Truckin'

The calendar says it's October 4th, 10-4, which means only one thing here at spitoutyourgum: our (kinda) annual salute to the world's truck drivers. They supply us with what we need and like, haul away what we're through with, amaze us with their maneuverability skills, and daze us with fantasies of life on the road. Or whatever. But getting to know a few drivers over the years, I've come to respect them and appreciate the fact that they're great characters. So, in celebration of these men and women, I humbly offer a poem I wrote nearly twenty years ago (don't think the red light factoid is still fact), before I really knew any drivers. A bit of splenetic piece of poesy this, an imaginary kiss-off, an all-purpose empathetic paean to the you-broke-my-heart blues--a message so hefty I felt only a qualified, and quality, truck driver could be trusted to deliver it. Thank you, drivers.


Driving You Away



I need a big
18-wheeled truck
To haul away
The memory of you.

The truck driver
(I see him as a cussing type,
Impressively fat with a mustache
That'll cut your nose
When you kiss him),
I'd give this guy,
Who I'm gonna call Hector,
I'd give Hector enough quarters
To get through all the tolls
To get to where I'm sending him.
You see, I'm willing to pay the price.

I'll start him heading south on 71
Out of this panic-quick Cleveland town
'Til the sign for 70 west Indianapolis
--which humdrum he's gonna bypass--
But he's going right through East St. Louis
West to St. Louis where he's gonna drive around some.
I like a big rig on city streets,
Makes you jittery
Making wide right turns,
Cutting commuters off
With that Arch in sight always
--whatever goes up, baby
comes metallic down the other side--
Then a run red light
And it's dirty river south
Down 55 through Memphis and Jackson and deeper.
And he will be instructed
Not to acknowledge any scenery
--not that Hector is wont to do such a thing--
But he will not stray from his mission:
He's driving you away,
And after this ride,
You will not come back.

Down into Louisiana he's gonna
Catch that desperately long Pontchartrain bridge
And when he gets to that halfway point
Where he can't see land ahead of him
Or behind him,
He's gonna stop that rig, shut it down,
Irregardless of traffic
And courtesy
And he's gonna shout from his cab perch,
“Not yet, baby! You ain't being abandoned
In this nowhere, yet. We got traveling to do.”
Then he starts up again.

And when he hits land he heads fast right
West on 10 way west
Past the sun through wide Texas
Where he can smell wasted Juarez, west.
And he will not jacknife.
And when some newly jerked kid
Pulls his arm down
From a mother-driven Aerostar
Just outside of Phoenix
Hector's gonna oblige and blow his horn loud
And that mother's gonna jump in her seatbelt
And slap that kid well to remind him
And Hector's gonna roll on west
1,947 miles times 18 wheels from New Orleans to L.A.
But he's not gonna push you off
The continent, baby, no.
He's heading 5 north now,
Largely for symbolic reasons:
It gets cold up north.
But in the desert of Sacramento
He's gonna start to circle 'round
--heading east on 80.

No,
Don't even think about it.
We're just toying with you, Hector and me.
'Cause somewhere out on 80,
Out in the dead west,
There's one red light
--the only red light left on 80, baby.
And that's
where the memory
of you
gets out.

Appropriately.

10-4, Good Buddies

If today, October 4th (10-4), isn't National Truck Driver Appreciation Day (NTDAD), I don't know of a more appropriate day to hold NTDAD. I would imagine most people's interactions with truck drivers start with the childhood fun of pulling your arm down from a passing car, attempting to get a trucker to honk his horn, and end with cussing a big rig driver as he cuts you off on the highway, and maybe somewhere in between, pulling your hair out as you get stuck behind one trying to make a wide right turn on a city street.

I, however, have the privilege of seeing truck drivers every day at work and getting to know some of them. I've never seen one spit tobacco juice (well, one, but we call him Mr. Sunshine for his sour disposition--a true anomaly among truck drivers in my experience), or heard one refer to his truck as "my rig." Most of them are friendly, funny, family guys. With one of them, originally from Germany, I discuss modern day comedians and trade off-kilter jokes all the time. They all are easy to deal with, help me in my job enormously, and I truly look forward to their individual, routine stops. So here's my personal shout out to them all on NTDAD.

There was one, though, who was a bit strange. He was older and moved about as slowly as molasses in a Bergmann movie, and he always called me cuz or bro, about twenty times in one unloading: "Goddamn snow, hunh cuz? You gotta lotta unopened boxes back here, don't you bro? Lemme use your bathroom, hunh cuz." On and on. One day he asked me if there were any old Playboy magazines in our dumpster. He kind of looked like the type--even at about 60--to go dumpster diving for mild porn. Anyway, he was a pretty regular deliverer for a couple months. Then I never saw him again, for over a year. By this time I had become good buddies with another driver from the same company. This guy was great, but he'd stay and talk forever, mostly about his son's baseball exploits, which was fine, and he called me by name, not cuz, so everything was good. One day I asked whatever happened to the dumpster-porn-salvaging cuz-bro guy. I didn't know the guy's name and did my best to describe him, figuring there couldn't be many guys like that, even around a truck depot. "Oh that guy," the new driver said, chuckling, "he died a few months ago." Geez, I felt kind of bad. He may not have been my cup of tea among truck drivers, but I never wished death upon the guy. I kind of had a mini-memorial thing for the guy the next time I dumped the old Playboys.

So anyway, no more than two weeks later, the back bell rings, and I go to answer it, thinking to myself which one of my truck-driving buddies was waiting out there in the wind or the rain or the snow or the hot sun. I open the door and what do I hear? "Hey cuz, long time no see." The only time in my life I thought I "seen a ghost." The only time in my life I came close to uttering the words, "I thought you was dead, bro." The rest of his visit is a daze. He puttered around and tossed off a score of bro's and cuz's, I scratched my head wondering how the other truck driver could confuse this one with another one, and then the guy finally finished unloading the skid of books and said, "See you around, cuz," and left. I haven't seen him since. Makes you wonder.

In high school I was good friends with a kid whose family had emigrated from Europe a few years before; they were dogged about their assimilation. To the point where one spring they went all-out American: they bought a big blue Buick, packed up the family, and road-tripped to Florida for spring break. This being the late 1970s, of course the old man also had to buy a CB radio. As my friend told the story, about a half hour onto the highway for the long trek to FLA, the old man made a big show of turning on the CB and in his heavily accented, but proper English, spoke into the speaker, "10-4, good buddies. Any smokeys out there?" What followed, according to my friend, was a hailstorm of abuse from truckers advising him to get off the airways. The CB sat holstered and un-turned on for the duration of the trip, to and fro.

Elvis started as a truck driver. Really, that's all you need to know. Happy NTDAD.

Moby Grape-Trucking Man

Link Davis-Trucker From Tennessee

And as a bonus, the trailer from Steven Spielberg's TV-movie Duel, which must be the ultimate dark fantasy of truckers everywhere.