Keep Truckin’

I drive a truck for a living: a big truck - the kind with 18 wheels. James Taylor once wrote in a song, “Mr. 9 to 5 in your Coup De Ville will never know how it feels to really roll roll roll.” I roll. I have been reluctant to reveal that information (that I’m a trucker) on this blog for some reason. Maybe I thought that whatever readers there were who might stumble across this site might think less of me for it. Pretty insecure, huh? That’s not all I’ve ever done for a living in my life and times, though. I’ve been a carpenter, a salesman, a manager, a teacher, a sailor, a cab driver and some other things I won’t mention. I have a bachelor’s degree in Music and an MA in teaching (English). Some of my favorite things are reading, writing, classical guitar, chess and fly fishing. But truck driving seems to stick. I keep coming back to it. What’s the point of all this? I don’t know. Maybe if I keep writing I’ll come up with something.

Back in 1982 when I went on the road for the first time, it was fun and exciting. Everyday was something new - new places and new things. I remember the first time I came over the mountains at night and saw Las Vegas below, lighting up the desert or rolled down I-10 into LA. I still love to drive through the desert at night. I remember drinking with an old Indian in Whitefish Montana and driving down Park Avenue in NYC.

Maine to Miami, San Diego to Seattle and everything in between. I’ve ridden down the old Route 66 from east to west and come down Cabbage Pass with no brakes. It’s a lonely life and a hard one and it’s starting to tell on me. Caffeine and nicotine keep me going now. Used to be reefer and amphetamines. Bad food and long lonely nights. Most of the good old truck stops and diners are gone now, too. Everything now is slick and sterile. No character.

I’m getting tired of the road. Mainly I hate public restrooms, fast food and being away from home. And the traffic is terrible. Everybody going nowhere real fast. I just take it slow and easy and kind of let the rest of the world go by. I don’t get in a hurry. No need to.

The fine moments of surprise and excitement are few and far between now. But sometimes I open my eyes and see white fluffy clouds in a sharp blue sky or snow-capped mountains in mid-summer or an old country lane going nowhere or a storm building out over the Gulf and I think, “It could be worse. I could have a real job.”

It’s honest work. We’re paid by the mile and we earn every dollar we make and it seems lately that we are mostly disrespected and misunderstood. We are probably among the most well informed people in America. Heck, we listen to the radio 24 hours a day, including NPR and Coast to Coast. If you have any doubt that we know a lot of stuff, just ask any one of us. We’ll tell you all about it.

I’m looking for a way out of it (the truck) now. I ride along and dream of having a little office in town and giving guitar lessons and doing computer work - maybe playing a gig now and then. I’m good at English. Maybe I could open an English shop. I could sell footnotes, undangle dangling participles and re-place misplaced modifiers. I live on (what could be) a small farm. I’d like to raise goats and chickens and grow organic vegetables.

But I’m too young to retire and too broke and scared to quit. There are bills to be paid. And the road is still out there, like a siren, singing its bittersweet song. And maybe, just maybe, there’ll be something new around the next bend.