Magic Man

Randy Grider is editor of Truckers News. He is the son of a career trucker and holds a CDL. He blogs regularly at truckwriter.wordpress.com. Write him at rgrider@rrpub.com.

It’s not unusual to find a small gathering of truckers at the TravelCenters of America truckstop in Cartersville, Ga., being amazed by Michael Anthony Mooney’s impromptu magic shows.

Mooney isn’t a trucker himself, but he calls truckstops his “second home,” and truckers — whether he knows them personally or not — are his extended family.

“I love to sit down with truckers and listen to them talk” Mooney says. “I do a few magic tricks and drive some of them to Wal-Mart and other places if they need to pick up some supplies. It’s kind of my way of repaying them.”

Mooney is repaying them for the years truckers were his main source of transportation and often of food and money in order to survive. The 44-year-old Jackson, Tenn., native had a difficult childhood. After his parents divorced when he was 6, he was placed in foster care and bounced around in the system until he was 18. Then he found trouble.

Petty theft crimes landed him on a penal farm from which he escaped. At 19, he went to prison, where he stayed for nine years.

Mooney says when he left prison he had no parole or probation requirements, so he hit the open road, “hoboing” across the country for the next four years. Always keeping a neat, clean-cut appearance and a low profile, he found truckstops great places to hang out, sleep and seek rides from friendly truckers.