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Truck Drivers Reveal Which Towns They Refuse To Stop In

Truck Drivers Reveal Which Towns They Refuse To Stop In

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Dr. Seuss said it best... "Oh the places you'll go." It leads to great ideas of freedom and whimsy and daring. Oh the places we'll ALL go and see and explore. We all have that travel bucket list we crave to check off one by one. It's always fascinating to experience new places but sometimes those new places leave the wrong kind of memory. Memory? Heck, they leave nightmares. And who best to give us the rundown of the worst places than the people who travel for a career. The ones who don't fly over but literally land and rest in a town.

Redditor _Jindivid wanted the truck drivers out there to speak up asking... Truck drivers of Reddit, what city or town do you absolutely refuse to stop in? Get ready to update those lists y'all.

DON'T FEEL THAT THUNDER!

Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

Forget it. Its a rather small city, buried in the mountains, but DAMN. Stop there, and you're likely to lose the wheels right off your truck.

Imthecoolestdudeever

Australian here, I stopped in thunder bay 10 years ago for a night. Pretty quiet town then. The vehicles all ok. I guess meth has hit there hard. Did have some sketchy stops but that wasn't one of them.

Addamant1

I'm going there for a couple days this summer for a wedding :/

nsfy33

THE MTA AIN'T MUCH BETTER...

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New York City. The bridges were built before trucks and it's a pain to drive in.

CAN'T STOP-WON'T STOP!

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Former trucker. I think that Amarillo, Texas is on the "will never stop" list for many truckers, and the "will always stop" for others, for the same reason.

I always noticed a shocking number of lot lizards there. Like, I'd maybe see one or two per night in other cities. I'd see 5-8 per hour in Amarillo.

OH THE PLACES YOU'LL GO...

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I travel a lot and have only come across three places where it really felt I was in danger. Truck stop in Arkansas just before Memphis, truck stop outside of Shreveport and a truck stop outside of Waco.

I SEE YOU TEXAS...

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Travis or Rosebud Texas. I drive 5 miles under the speed limit, pull over beforehand to check my lights, am very cautious about lane travel, and use my blinkers liberally.

Those two towns in Texas are the worst. I've been pulled over countless times in both for no reason whatsoever. Thank God they're small and only take 2 minutes to drive through.

I won't ever stop there because I'm an outsider. Those towns are close knit and people know if you aren't from around there. The state troopers out there are a-holes.. Their police department makes all its money on bogus tickets handed out to travelers.

I have never once driven through either town without seeing someone caught in a speed trap.

RUMBLE IN THE BRONX...

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15 years ago I worked in the South Bronx. I though I knew urban blight. Then we went to see the Lax college championship in Baltimore. We got lost exiting the area and ended up in a bad part of town where every other house was boarded up and people were sitting in the middle of the street wracked out of their heads.

EVERY TOWN HAS A STORY...

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Not a trucker, but my mom was. She quit her real estate job at 54 years old and got her CDL. For the first 6 months she team drove with her boyfriend at the time, who quit his job in IT because he liked her idea and got his as well. And she loved it, would send me pictures of cool stuff she'd see all over the US. But then they broke up, and she started driving alone.

She doesn't scare easily, but now was a single female truck driver doing coast to coast loads. The only place she told me she'd never stop in again were the small towns in Utah. I can't remember the 2-3 she named specifically, but she said they were the only stops where she felt unsafe and watched the entire time she was parked.

She'd driven in Manhattan, all over the Rocky's, Detroit, I'm not sure about Gary, but certainly weird towns all over the country, and still, the only places she felt genuine fear for her well-being were in those small towns in Utah.

NEVER AGAIN WYOMING...

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Lake Station, Indiana, also known as "The A-hole of Gary." So that should give you a clue. I used to drive long-haul flatbed, and we had a depot there. If the depot (which was decent enough and had 24-hour security) was full up, we would have to drive over to the nearby TA and shut down there for the night. Only place where I ever thought I was gonna get jumped in the parking lot and the only place where somebody actually tried to steal stuff off my rig while I was sleeping in it.

The Flying J in Amarillo was okay to stop at, but you would get plenty of young (and not-so-young, and occasionally prehistoric) ladies offering to "clean your cab" for a modest fee. I was stuck over Thanksgiving at, I think, a Love's in Tucumcari, and the lot lizard that knocked on my truck in the middle of the damn night there was a dude. No thanks.

Finally, I was driving through downtown Detroit trying to get to the Ambassador Bridge so I could get up to Sudbury and some dude jumped up on my running board when I slowed down to make a turn so that he could ask for money. My window was rolled down as it was a nice Spring day, and he startled me. Unfortunately for him I had a tire-checker close to hand. And I hated driving through Wyoming, but that's just because there's very little oxygen in that place.

OH POOP!

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Brooks, Alberta. City smells like actual CRAP.

PEOPLE JUMPING OUT AT YOU? NO!

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Not a truck driver, but Dad is MD of a Haulage company - Never, ever, stop within 5 miles of Calais in France when coming to the UK. As horrendous as the situation is, the asylum seekers will just hop on anywhere, break into trailers etc and then as soon as you bring them across to the UK, you can get prosecuted regardless whether you knew they were there or not.

The Weirdest Things People Have Witnessed In A Rich Person's Home

Reddit user Jerswar asked: 'What's the weirdest thing you've witnessed in the home of a rich person?'

An illuminated mansion at night
Photo by Daniel Barnes on Unsplash

It's no secret that as a person starts to make more money, they may forget how difficult they had it when there was less money coming into their bank account.

Not only are rich people often incredibly out-of-touch with the realities of most people's lives, but what they choose to prioritize and bring into their home is often pretty bizarre, too.

Already side-eyeing, Redditor Jerswar asked:

"What's the weirdest thing you've witnessed in the home of a rich person?"

Love Can't Be Bought

"Rich grandparents had a brand new house built, had a $100,000 splash pad built for their only grandchild who has never visited them at their new house."

- wyoflyboy68

"This reminds me of when my sister built her house. She had a barrier-free ground-floor apartment built in it, so my grandmother could visit. She never did."

- P44

A Separate Hoarder's House

"I had a rich neighbor growing up who'd always invite us over for parties and always insisted on giving us gifts and leftovers. They did this with every guest."

"They were also hoarders but built a separate house to keep their crap in. It was filled with whatever they bought but never used and even never got out of the packaging it was delivered in."

"They told my mom to take a box of what she wanted, and for s**ts and giggles, she did. It was a knife collection and sharpener set."

- MUSTARDUNAVAILABLE

Unusual Art

"I was at John Waters’ house for his birthday and he has a room set up as a lifelike recreation of a meth lab (it wasn’t a real meth lab, it’s an art piece)."

"He told me that when Bill Clinton visited him the secret service agents were extremely concerned about the room."

- writeleahwrite

Weird Pet Relationships

"One client had a whole separate house on their property just for their dogs. They'd referred to it as the 'dog house,' and I was expecting like maybe a little building in the yard where they kept their toys or something, but this was a fully furnished home with king-sized beds and a huge playroom on the main floor."

"They had a full training and feeding staff to care for the dogs and everything. They lived in their own house and would come over to visit. Seemed like a weird dynamic to have with your pet..."

"One client didn't have a litterbox for the cats, their cats I guess didn't like using the boxes in the basement and they didn't want to put boxes upstairs so they put down pond liner and kitty litter across an entire room in the basement and had their housekeeper run a rake through it daily."

- daabilge

Special Needs Kitty Mystery Mansion

"As a kid back in the Mesozoic Era (I'm old), my best friend and I used to play in a converted racquetball court and lounge under the old West Coast mansion her family had lived in since its construction."

"The stairs to it were hidden behind a closet off of the abandoned servants' quarters. Halfway down the stairs was a wine cellar. A decoy as the actual wine cellar for the home was under the kitchen….. Another staircase behind a rack of dusty bottles led two stories down to our giant play area beneath this."

"At the beginning of WWII, before Pearl Harbor, my friend’s paranoid WWI vet grandfather had dug out the space over fear of Japanese (or German) invasion. Her dad made the giant room regulation designed for racquetball years later. Maybe originally squash. Not sure, but the lounge area was also glassed off above it so one could look down into the court like a gallery."

"It was really neat. Also upstairs in the living room was a wall straight out of an old mystery novel. If you pushed a spot just right, the wall opened to a hidden room. Super tiny and had a button to ring certain other rooms in the house as the home had these already to call for staff. My friend's mom said it was so if someone quickly had to hide, they could alert the household of danger."

"We used to pretend to be on Nancy Drew cases all the time... so fun."

"The family was wealthy, but despite the amazing home, they lived a completely pretentious free life. Normal cars, camping vacations, frugal living as sport."

"But they were philanthropists too, especially supporting organizations like the humane society. One thing about this family’s home was all the cats. I loved kitties but had a mother who preferred her animals well-seasoned. The family had the space so they always had, and were looking to adopt out but often didn’t, at least 20 rescue cats, many with special needs."

"I’m old, I didn’t know how to write that. Special needs kitty mystery mansion really is actually an appropriate description..."

- waltersmama

"Special needs kitty mystery mansion with hidden panic rooms and decoy wine cellars is like, the best possible fever dream."

- ConneisseurOfDanger

A Unique Viewing Experience

"In Naples, FL., I was at a house with a sensory deprivation room. Flat black walls with acoustic dampening baffles, in the middle was a coffin-like bathtub. It had speakers and a flat-screen display in the lid."

"I heard that the room cost over $100K to build."

- frank_sarno

A Christmas Village

"They had part of the house permanently decorated for Christmas and it included a fully decorated Christmas tree that was suspended upside down from the ceiling. Which was pretty awesome."

- lithecello

New Meaning to "Don't Take Your Work Home"

"My wife and I used to babysit for this wealthy couple when they went on ski trips etc."

"Except for the children's schoolbooks, there wasn't a book, magazine, or newspaper in the house."

"The man was a publisher."

- Texbadger349

The End of Laundry

"I knew someone who didn't like to do laundry so she just bought new clothes for each of her 4 kids every week. They were always high-quality or designer clothes. At the time, all her kids were 10 to 16 years old."

"What would happen if they liked an item a lot and couldn't find it again? Why not just teach the kids to do their own laundry? Why not hire a housekeeper who can do it?"

"There are so many options, other than spending thousands every month just to avoid laundry. Plus, they rarely donated it. Just bagged it up and threw it out. I never could wrap my head around it."

- coffee-jnky

Can We Be the Trivia Guy?

"I know someone who's worked for a very rich person, probably worth billions. He had more than 100 staff on site, including chefs for the staff...all while divorced and living alone. He had a 'trivia' staff member... someone hired to tell him interesting facts and stories daily. That was his only job."

"Someone else was hired to maintain his shoes. Polish, shine, the works."

"If I didn't hear it firsthand, I wouldn't have believed it."

- mambo-nr4

A Mud Room, Indeed!

​"I used to work as an exterminator, mostly pest control. This had me walking through houses from the poor to the rich."

"One day, I pulled up to a four-story mansion with more rooms than I could count."

"I spoke with the lady at the door and got started. As I sprayed, I noticed there wasn’t much furniture in the house. As I went, I made a game of counting the furniture I could find. Over 50 rooms and the whole building had 13 pieces of furniture."

"Pretty odd, but then I went into the very last room, a mud room right by the door I came into."

"I stopped as I walked in, completely shocked. A huge, full-sized (alive) adult pig stretched from one end of the room to the other, resting on the tile floor. I’m talking five or six feet stretched out across the room. Flies buzzed around its head as it stared at me."

"Suddenly, the lady (who I hadn’t seen since she let me in) said, 'Oh, don’t go in there. She doesn’t like men,' and then she walked me out, paid me, and went back inside."

- Moist-Exchange2890

His Very Own Hot Wheels Garage

"Buddy of mine has a car elevator."

"Instead of just building a bigger garage, he stores his cars stacked onto each other, like some kind of Hot Wheels accessory. It's very surreal."

- SmackEh

Make Yourself at Home

​"My friend's dad growing up was one of the top lawyers in our state. Their house was so d**n big, I got confused (lost as h**l) on all the staircases they had everywhere. They would split in a few places and lead to banisters that had different connections to different parts of the house."

"They had a room just for dishes. Her mom had a huge room for sewing and another for different crafts. They both had an office. Many guest rooms. A small kitchen in one part with a sink, coffee pot, and fridge. Their main bathroom for guests had heated floors and rainfall showers and everything. I LOVED HER SHOWER."

"Her room had a balcony and a table outside."

"They had a pool and hot tub. Horses and a barn and lots of cute barn cats."

"I was very poor and had a messed up situation in my childhood. I stayed there a lot and they would even take me for weeks in the summer because my mother was not there. They are really great people."

" They didn't give handouts or anything, I would literally scoop up horse shit and clean stalls and help with everything for those horses when I stayed. I wanted to help."

"They had a maid, but we still cleaned up after ourselves. Their kitchen was gigantic, and I always loved the fancy pasta water arm over the stove. I had so much fun cooking with her mom and us having the big dinners (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) with them."

"They were so magnificent and beyond anything I would have ever experienced without them. I got my first pair of cowboy boots from them for Christmas. Her dad bought me a plane ticket one time out of the blue because I wanted to visit my grandmother. Never forget them."

- xNinjaNoPants

So Much Wasted Food

"A very rich person I know does not eat leftover food. They will cook a feast and after, everything goes straight in the garbage no matter how much is left over."

- duckduckroosebolton

"My husband won’t eat leftovers because he thinks it will give him diarrhea. His family is preoccupied with food poisoning but doesn’t know any of the actual food safety rules."

"Oh well, more for me."

- jendet010

"My brother-in-law’s family does this but they are middle class. It’s such a waste!"

- outlawjoseymeow

An Art Enthusiast

"Not weird but a Van Gogh, just chillin' in the hallway. I took a selfie with the flash on, whoops."

- Raccoon_Expert_69

"When I did executive level IT support years back, I found a Monet dangling haphazardly on an office chair in the CEO's extra office (which was unused for storage, and had an extra desktop computer I would sometimes use for quick tasks when on that floor)."

"Another time, I was admiring a Joan Miro coffee table book in his main office, and when his assistant noticed, he showed me into a side room I didn’t realize was there, which had a mini gallery of original Miro drawings."

- spymusicspy

It's amazing what people will spend money on when they have the money to spare. It would be so interesting to see how much more a person would explore a hobby if they had the money to spend.

There's nothing like leaving a movie theater having just seen an excellent movie.

Particularly one that took you by surprise.

Perhaps it was deeper and more meaningful than it purported itself to be, or on the flip side, had much more warmth and humor that you would have expected.

Or, the film took an unexpected twist that you never saw coming.

Resulting in your needing to bite your tongue until the rest of your friends and family see the film, and not spoil the surprise for them.

Redditor HornyCorny was curious to hear which plot twists left viewers utterly speechless, leading them to ask:

"What’s a movie twist that caught you completely off guard?"

He Didn't See It Coming Either!

"Brad Pitt in 'Burn After Reading'."

"So surprising and downright freaking hilarious."- thefirehairman

If The Shoe Fits...

"'The Shawshank Redemption'."

"Come on."

"It's not always a man notices another man's shoes."- FUBARspecimenT-89

Lucky For Some, Not For All...

"'Lucky Number Slevin'."

"Huge twist and very satisfying."- kvlr954

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Rosie O'Donnell Would Agree...

"Fight Club."- BuchseeI

"once watched it with a friend who had never even heard of it, and she called the twist like, a half hour in."

"She said it as a joke and didn't realize she was right until the actual reveal, but still I was shook."- yugosaki

I See You Keyser Söze

"The ending of 'The Usual Suspects'."- Schwarzes__Loch

Definitive Shyamalan

''The Sixth Sense'."

'I love movies with plot twists, but I never imagined this one. It caught me completely off guard."- lucasduka

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The Title Is Also Misleading...

"The second half of 'Parasite'."- iwontrememberthat4

Appropriately, They Really Toyed With Your Cognition

"'The Game'."- DudeHeadAwesome

"Good one!'

"I spent the entire movie going 'is it a game? Is it real?'"- fastpixels

There Were Definitely Ghosts...

"'The Others'."

"Unsuspected end."- NeckComprehensive743

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One Unforgettable Opening Scene

"'Scream'."

"The Drew Barrymore role."- LivingTheLife53

The Real Reason Everyone Is Terrified Of Bees...

"When I was a kid, I wanted to feel good and happy."

"So at the video store, I decided to rent a movie with two happy laughing kids on the DVD cover, thinking it would be a feel-good playful story."

"That movie was 'My Girl'."

"Eff that movie."

"Seriously."

'The DVD cover lies."

"IT LIES."- buckyhermit

You THOUGHT you knew who the villains were...

"'From Dusk to Dawn' — midway point."

"Didn’t know at all what I was walking into when saw it in the theatre decades ago — just, you know, Salma Hayek. Good enough."

"Quentin Tarantino slurping tequila from her foot after it ran down the entire length of her leg — that was already a 'Holy WTF' moment."

"But then, well.. . you know."

"And if you don’t know — quick, go watch it. "

"No trailer, no synopsis, no summary."

"Find it and load it 'blind' and fasten your seatbelt."

"You’re in for a wild ride."- canada11235813

George Clooney Tarantino GIF by MIRAMAXGiphy

It's Title Is More Than Accurate!

"'Crazy Stupid Love'."

"The scene when the whole movie goes apesh*t in the yard is one of my all time favorite movie scenes."- Fimbulvintern

Trifecta Of Twists

"'The Others'."

"The end of 'The Mist'."

"'The Prestige' (though, I ALMOST had it figured out, but not quite)."- Krinks1

There's nothing better than when a movie surprises you.

Even if it does make talking about said movie with people who haven't seen it a bit more challenging.

Case in point, people who saw The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects after their endings were spoiled for them, don't seem to like those movies as much as those who went in blind.


Every family has its secrets.

It's up to every new generation to unearth it all.

Don't we all want to know if we're related to famous people?

Or what if we have a familial stake in lands and businesses?

Also, this is a good way to NOT end up dating blood relatives.

The more you know, the less awkward later.

As much as there is a lot of trauma there could be a lot of cool facts to to discuss at parties.

Redditor ForthrightPedant wanted to hear some interesting family histories, so they asked:

"What is a historical fact about your family that you think is kinda neat?"

I don't have any family history.

Of course I've done no investigating.

Maybe I do.

I should look!

Super Talent

Excited Happy Hour GIF by Boomerang OfficialGiphy

"Great-grandpa created the Flintstones. Dan Gordon. Drew lots of Hannah-Barbara cartoons, and directed the first three animated Superman films at the beginning of WW2 as well as several seasons of Popeye, Scooby Doo, Smurfs, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound."

downnoutsavant

Bad Voyage

"My grandfather disliked America and wanted to return to Ireland. He booked passage on the Titanic’s return voyage. If it wouldn’t have sunk, no of us would be here."

mrseddievedder

"My great-grandmother was a Titanic survivor. She was a steerage-class Lebanese immigrant in an arranged marriage. Her husband went down with the ship but she managed to make it to a lifeboat and made it to the Carpathia. Then she remarried in a Lebanese neighborhood in Virginia. Had it not been for the iceberg that struck and sank the Titanic My family lineage would be different and I wouldn't be here. My family's official toast is 'to the iceberg.'"

jaspersurfer

Forgotten

"My husband's grandfather was one of the 'forgotten soldiers' in Canada. He was a Canadian-born Chinese man who asked the Canadian government to fight for his right to vote and a passport. Even tho he was born in Canada in the 20’s since he was Chinese he was not considered Canadian."

H"e was dropped into the Burma jungle and was told he would likely never return. He was in the 10% that did return. He was given the right to vote, to a passport, and to University."

"His wife is still alive today and my son is named after him."

cowskeeper

​Can you imagine?

"My great-grandmother had 13 kids, so she was pregnant for literally a decade. There’s two hundred of us now, all because of this one woman."

CoverlessSkink

"My great grandma had 14 kids. My grandma was the youngest. She died giving birth to my grandma. The oldest child who was like 22 years old raised my grandma. My great-grandfather remarried a woman who had 10 kids of her own. My grandma would tell me stories of them all living together. Can u imagine? 😦."

Content_Pool_1391

Long Ago

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"The land my dad was raised on and my cousins still live on was deeded to the family by George Washington as compensation for service during the Revolution. There was a document with his signature on it at the courthouse until a fire destroyed the records a few decades ago."

mustbethedragon

So much land and fortune and HISTORY has been lost due to fire.

Thank God we keep more than paper records now.

Over the Moon

Michael Jackson Dancing GIFGiphy

"My second cousin is David Scott who walked on the Moon and drove the moon buggy. My mom does. He was so busy during the time when I was young that he even said later in life that he wished she’d gotten to know more of his family."

Roadgoddess

The Union

"Great-great-great grandfather on my mom's side was working his field in the part of Virginia that split off and became a new state because they didn't want to secede from The Union. Union soldiers came along looking for conscripts and he was a young, able-bodied man so they told him to come with them. He informed them he was a Quaker and thus a pacifist. According to family lore, that discussion went on for a bit but he would not give in. So they shot him and left him there. Good thing he had a couple of kids well before that day."

SpottyNoonerism

Opportiunities

"My great-grandfather was offered a chance to invest in a new invention by a guy by the name of Alexander Graham Bell. He declined, saying at most there would be one telephone per town."

Carson4307

"That is apparently my family too."

"One uncle apparently built a version of a hot water heater and then sold the design to GE for a good sum back then."

"Another uncle was asked if he wanted to be in a photo during his military service. He said no so they raised the flag on Iwo Jima without him in it."

"No idea if any of these are true, at best they are enhanced truths, but for me, I really hope they are true."

Jormungand1342

Underground

"I have a relative who worked for the Underground Railroad and had a price on her head in the South."

dahlia6767

"My uncle was a carpenter. And was doing restoration work on old houses in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Many of those old, historical homes had underground railroad passageways and hidden walls. He got to see and restore many of them. He had photos of some of the work he was doing and I got to see those as a kid. Living in Southern Ohio, we have a lot of rich underground railroad history here."

AddictiveArtistry

​Family Empire

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"My great-grandfather was the town police chief in the 1920s. His brother was the Mayor. Their cousins ran the casino."

"My family was a smaller version of Boardwalk Empire."

nowhereman136

Wouldn't we all love a show based on our families?

Then that's even more neat family history.