I'm Laura Norton, and this is one strange thing.

The show where we search the nation's news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.

The American long-haul trucker has been a mainstay of our highways, well, since we've had highways.

The 1950s gave the United States an interstate system and a new way to move things from one place to another,

sitting atop a big old truck.

And that trucker life appealed to a man named Harry Joe Turner.

In 1979, Harry Joe was 28 years old, married, and living in Winchester, Virginia.

He was a trucker, and his job was to deliver, piloting a big rig that reportedly weighed in at 80,000 pounds.

Based on a description from the Richmond Times dispatch, Harry Joe's short life had been fairly eventful.

They said he was, quote, an ex-Navy sharpshooter, an amateur boxer, the winner of 24 fights, the loser of four, and

donator of 27 pints of blood. Why that last achievement made the newspaper? We can't say,

but we're sure that the Winchester Red Cross appreciated all those donations. In any case, in August of

1979, it wasn't blood that concerned Harry Joe Turner.

It was condiments. More specifically, a load of ketchup and mustard that he was to haul from

Winchester to Fredericksburg, Virginia. On August 28, Harry Joe and his truck set out on US 17, prepared to make the 160-mile round trip.

Per the Times' dispatch, it was a nighttime drive and a rainy one, split here and there by lightning.

On his way out of Winchester, Harry Joe stopped to eat at the big man's restaurant.

Harry Joe was himself a big man, very tall

and broad and likely unafraid out on the road by himself, even close to 11 at night. It was a late

start to a long evening, but as Harry Joe told the Winchester Evening Star, he thought he could

grab a nap at the warehouse after he dropped

everything off.

...