Out in the 1940s Film Noir Night- With Highway 13 In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

No question teamsters (quaint old time word from when the mode of transport of good was by teams of horses, oxen, whatever) have taken a bad rap concerning their roughshod practices ever since about Jimmy Hoffa’s time, old man Hoffa, the guy that is probably, no, certainly, resting in peace in the Meadowland complex, not the son. Maybe that bad rap came before, maybe back to Dan Tobin’s time in the 1930s when all hell was breaking and the truck drivers here in America were organizing, organizing like crazy despite old man Tobin. Still the country, especially the areas away from the coasts, doesn’t get its goods delivered without such intrepid help plying the highways and byways in their piggy-back double trailers living on bennies, bad diner food, cold coffee and an occasional stray hot woman picked up in some fly-by-night barroom. Here’s a story, a short and sweet story from Hoffa’s time, the old man remember not the son , about a guy, Steve Crane, who they tried to frame, tried to send to the big step-off at the Q (San Quentin for the clueless) just because, well, just because he wasn’t dead really.

No question either that Steve Crane, expert driver, steady, well-liked by the hosts of the California diner stops that dot the Pacific Coast Highway and make life bearable on that long stretch of road. Especially well-liked by a gal, Betsy Binstock, serving them off the arm at Pa’s Diner and Auto Stop down near LaJolla. Yah, no question they, yes, they both are carrying serious torches for each other and will do something about it, marrying something about it, once Steve gets enough dough together to buy his own rig and put the dust of the Baxter Trucking Company that he has slaved away for the past several without getting very far.

Worse, lately the company has been plagued by a long series of “accidents” that has had the insurance company howling, howling and looking for a fall-guy to take the heat off of them. No question the thing reeks of some inside job, some inside sabotage job. And it figures, first a couple of trucks blow up, causes unknown, then a couple of trucks go off the road and down some forlorn canyon, causes unknown, and that is that. Worse, the heiress of the firm, Barbara Baxter, went to her demise over some other forlorn cliff, cause unknown. Steve though, although he travelled that same route never ever had a flat tire, nothing except an oil change.

So it had to be an inside job and Steve with his wanting habits, his desire for more dough expressed almost daily, his lady friend Betsy anxious to get married and start a home seemed the logical guy to take the fall. Especially after it became known that he had a prior record for some small time robberies when he was a kid. And more so when he snubbed the advances of one Delores Deagan, the Baxter Company’s a vice president of operations and nothing but a man-trap. Frame him, and hang him high. Easy pickings.

And it was an inside job except not by Steve. See Delores, and Barbara’s supposedly grieving husband, Lance, had been having an on and off affair for years, Barbara found out about it and was going to divorce Lance. Lance who on his own was worthless needed that heiress dough to keep him (and Delores) in style. So they cooked up the sabotage scheme with Pa over at the diner. And they had the right man in Pa since he was a henchman for Al Lewis and his gang out of Chicago in the bad old days. There wasn’t anything that Pa didn’t know how to “fix” in a vehicle, nothing. And so it went.

Except Steve Crane, a war veteran, much decorated, and a guy from the wrong side of the tracks who was trying to make good was not buying into the big step-off. So he snooped around, got the dope on Pa, and that led to Delores the brains of the duo and he into a car chase where ,well, where Steve’s luck held out, held out enough for him to collect a reward, and Betsy. And the wrong gees got nada, nothing. Nice work Steve, the teamster.