so we could take inside showers. Our two small barrels for water were swapped for two large tanks on the frame below the sleeper.

We also added something we forgot but luckily never needed, spare tires. Günther fabricated a rack on the back of the sleeper to hold one truck tire and one of the smaller trailer tires.

All in all, it was a fairly leisurely holiday. We didn't have any major surprises on equipment. Günther and I both softly groaned when the girls decided several of the spots on the ride needed to have the pink touched up. Damn that fucking pink is BRIGHT!

I made sure I kept a ball cap and dark sunglasses in the truck. We were one long pink stripe going down the road.

The one nice thing about pulling a double is certain arrangements didn't work for us getting in and out of. Because of that both of our rides didn't get tucked too far into the back corners when there were back corners on the sites.

Molly grinned, they did their best to get near our 'blinding pink' ride. Ro verified our numbers with Aldo and pronounced the pink as an attraction. Casey and Molly liked the little bump in numbers when they were near us.

Ro came back grinning. This was NOT going to be good. She handed me a box, gave me a kiss, and walked away with maximum ass wiggle. She had found some outside strobes to mount at the top of each of our rides... I waited until I couldn't watch her wiggling ass to hang my head and groan.

We had been at a large fair with multiple companies a while back, and one company had strobes on top of all their rides to set them apart. Hell, even I walked down to see what the strobes were all about. And Ro decided we needed them. Fuck...

Now the big ride wasn't too bad, it had a flat spot, and I was able to splice in another electrical connection in the main spindle.

But good old Günther had made the top of the kiddie ride a real point. It took a while, but I finally figured out how to make a contraption to sit on top using a couple of those gallon tin cans. The cord had to run down the outside, but we now had strobes on our PINK rides.

But since she got her strobes, I got what I wanted. She had to wear a lace bra under a thin t-shirt for the rest of the stay. An unlined lace bra! I thoroughly enjoyed the look of the lace showing through a little. The nipple bump was just plain fucking hot.

Ro wasn't too sure about all the extra attention she was getting... until she started adding up the evening ticket counts. She didn't believe me when I said we got a lot more riders when she was taking tickets in her hot outfit.

"Uh uhh, the guys were just standing out there gawking at me."

I pulled her to me, then slid my hand up to cradle her tit. "Probably, but then if they wanted to keep standing there drinking in your hot bod, they had to get in line."

Ro made a noise.

"Want to prove me wrong?"

I was getting the eye, "How?"

"The next stop. It's three middle of the week days. We have several years' history between us and Dom. So we do it differently this year."

"How different?" she asked slowly.

I kept one hand on her tit, and let the other drop to her ass. "On the first day, you dress like you usually do. On the second day, you dress like you did these last few days."

She was waiting for me to continue, but couldn't wait anymore. "And on the third day?"

I let my hand from her tit slide around her back to pull her close. "And on the third day, you swap the jeans for your blue shorts," and pulled her close for a nice kiss.

About halfway through the kiss, it registered. She pushed back, "MY WHAT?!"

I let my hand drop so both of them wore caressing and squeezing her ass. "Those blue ones you got a few months back."

Her lips were moving, but it took a bit for the voice to catch up. "Those things practically let my butt hang out!"

"Not really when you're standing, but they do show off your legs something fierce."

"But... but..."

"We both know how dead Thursday usually is. You want to prove me wrong, let's have a hot babe not hiding her delicious figure out there taking tickets on Thursday."

"But they'll just be looking at me!"

I gave her ass a good firm squeeze. "Well, that's a given. Only a blind man wouldn't be looking at you. But what will having a hot babe taking tickets do for our numbers?"

Seeing a woman try to gasp and grin at the same time is as comical as it is hot.

"I mean, look how good the kiddie ride does when Eunice is working it?"

That was another grin / groan thought.

We had three of the concession owner's kids taking turns taking tickets at our kiddie ride for extra money. Two fifteen year old boys, and Eunice was sixteen going on oh-my-fucking-god.

Her mom was not a bad looking woman, but even at sixteen, Eunice was going to be one hell of a heart breaker. If you were a single dad or a big brother that had to haul around the rug rats, you spent as much time as possible around Eunice. Worst name ever for such a good-looking kid.

Ro looked like she wanted to argue, but she was the one that spotted the increased numbers when Eunice worked the ride. Hoisted by her own petard!

I began kissing down her chest as I unbuttoned her shirt, popping the catch between the cups when I got there and moving to her left nipple. "The only question is how much or how little you wear under them."

I surrounded her nipple and nipped at the tip to short circuit her argument.

Ro decided to postpone the argument until after I ravished her body. I knew she was thinking about it though, it took very little to get her off the first time with fingers and tongue, and even after I sank into her velvet pussy she was cumming and spasming all over again.

I managed to stand and put a towel between her legs before pulling my jeans back on. I dropped into the driver's seat just in time to see a grinning Ben roll on by. Ro wasn't in the passenger seat and his imagination probably went wild on just where she was. He'd shit a brick knowing he was right this time.

I dropped the truck into gear and got on the road. I saw a bit of bare ass in the mirror as Ro made her way back to the shower, and a quick cycle of the water pump told me she was back rinsing out.

I heard a throat clear behind me and looked in the mirror. I saw Ro bent over, her cheeks split by a bright yellow thong, then her jeans being pulled up and wiggled into, with as much fanfare as possible.