Different Slants

Comment by Don Larson

August 9, 2012 @ 12:15 pm

Very good!

I’ve been through Amarillo many times in both directions. You’e right about that 100 miles of nothing there. In the hot summer the smell of cattle yards while driving over those 100 miles is something to appreciate.

Don

Comment by Bob

August 9, 2012 @ 12:25 pm

…and the hairy Tarantulas crawling across the molten blacktop, the bleached cow skulls on the side of the road, Christian radio stations–and only Christian radio stations–that make you wonder what country you’re in, if you listen to them in desperation for entertainment. A caustic and disturbing reminder of what I’m not when I’m slicing through the dry desert air at 90 miles an hour.

Texas and Oklahoma are very different places, Don.

Bob

(part of this same day reply later added to my poem. Gotta seize inspiration by the horns when you find it)

Comment by Herb Berman

August 9, 2012 @ 12:34 pm

Vivid tableau, Bob. A corner of Hell I think I’ll skip on my next vacation.

Comment by brad dechter

August 10, 2012 @ 7:09 am

Maybe those transcontinental or long haul drivers still fit the description you lay on them, but none of my tractor/trailer drivers do. As I read your description of them I was thinking that might have been 10+ years ago. There’s a driver shortage now- times have changed. To many of them it’s a career or profession. It’s not like the old days. The trucks are very complicated , computer oriented machines…
That being said, loved it. I can only imagine the younger tits!

Comment by Herb Berman

August 10, 2012 @ 2:24 pm

I’m a labor arbitrator who has resolved many trucking industry disputes. My experience with long-haul drivers comports with yours, Brad. Men (and women) in this field are generally professional, serious about their work, and highly skilled. In fact, the stereotypical blue-collar-worker cliche is outdated. Today, a typical factory worker may be sitting in an air conditioned office using a computer to control a production line or lines or a series of related and very complex processes. Of course, there are less skilled jobs, but they’re quickly being phased out. One highly skilled technician manipulating extremely expensive equipment may be responsible for millions of dollars in output——a job for which he is, as he should be, very well-paid.

Comment by Bob

August 10, 2012 @ 2:47 pm

Gotta respond, since I’m the curator of the past in both my stories and store in Skokie, Il. I first came into daily contact with a range of truck drivers when I opened my first newsstand with Rick Munden in 1965. With few exceptions, these were large,crude, rough, nasty, threatening, thieving and often anti-Semitic men. Until you got to know them, and then the whole blustering facade fell away. No, they weren’t cuddly little darlings afterwards, but they let me see the real person more clearly. I gradually became fascinated with the culture of truck drivers, their own “cowboy” self-image and how they treated each other, women and me. I was a teenaged writer when I first met them, and though all those first difficult contacts I met are dead now, I still remember them.–Bob

Comment by Jim Payne

December 22, 2017 @ 9:31 am

I like your “center of nothing.” As vivid and simple as their lives. You portrayed them well.