Happy Mother's Day! We couldn't do what we do without your support! Here's a bonus episode of Driver to Driver - A Stokes Trucking Podcast. I interview my wife, Becki Lawver, and my mom, Clara Lawver! Be sure to thank all the Moms out there today!
Happy Mother's Day! We couldn't do what we do without your support! Here's a bonus episode of Driver to Driver - A Stokes Trucking Podcast. I interview my wife, Becki Lawver, and my mom, Clara Lawver! Be sure to thank all the Moms out there today!
Welcome to driver, to driver, a Stokes trucking podcast on driver to driver. We will discuss everything related to trucking. And put a stokes trucking spin on it stokes trucking doing the right thing since 1979.
Becki:to a little
Mark:bonus episode of the podcast I decided at 8:00 AM this morning that I should record something for mother's day So
Becki:Aren't aren't you sweet
Mark:Well and maybe I forgot to get either of the mothers in my life Anything from others day
Becki:You mean all the mothers
Mark:So this is my present to all mothers everywhere So I'm joined by Becky my wife Who's also the mother of my children all the ones I know of anyway
Becki:that's all you got that I know of
Mark:I'm also going to have a little segment with my mom Clara Lawver on this episode but I wanted to talk to you Becky about being the mother when your spouse is a truck driver Now obviously I'm not driving full-time today but for most of the time when our children were young I was
Becki:you were and I had no idea that that's what you were going to do when we first got married
Mark:I maybe did a little bait and switch
Becki:Yeah I thought you were going to be a you know a ritzy ditzy salesman and wear a tie and uh and and work in an office every day And
Mark:See when you listened to the segment with my mom you're going to realize if you would have talked to her a little more Just a little more before we got married You might've known
Becki:what the future had in store Yeah
Mark:Yeah So talk a little bit because I always felt like you were mom and dad at the same time for our kids
Becki:Sure sure Yeah It was a little tough you know early on getting used to being gone and being on the road and with Caleb it was really just me and him for three years by herself solves you know you'd be home on the weekends and we'd go do things as a family and and you really didn't bond with him until he started talking really
Mark:Yeah Yeah
Becki:Um so the the baby stage for you is a hard one
Mark:I didn't know Well I was so I was so immature
Becki:That's terrible
Mark:Well maybe I still am a little bit but uh yeah I um I think I've had this talk with him where you know when he was born of course your labor was so weird with having an emergency C-section I was I remember that that day I was not concerned at all with him I was all all my focus was on you I was worried about you and all your focus was on him W w what little bit you were kind of lucid in awake after what you'd gone through So that was when I started to realize that it's different for moms Up until that point I felt like I was really special to you And about the minute he was born I realized that it was over
Becki:You are special to
Mark:me
Becki:No but yeah those first couple of years just with me and Caleb gosh we lived in Blair for a little while so Not super far from family but still far enough that you know I had to find daycare for him when I went back to work And you know there was a time there when I took him over to my grandma and grandpa's uh
Mark:Oh that's right Your grandparents were living in Blair weren't they
Becki:Right and so they watched him for a little while and then we moved Where did we move after Blair
Mark:to North bend
Becki:Yeah We moved to North bend and had grace while we were there And Still relied a lot on your folks and my folks they went to daycare but whenever I had to go out of town or had a late night activity with school either your folks or my folks were there to sort of help out So I had a really strong support system
Mark:Yeah
Becki:Um
Mark:that's the other thing that the other little piece to the puzzle for us was you weren't a stay at home mom because I was horrible at earning money So so this whole time you worked full time
Becki:I did as a high school agriculture teacher
Mark:And you went to and you were taking grad classes
Becki:and was
Mark:in the summers Man that's riding you like a mule
Becki:I tell ya No but you know one of the things I think I learned from my mom was that I needed to be able to take care of myself just in case someday you weren't there to take care of me Right And it's not like that's how I lived my life like doom and gloom waiting for Mark to just drive away in his truck and never come home It was more of a you need to be A strong woman and you can do this uh you don't have to always rely on Mark to do everything for you And so it was just one of those things where yeah there are things now that I'm like Nope that's a Mark job You can get my oil changed and fill my car up with gas I'm done with those days But but for for a long time it was you know Do the things you gotta do just to keep the house going And it worked for us
Mark:I in hindsight now I realize that You Al you took care of things and allowed me to do my job And didn't saddle me and I I don't know if that was a conscious thing for you or deliberate or if you just did it I
Becki:No you know we I I have a horrible memory you know this but I'm pretty sure we probably had talks about how you always wanted to be a truck driver and that was your dream and and uh you wanted to own your own truck And so that was me Unconsciously or or whatever supporting you in that decision And then we did that for a long time and then you had to support me on my decision
Mark:Yeah Yeah So well That's another topic for another day I think the whole grad school
Becki:well even there you are trucking while we were living in Missouri and Again we didn't have the support system when we moved there but I found some awesome college kids that came in and hung out with the kids at night when I and took him to football practice when I needed to be taking my night classes on campus And we had some really good friends that would help out in an instant instance when when I needed any help if you were on the road and man you were trucking hard when we lived in Missouri like it was It was hard for you because I wasn't making any money at all Really
Mark:And and had you not had our relationship or our marriage not gone had you not allowed me to Learn how to run a business in those early years I don't know that I would've been able to earn the money we needed when you did go to grad
Becki:right
Mark:You know we that the first 10 years of our marriage while we were we were figuring it out We we didn't have my dad would say we didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of
Becki:No we did
Mark:that We really really didn't I mean
Becki:We were living on a pretty tight budget For a long time
Mark:There wasn't even a budget Yeah
Becki:no There was here's your envelope full of cash for groceries for the week don't spend over this
Mark:Yeah Um
Becki:we did that for a long time and yeah it totally sucked but we got through it and we got through it together and I think that's probably more than anything Our relationship has gotten stronger because of the support we've given each other as parents and as spouses
Mark:I just always thought you were you were such an amazing mother to our children
Becki:I tried I screwed up lot
Mark:Well everybody makes mistakes but you were the you're the epitome of of the mama cow
Becki:Yeah Thanks for calling me A cow is not the first time in our relationship that you've compared me to a cow maybe one of our first dates with your whole family You may have called me a heifer
Mark:I think the exact statement was she's going to make a really good replacement hepper
Becki:and your mom turned to me and said that's a great compliment
Mark:Yes Well smooth
Becki:You are you are
Mark:No I uh you you've always been just the perfect I I've always looked at you like the perfect mother to our kids You you you've done such a great job because you raised you raised them for the first 10 years you know tell Caleb was 10 and grace was seven I there were times when I had jobs where I was home but I wasn't I wasn't a great dad at all
Becki:Yeah You're still learning how to be a dad Yeah
Mark:I didn't know I was boy was high dumb
Becki:That's why I'm here to help teach you
Mark:Yeah That's why I married an older woman All right Well thank you for joining me Happy mother's day This is all you're getting Is another appearance on the podcast
Becki:I just, I want to give a shout out to all the mothers in our life. Um, friends, family, moms who? Mom, dark kids. Um, when we weren't, when we had things going on, yeah. Uh, when Caleb was in high school, we had this football moms group. We all mothered each other's kids.
Mark:Well, yeah, that, that was one thing. even though you weren't a stay at home, mom, you were, you were really good at, you're an amazing judge of character and you were really good at finding people that could. Mother our children, when you weren't available finding the right people to do that, that, that was big for our kids. Everything's just turned out so good.
Becki:Yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. And happy mother's day to all the moms
Mark:Yeah. Anybody who's listening to this? I, I, um, probably it's probably going to get out late on mother's day, but, uh, whether you listen to it on mother's day or not, Get ahold of the moms in your lives and thank them because they're, if you think really hard about it, they've all done their job. All right. Here's a quick little interview with, with my mom, Clara Lawver. happy mother's day. I'm recording you for the podcast.
Clara:Are you really
Mark:Yeah.
Clara:well? I may have listened to all of them.
Mark:Oh, well, thank you, mom.
Clara:Four or five of the podcasts. I have listened to three and four times, at least twice. I appreciate the last, what is it? Three that had the transcript because I can go back and just pick out parts that I want to listen to again. So. Transcript is very useful for me. I've gone back to pick up parts. you know, uh, but you have said it's kind of funny that you are the tire Nazis, the gas Nazi. Especially, no, you are pretty German and your heritage. And you were, you said that a couple of times about, as you were growing up the miles per gallon, the longevity of tires, all of those things. We're very important as you were growing up in your childhood. I mean, you were taught that from the time you were little, it made a lot of difference, you know?
Mark:I decided, to call you, cause I've got like 30 minutes left. I can upload this month. And I thought, I, I thought I'd record a quick little happy mother's day episode for everybody.
Clara:Well, thank you. Thank you.
Mark:So, so happy mother's day, mom, this is everybody. This is my Clara Lawver she's in wahoo, Nebraska. Now. I was born and raised in Weston Nebraska. I remember having Toy semis when I was little, little, little, like two, three years old, four years old was there a point in my childhood where you were like, yeah, he's going to drive a truck. This one. He's not, he's not doing anything else.
Clara:One of your favorite childhood games. If you want to call it, that was lighting up the trucks that you had on the living room floor or out in the sandbox or wherever. And we had to take toy trucks and toy tractors with us to the horse shows to the cattle sale everywhere we went. We had to have a toy truck or two and a toy tractor. And you spent many hours at the fairgrounds out in the dirt with friends. Building roads and bridges, even for your trucks and tractors to go over
Mark:So I don't ever remember dad. Driving truck for a living, but he did,
Clara:when, when we got
Mark:in your marriage. Right?
Clara:When we got married, he was a truck driver. He worked for cotton transfer in Omaha. And he, he, uh, picked up and loaded, unloaded whatever called cattle and hogs. It was livestock entirely when we were first married and it was a, state truck. And we had been married about five months and he slipped as he was loading. He was on the outside. Somehow he slipped and caught his. Finger his ring finger on, one of the state things on the box of the truck. It wasn't Omaha body, I think anyway, at her his ring finger so bad that he was never able to wear his wedding ring after that. And anyway, he drove trucks then. And then he and the boss got into it. He had,
Mark:way.
Clara:and then he became a carpenter. Well, he drove truck for Omar bakery. He drove up a delivery truck, for Omar bakery and, All of this time, he was already in the national guard and in 1956, I think it was, he went full time for the national guard at the guard camp in Ashland. And he was kinda like their chief truck mechanic. And even I spent hours going from here to there and national guard trucks.
Mark:So there's a story you tell about having us kids in a truck, when he was driving, wasn't he hauling pigs for WIC? Wasn't that the name of the company
Clara:Yes. Wait a minute. And Fremont,
Mark:How many kids did you have at this time?
Clara:when he was driving for Whitman, your sister, Mary was a baby. Actually. She was. He was working for Wickman when she was born. Her trip away from the hospital was in a Wicklund St. Drugs.
Mark:So, so Mary Mary's I'm the youngest of five. So there would have been three at home
Clara:Yeah. Three at home. And then married. Yes. When I took her in for her six week checkup, checkup, the doctor. Put her up on his hands, kind of spun her around. She yelled and screamed and anyway, he, Oh, she's got healthy lungs and I she's well enough. Now you can take her out. Amazing. The girl already had about 3000 miles on her. She's bent up Iowa, Oklahoma, um, you know, Missouri, South Dakota.
Mark:you, you have to tell everybody where she wrote in the Wickman truck. When you were with dad,
Clara:Underneath the seat we had, it was a piece of plastic. Actually. It was her, her car seat. It was a piece of plastic, out the size of a bread board or something. It had a little, Half an inch wide plastic strap that went across her. And I would slide her under the seat. And if she wasn't, you know, sitting in my lap or something like that, that truck had no, any of the trucks that we drove there had no seat belts. And anyway, she slid underneath the seat very nicely in that little plastic thing. And like I said, she. She had, I don't know how many thousand miles in that truck
Mark:So is this like a, was it a straight truck or was it a tractor
Clara:Yeah, it was, uh, it was, no, it was a, they described it as a two and a half ton or something like that. It was a box truck or, you know, and, uh, yep. Had, you know, And it wasn't at all like they do now. But anyway, we, we traveled, uh, South Dakota and Nebraska, Kansas, and into Oklahoma, also Missouri and Iowa. And usually your dad would go out with the Cadillac and buy the pigs and then we'd go out with the truck. And he often had us go with him because he liked, you know, keeping track of me and keeping track of Mary. So yes, I was driving the truck. I drove a lot. Uh, I, I remember sliding sideways down the street of Dawson, Nebraska, some main street. It was so icy and, uh, I was driving and we went sideways down a Hill in Dawson,, Nebraska got down to, I think it was prior Oklahoma or something. And the truck was so coated with ice. We pulled into some dealership and had to get some of the ice chipped off here and there before we could continue. Couldn't see you, the mirrors. It was horrible. I was also driving, uh, our, our own farm trucks, hauling grain from a field over on the highway, and I had a full, full truck load. Came up over a Hill and there were hunters in the middle of the road, all four doors of their Jeep open. And I went into the ditch. Thank God. It was a flat ditch and I spilled some corn!. Oh yeah.
Mark:I
Clara:But I made
Mark:dad wasn't upset about spilled corn. Was he? I'm sure he didn't didn't
Clara:uh, Not not to know, but he was mad because I didn't get the license of that.
Mark:you didn't crash, but you didn't get the license.
Clara:Okay.
Mark:that's beautiful.
Clara:That was not the only time I went in the ditch, but I mean, that was the only time I went in a ditch with a load.
Mark:So I want to talk about that quick to you and him. Obviously, you didn't get your CDLs in, you know, when the CDL became a thing in the eighties, but later on, you
Clara:we didn't get our CDLs until 19, uh, 90 something Could have been 2000.
Mark:Yeah, it had to, it had to be, cause I think, I think both of our kids were born, but it's when you guys got your CDL, which you would have been,
Clara:And,
Mark:you want to
Clara:and the only bad
Mark:would have been close to 70 at that time. Right? Late sixties.
Clara:Y'all yeah. Only bad thing I did with the semi. I, I got sideways, uh, hide centered in our driveway. There is a deep, you know, deep. Famous and I high centered it, but it was empty. Thank God. And, but he asked he, Oh, of course. I heard all kinds of heck about that. But after that two different times, he drove into the augers. I have to look up, look up, you know, you gotta look up, look up,
Mark:Oh, he did with the semi
Clara:Huh? He did. Yes.
Mark:I didn't, I didn't realize that. I guess we can mention too, dad, traded in model semis for Oh boy. Close to 30 years, 20, 25
Clara:Yes. Yes. And we went to, we talk with Werner's, we talked with FCC. We, there were, yeah. And, uh, they, some of these people would actually come to a toys show say in Illinois or Indiana or somewhere, and. Because we were selling trucks, toy trucks, always buy trucks, and they could be customized to the owner's, uh, wishes, the whole bit. And so we learned a lot about, decals and wrap trucks and all that kind of stuff and, lights and where, where the. Air tanks are supposed to be on the fuel tanks, half how's the look. And for 30 years we did that.
Mark:Many of our drivers have seen my collection. I've got it on the wall in my office, you know, and we'll do zoom meetings and, um, that's my back. You know, I don't have a background I put up, I just, you can see my toy trucks in the background when I'm on a zoom meeting. So. Uh, a lot of our drivers are aware of that, that little connection from me,
Clara:Okay.
Mark:So. All right, mom. happy mother's day. Thank you for, humoring me and letting me do this. Okay,
Clara:Well, you can edit whatever you want
Mark:Love you, mom.
Clara:Okay. Love you.
Mark:Talk to you later.
Clara:Thank you. Bye.
Thank you for listening to driver to driver. Uh, Stokes trucking podcast. For more information on Stokes trucking, please visit our website Stokes trucking.com. You can also learn more about us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at Stokes trucking. The intro and outro music is I can't keep still. The bumper music between segments is fetch me another one, Both performed by the caffeine creek band Driver to driver is a frankfurter studios production