Santa’s Fellow Long Haulers

A squat, white artificial Christmas tree garlanded in blue and trimmed with bulbs guards the trash cans. A wreath bedecks the signs for a clam chowder and country corn soup buffet.

Big-rig horns blast from Interstate 10 as men and women amble with plates or soda pop: long-haul truckers refueling for a holiday drive home.

At TravelCenters of America West in Ontario, about 1,000 big-rigs grunt through each day, making it one of the busiest truck stops in Southern California, even on a weekend when others are nestled in front of fireplaces or hurriedly wrapping presents.

Danielle Parker, 35, and her husband, Steve, trucked from New Jersey to spend Christmas Eve in Ontario with 31,000 pounds of something. She knows it’s produce, but details fuzz when you’re constantly reloading.

Parker reclines in front of a Chris Farley movie in the stop’s TV room, clutching molasses cookies, hot chocolate and a pack of Marlboro menthols. Someone chastises her for lighting up indoors.

“Most of the stops let you, and you forget you’re in California,” she says.

The five Parker kids -- ages 16 to 3 -- took three presents each to tear open at an aunt’s house in Gardena, where they stay when their parents are on the road.

When the time comes to open them, Parker won’t get to watch her oldest son’s face light up at a Laker jersey. She’ll be headed east. But the cash for driving holidays buys presents.

The road has perks, as well. “They’re having a free dinner at one of the stops, I think in Arkansas,” Parker says. “We see enough lights on the road, it’s like a Christmas tree anyway.”

Part of trucking is accepting places like the travel center as home, says Pete Wicky, the general manager of the 24-hour truck stop. Truckers have asked for marriage ceremonies on their flatbeds. Some want their ashes to be scattered at the stop when they die.

Roadside holiday cheer is possible once you adjust, he reasons. After all, Santa spends the holiday en route; he seems rather jolly.

Some truckers adorn their cabs with bows outside and lights inside, and over the radio they wish one another merry Christmas. A few balance mini-trees in their passenger seats.

At the 34-acre travel center, Doug and Carolyn Young, an ex-driver and his wife, offer prayer from a mobile chapel, run as part of a ministry called Transport for Christ.

On Christmas Eve, the two prep 150 Ziploc bags for truckers. The bags brim with candy canes, chocolate chip cookies and CDs and cassettes of a local pastor’s Christmas service from the prior year.

Doug Young, 56, surveys his trailer ministry -- manger scene, menorah and 20-some chairs for Sunday services -- and tells a story of a truck-stop Christmas as “Silent Night” sings from a CD.

“When God announced the arrival of his son, he didn’t go to the kings, he went to the shepherds. The shepherds were kind of like truckers: They lived alone, smelled kind of peculiar. People stayed away, but they were vital to the economy,” he says.

“If God,” he adds slowly, “was announcing the arrival of his son today, I don’t think it would be unusual to announce it to a lonely driver in the corner of a truck stop.”

The Youngs are unusual among the holiday bustle: The rest stop, tucked at the foot of the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains, is their Christmas destination.

By contrast, Claude Pettijohn, 46, is so eager to leave that he paces in front of his truck. A T-shaped wreath decorates the grille -- four gold bells, fake pine cones and a crimson bow. But the blue cab is covered with salt.

On this, his first Christmas on the road, Pettijohn dropped off 38,000 pounds of Kodak film in Long Beach. Now he wants the cab slick and shiny when he trundles into Bakersfield.

Pettijohn tries to bargain with the four drivers ahead of him at the truck wash: His three kids will each open one present tonight, a Christmas Eve tradition, he tells them. The 24-year-old apprentice driving with him told his wife he wouldn’t make it home to El Monte. Boy, will she be surprised.

The sell is wasted. “We all want to get home,” a driver tells Pettijohn.

“It’s hard,” he tells a visitor. “You don’t get to see the decorations go up, you don’t get to see the kids get antsy before the holiday.”

Jon Amos, however, makes peace with the road over an egg sunny side up and toast so black that a waitress asks if it’s OK.

A Tennessean, he’s headed to Prescott, Ariz., to spend the holiday with his daughter. Pit-stop holidays were rough years ago, he says, with two teary-eyed kids watching Daddy back out of the driveway.

But after 41 big-rigging years, Amos finds charm in gulping black coffee to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

Stockings hang at the Fork in the Road diner, and a garland swirls over counters at the adjacent Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Subway. Amos invites a hitchhiker to slide into his booth. Patrick Moran, 43, scarfs macaroni and cheese, chicken and ham from the buffet.

“I talk to my nephew sometimes. If I had a calling card, I’d call him,” Moran says. Amos listens. Moran rambles, bums a smoke, returns.

Amos hands the waitress cash for the bill, the tune switches to “Santa Baby” and he buys the hitchhiker Christmas Eve dinner for $10.43.