By Daryl Lang
Sentinel Reporter

Trucker Simmie Bowden leaves the Pilot in Middlesex Township with an armful of essential items.

He carries a bucket-sized drink cup filled with water, a steel mug of coffee, three chocolate muffins, some new work gloves and a six-pack of wool socks.

Bowden, who lives in Louisiana, is hauling a load of plastic pipe to Columbus, Ohio.

"Coffee and water. I got my sweetener," he says as he climbs into his rig. "Time to ride."

It's 2:10 a.m.

U.S. Route 11 through Middlesex Township never sleeps.

Four big truck stops, plus five smaller all-night gas stations and restaurants, line a brightly lit span of road slightly more than a mile long.

Truckers know it as the Carlisle exit, a link between two interstates and a day's drive from most of the East Coast's major cities.

Locally, it has another nickname: The Miracle Mile.

"The Miracle Mile, it's constant, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," says Middlesex Township Police Chief Barry Sherman.

A night on The Miracle Mile reveals a vital slice of American commerce. Thousands of truck drivers take a break here as they move goods between factories, warehouses and cities.

* * * *

It's just past midnight at the Middlesex Diner, and some volunteer firefighters have already rescued two plush animals from inside a claw machine.

They're burning off steam and spare change in the restaurant lobby after a meal and meeting.

A third critter is almost in the claw when the radio dispatcher announces a report of smoke in a McDonald's on the other side of town.

"Let's go," one of the firefighters says, and they dart out the door.

Apart from that, there isn't much action in the diner. There's a group of six loud young people at one table, but they don't seem to bother the few solitary souls eating a late meal at the counter.

Workers who staff the overnight shifts in these restaurants say things are usually calm.

"I'm happy to say it's kind of boring here," says Jay Roebuck, who co-manages the Pilot. "That's how we like to keep it."

Drivers pull into the lot to sleep in their trucks, then come in for coffee, supplies and directions.

"Our two biggest questions are 'Where's 81?' and 'How do I get back on the Turnpike?,'" Roebuck says.

Today, two superhighways funnel traffic onto the Miracle Mile, but Middlesex's travel history dates to the days of the buggy.

According to a Cumberland County Historical Society article, Middlesex got its first tollbooth in 1816 when a north-south turnpike began operating along the Cumberland Valley.

More than 100 years later, the federal government labeled that road U.S. Route 11.

In 1940, Middlesex happened to fall at the eastern end of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the first high-speed route between Pittsburgh and eastern Pennsylvania.

The Turnpike eventually spread statewide, and still more travelers began to barrel through the township when Interstate 81 opened in the 1970s.

Taking advantage of the location, three major trucking companies built distribution centers along Route 11.

Yet through some quirk of highway planning, the north-south 81 and east-west Turnpike simply do not intersect. The two highways flirt briefly at an overpass, then go their separate ways.

The fastest link between them is The Miracle Mile.

* * * *

At around 1:30 a.m., Middlesex Police Sgt. Steven Kingsborough pulls into the Petro truck stop and turns up the volume on his CB radio.

"Where all the girls at?" asks a male voice on the radio.

"Over here," replies a female voice.

"Ain't no working girls in Carlisle," says a second male voice.

Kingsborough knows otherwise.

"We've made some arrests for drugs and prostitution, but not lately," he says.

Prostitution along the mile usually picks up soon after midnight, he says. Women perform their services in the sleeper cabs, and use the trucks' CB radios to locate their next customers. Truckers will describe their truck over the radio and flash their lights to let the prostitutes know where to find them.

In the past, the police department has set up random sting operations to catch prostitutes and their suitors.

Sometimes, officers pose as truckers seeking sex. Other times, they'll pose as "working girls" offering their services.

"It's not uncommon for us to come out here and do undercover operations. And we do that with the cooperation of the truck stops," Kingsborough says. "It's bad for business if they're known as the truck stop that houses the whores."

Kingsborough says the trucking industry employs a mix good and bad, from noble professionals who take pride in helping stranded motorists, to rowdy young men who party their way across the country.

"They're like any other profession, and that includes police officers," he says. "You have good cops and bad cops. You have good truck drivers and bad truck drivers.... As a whole, commercial truck drivers are a very honorable breed and profession."

Some nights can be dead quiet for police on the 'Mile. On a recent patrol, police responded to only one call in Middlesex Township between midnight and 3 a.m. -- a broken-down truck blocking a lane.

Kingsborough spends much of his time on night patrol checking on the security of businesses and watching for signs of drunk driving.

Though the state limit for driving a private vehicle is a blood alcohol level of .10 percent, the law prohibits commercial truckers from drinking any alcohol at all.

"Out here, we take that very seriously," Kingsborough says. "That's an 80,000-pound weapon in somebody's hands."

Most truckers would prefer to stay out of the way of the law. As Kingsborough cruises through the truck parking lots in his marked police car, there's a sharp drop in CB calls.

When he leaves, the chatter resumes. This time, it's a profanity-laced conversation about Russia, China and Osama bin Laden.

* * * *

"A guy told me one time, if a truck driver's lip's moving, he's lying," laughs Bill Wright.

He's exaggerating, of course, as folks are expected to do when they sit at the counter of the all-night Iron Skillet restaurant inside the Petro truck stop.

"One guy will start something, and another guy will do it twice as good, and this guy down here, he's done something three times as good," Wright says. Wright lives in Carlisle works as a part-time security guard at Petro, a bright, clean travel complex that used to be called the All American Travel Plaza.

Wright is a regular at the restaurant there, where he can be found in the early hours snacking on eggs, smoking USA Golds and chewing the fat before he heads home to bed. He even gets his hair cut at the Petro barber shop.

Wright remembers a driver who spun a yarn about his old job as an Ohio state trooper.

"He started out talking about parking tickets and speeding tickets," Wright recalled. "And later he wound up with how he shot 18 people in one van."

On top of the wild stories, the Petro counter is a good place to develop an ear for regional accents. The men around the counter talk in tones of the South, the Midwest and practically anywhere else in the U.S.

"Everybody runs up 81," says trucker James Reeves, who's voice tells you he's from Texas even before he does. "It goes over every major city."

* * * *

The thin ribbon of the Miracle Mile is about the only thing that draws outsiders to rural Middlesex Township. Once there, most drivers just know it as an extension of Carlisle.

"Everybody knows where Carlisle, Pa., is," says Mark Wingham, a trucker from Louisville, Ky.

At 1 a.m., he's alone at the Flying J Travel Plaza counter, eating a cheesesteak and dipping french fries into ranch dressing.

Wingham, 29, has a wife and a 16-month-old daughter at home.

"Makes you want to pull your hair out when you leave," he says, but he realizes his job brings in money. "Gotta feed 'em."

Tonight, Wingham is heading toward Salem, Mass., with a load of potato chips.

Like many truckers, Wingham prefers to drive at night. It's safer, he says, with less congestion.

Overnight, a few trucks rumble down the Mile every minute, but during the day the road is jammed with vehicles of all sorts.

Traffic estimates vary, but the most recent PennDOT figures say 25,000 vehicles per day travel the Miracle Mile and 21 percent of them are trucks, according to spokesman Greg Penny.

That's much lighter than, say, Interstate 81, but Mile traffic crawls at 35 miles per hour and backs up at seven traffic signals.

Local governments talk about one day building a connector highway between the two interstates to ease some of the congestion. Right now, Cumberland County is studying possible ways to do that.

One congested town along the Turnpike, Cranberry, is adding a connector. Another, Breezewood, is famous for avoiding one.

Opinions vary about what impact a bypass might have on Miracle Mile businesses. For now, the Mile rides high on its reputation.

"This is one of the famous stops for trucks," driver Bowden says at the Pilot. "You would think they're giving away free food."

"I don't know what makes it unique," Bowden says. He pauses, thinks for a moment, then laughs. "There aren't any pretty women here."

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