Randy Grider
Editor
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There’d be no truck drivers if it
wasn’t for us trucks
No double clutching gear jammin’
coffee drinking nuts
They drive their way to glory and they have all the luck
There’d be no truck drivers if it
wasn’t for us trucks
It’s strange how you can hear an old song and it can lure you into an almost forgotten time. “I’m a Truck” by Red Simpson takes me back to my early youth. My dad was an early riser, usually never sleeping past 4 a.m. when he wasn’t on the road. I can still hear the coffee percolating and almost taste the aroma. He would switch on the stereo and play that song because it made him laugh.
Well there he sits in that cafe drinking coffee and telling lies
Prob’ly telling ’em ’bout that that hill we topped 10 miles back
Oughtta tell ’em how he missed a gear and that Volkswagen bus full of hippies
Passed us like I was sittin’ up on jacks
Or how we took that curve over on 66
Hadn’t been for me hangin’ on the shoulder
We’d a both wound up in the ditch
I grew up in what I call the heyday of classic trucking songs – the late 1960s and much of the 1970s. These songs romanticized trucking. Some were whimsical or sentimental, while others emphasized a rebellious nature.
Their popularity spawned fads, movies and television shows. As a kid, I would crawl up into my dad’s truck when it was parked, turn on the CB and try my best to talk like C.W. McCall did in “Convoy.” Other times I would try to deepen my voice in order to pass myself off as a trucker. I would use the 10 codes to ask for a radio check or the time of day. And I always popped an 8-track of Red Sovine or Dave Dudley into the truck stereo to add realism to my trucking fantasy.
Some drivers who were listening would humor me and give me a few minutes of conversation. Others would remind me that they knew I was a kid who was babbling on a channel where people were trying to work.
