White Line Fever

To me, no other culture is more indiginous to our Americanness, to our robust, Western, enterprising spirit than trucker culture. Music, hats, bumper stickers, mudflaps, license plates with Taz on them, all of these are manufactured just for the guys that spend their lives hurtling down the interstate every damn day to God-knows-where, U.S.A. There are people working specifically to keep these people entertained.

Travel centers with a Dairy Queen, Pizza Hut Express, showers, a convenience store, and an arcade with the naked lady game are all to be found at least every 100 miles or so, accessible almost exclusively from the highway. These people do not care that you are looking over their shoulder as they take a damn break from the ol' highway and enjoy some video gin rummy that rewards with pictures of a topless pinup from 1991. They could not care less that you are weary of their presence as they look too long at your girlfriend as you both walk across the parking lot to the Travel Center to get coffee and to pee. They do not care that you are disgusted by their fractured and slangy language or creepy looks as they exit the bathroom. All they know is that some people aren't cut out for life on the road the same way they are.

And those people are you.

Truckers have their own hidden niche that few more than fellow truckers appreciate and respect. But here are some examples of those that do just that.

My first exposure to the laughably esoteric trucker culture was a chap by the name of Boxcar Willie. In his overalls, travelin' hat, and standing next to his big rig, he was perched on the cover of an album my family purchased many years ago. Truck Driving Favorites was an album that I remember well.



My stepbrother and I made fun of it both lyrically and comically, giving little slack for the lifestyle presented in its words. It contained some gems such as Teddy Bear, wherein a crippled kid whose trucker father had died was always talking to truckers on the CB radio and explaining his story to draw sympathy. Then all of the truckers pulled off of the interstate, came to his house, and took him for rides in their trucks. Then the mother came on and said thanks to everybody. The end.

Another one was Convoy, which was about some badass truckin' motherfuckers who decided that they would rebel against...um...The Man. Actually, I'm really not sure what point they were ever trying to get across, but they do it by just not stopping for gas and caralling 1,000 of their fellow truckers into just driving somewhere. The Army tries to stop them, can't, gives up, and the truckers eventually split up after they feel better about themselves and deliver their loads as usual.

If you're going for truly underground trucker entertainment, the Internet can provide where others can't. I'm talking about Buck Truck. His songs are most readily available here.

*****NOTE: LISTENING TO THE SONGS ABOVE WILL GREATLY ASSIST YOUR FURTHER READING PLEASURE. IT WOULD BE A DISGRACE FOR YOU TO GET LOST IN YOUR TRUCK DRIVING MUSIC EDUCATION, AND I WOULD FEEL PRETTY GUILTY. THANKS.*****



Buck Truck is his own man. There are no hip-hop beats or rhythms to his music, just regular country twangyness over a distinct Casio cacophony. The depicted cigarette is really a waste of ink, since the rhasp in this man's voice is so prevalent. His songs include Buck Truck, The Weird Waitress, How'd I Get This Way, Too Old to Truck, Elvis Once Drove a Truck, and more. In these he analyzes different aspects of trucking. He looks into man's origins at the career, preferred culture, common personalities encountered in trucking, and the super slab (that's street talk for the highway for all you four wheelers out there). Mr. Truck goes deeper still, perhaps without intention. He addresses the emotional, mental, and social plight that strikes the trucker on a day to day basis.

Take, for example, How'd I get this Way? In this song, he starts out with "Hey trucker? What are you doing" in a calm, eerie, focused tone. He does this to replicate the noticeable voices that truckers sometimes hear, in order to get their attention. After this, he delves into the basics of trucker beginnings, which is mainly because his dad did it and his dad before him. So based on this, if you aren't a trucker then you probably aren't going to be one later on.

An intriguing psychological specimen is entitled The Weird Waitress. Brother Dale has this to say on the song:

In Mr. Truck's world truckers, in comparison to waitresses, are rich people, or at least they consider themselves to be, since their jobs enable them to patronize and enjoy the friendly services of the waitresses, who are ostensibly poor enough to be grateful for the opportunity to serve. In fact, this socioeconomic disparity between who she is and how she acts, may be what makes the weird waitress weird. Her insouciance and nontraditional attitudes toward her clientele define her; the archetype of the trucker in relation to a liberal female is shocked into submission, as in when he accepts the cheese pizza, and when he is stunned into silence by her witty retort after he tells (pleads with?) her to give him a break.

Truckers are royalty at truck stops in the same way that blackjack players are royalty at the blackjack table, but on a smaller scale, and women on the cusp of homelessness are going to suck dick even if it's for five bucks. At the heart of my analysis is that it's in a relative way that truckers are rich, but importantly, this does nothing, psychologically on either side, to diminish their clear dominion over the lowly waitrons at the bean pot.

But then, I don't listen to Buck Truck because of his ablility to envision truckers' collective social identity as a renegade, speed-crazed vagabond, pushing a smoking death machine to its limit at the edge of reality itself. I like Buck Truck 'cause he keeps it simple.

Buck continues his ego-lifting, jargon-filled propaganda with Elvis Once Drove a Truck. The thesis of this song is that there aren't boundaries in trucking, but if you "hold on to what ya got", you can be like Elvis Presley, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and others.

So why all of this self uplifting dialogue? One could stand back and be realistic, saying "Because they're normal people, Hank, and normal people get depressed and blah blah blah" and make other sensible remarks. But seriously, how many careers are there that have albums to remind them that they shouldn't make a false move, run off the road, and take the lives of innocent motorists? Not very many. I guess it is because there are few careers wherein you spend so much time with your thoughts. These fellows must share a common sadness as to their future and toil. Perhaps they feel that there isn't enough of a point to their labor and their time, which piles up mile by mile in the logbook at the end of the day. If you were a trucker, would it be more depressing that you think your work is fruitless, or more that the only kind of entertainment christened to your job is Buck Truck or Boxcar Willie?

With that, I thought that it would be only right for me to make my own contribution to the pool of ideas, because these guys need a break (and not the kind that the desperate/weird waitress is asked to provide). Dale and I were once barreling down the road and almost got run off the road by an eighteen-wheeler, which inspired a new and fresh piece of trucking Americana. As we continued our trip we created the multiversed power ballad presented here. I leave you with The Trucker Song. I would like to say, though, that the lyrics alone do it no justice, but if you want to hear it (which you surely will because it is the greatest thing ever) then email me and we'll work something out. While you're flying down the highway, maybe this will make that heavy load a little lighter.

Enjoy.

Well he hasn't had sleep in many moons so he's running people over like water balloons
Well he don't give a damn about the load he lugs 'cause he stole his nephew's prescription drugs
Well he's trying to keep his rig between the lines but it's kind of hard to do with a broken spine
Well his knuckles are white and his eyes are red 'cause it's been two weeks since he went to bed
Well he's been fired and it's time to leave so he's selling his ass to Bruce and Steve
He's got a trailer full of cattle and an itchy crotch so he eats a big mac while he makes them watch
He does twelve lines of coke just to stay awake, three states ago he disconnected the brakes
If you don't move over and let him pass he's gonna drive that truck right up your ass
Well his wife's been cheatin while he's away, so he does a half gram of coke a day
He drives four hundred miles on a head full of speed but it still won't fulfill his aching need
Well he don't give a damn where he goes any more he just pushes that pedal down to the floor
Well he don't give a damn about the highway patrol and the ninth gate of hell is eating his soul
He keeps a gun in the cabin in case he sees a cop cause he'll do anything to keep from having to stop
He keeps driving like hell in his big ass truck just running people over 'cause he don't give a fuck
Well his nose is bleeding and his pupils are big so he keeps on driving that bad-ass rig
He's done so much meth his head's about to explode but he's got to keep hauling that heavy load
When he dies and I know he will he just wants to be strapped to the grill
Well he's running out of bullets from shooting dogs but he don't put it down in his truckin' logs
He tries to hold it in but it's leaking out that's what being a trucker is all about
Well he's going real fast 'cause of too much speed and he needs to slow down so he smokes some weed
Well his axles are broken and his wheels are shot, where he's goin he done forgot
Well there ain't another exit for a hundred miles but he don't give a damn 'cause he's pukin' bile
Well he's goin' real fast around a dangerous curve 'cause the methamphetamines have fried his nerves
Well he's scarin' hitchhikers and he don't know why so he asks his puppet mordecai
Well you can't see fear in his bloodshot eyes 'cause he don't give a damn if he lives or dies
Well he passed the weigh station at the county line 'cause he don't give a damn about the fine
Well he ain't been in love since he don't know when but his hooker is stayin at the shoney's inn
Well he'll run your ass right off the road 'cause he don't give a damn if your car explodes
Well his load is shifting and his knuckles are white, he's a bat out of hell screaming throught the night
Well he's on qualuudes and percodan so you just can't stop this truckin' man
Well they took his license in Arkansas but he don't give a damn about the law
Well he dropped of his load at the fifteenth gate and he's starting to hallucinate
Well, fifth gear is the only one he knows 'cause he don't give a damn about drivin' slow
He don't give a damn about following rules, like those sissies in trucker school
He's got a heart infarction and his lungs won't expand and his aorta's blocked but he don't give a damn
Well he don't give a damn about the radio, just the voices in his head saying GO GO GO
Well the other guys on the old CB stopped talking to him in 1993