After reading the story “Glenn The Fuel Truck Driver” written by my father earlier I felt the need to elaborate a little.

At the time I was watching over the equipment and trucking fleet for Lewis Contractors. We were struggling to find a good Oiler to drive our fuel truck. Working as an Oiler is interesting to say the least. Everything you touch is laced in grease, mud, diesel and red hot to the touch.  It’s back breaking work crawling up and down the equipment and into tight spaces and the job consist of doing this dozens of times each day. I’ve done this job as a fill in when drivers needed days off and have respect for the trade.

When you find a guy willing to do this job well you tent to keep him around. Now the issue with this is anyone willing to do this job might have a few screws loose but if they are good it’s easy to look past the flaws because the equipment needs fuel and grease every single day, so a consistent guy is the key to a success operation. 

I had a contract mechanic named Eddie that did most of our repair work on the equipment. He was loud and very country but a top notch mechanic. We were in need of a Oiler so I asked Eddie if he knew of anyone. His response was that he knew of a guy named Glenn and he was a good but he had a big mouth. Since most of us in the construction world have big mouths I didn’t figure it would be much of an issue so we agreed to term and Glenn was hired. 

I quickly started to understand that Glenn has a different type of big mouth than most of us. If Glenn approached you it was a guarantee that you’d be listening to him ramble for 10 plus minutes about the most irrelevant topic so we all quickly learned to avoid Glenn when he came around.

Now Glenn wouldn’t just talk about daily events, rather he always wanted to tell a story about his past life experiences. On a few different occasions he told me a story from when he was in Vietnam. 

Glenn stated that one day he was being transported by helicopter to a site in the jungle.  It was mentioned that he had no experience flying helicopters but in this specific day they took heavy fire and both pilots were shot.  Luckily Glenn always sat in a position where he could observe the pilots actions so he quickly reached over the pilots body and safely landed the copter. Now, I hate to call a man out on his bull crap but I didn’t need to do much research to figure this one out. The funny thing is when someone called Glenn out he would respond with confidence that it was a true story.  Eventually I learned to just nod my head and move on with my day. 

Glenn was good at lying. He would tell about an underground bunker at his house where he stored his arsenal of weapons. What I found interesting was he would give a total number of guns that he kept in his bunker and if he retold the story months later he would requote the same number of guns. Glenn was very convincing except his stories were so outlandish that you didn’t take much to figure out that he was fully of s#!t. 

Glenn worked for the sheriffs department for 15 to 20 years before changing careers to work as an Oiler in the construction industry. Now I know that Glenn was actually a deputy but he never told stories about his experiences. Eventually I started wondering why he never Discussed his time on the force, for anyone working in law enforcement has plenty of stories but Glenn was very tight lipped about sharing any experience he had. 

His favorite hobby was searching for stuff with metal detectors. He would talk about all the different types of metal detectors he had and explain in detail what they were all for. Of course this was all unsolicited but that never stopped Glenn from discussing them anyways. The problem is he couldn’t just talk about his hobby, he felt the need to tell about the items he found. It was nothing for Glenn to come to work on a Monday and tell about a buried coin he found over the weekend that is valued at well over $10,000. He would talk about finding items he has in his possession that were valued at well over a hundred grand. But he said that they were so important to him that he kept them in a safe in his underground bunker. He couldn’t trust society to bring them out for me to see them because they were so valuable. He could never sell any of them because Uncle Sam would take too big of a cut. Ok. 

I worked with Glenn for several years and heard stories equal to these on at least a weekly basis. It was entertaining for a while but to hear someone tell you stuff like this started to become insulting to my intelligence. I am sure some sort of traumatizing event changed the course of his life and this was his way of copping with it. I empathize with people caught up in delusions like this and wonder if they will ever find their authentic self again. Life as a human is interesting to say the least.