Truckin'

I live in a county of about 23,000 people and about 50,000 trucks. These trucks come in all sizes and shapes; SUV's, old and new, hauling stuff and from out of town; pick-ups with toppers, with crew cabs, with fifth wheels, with hitches; old trucks with rigged up wooden sides and bad paint; new trucks with shiny chrome wheels, air conditioning, and sound systems; delivery trucks with advertising on their sides and wide mirrors; and most especially dump trucks.

These dump trucks get your attention partly because every 3rd vehicle you see on the road is a dump truck and partly because when they move you move. No one argues with a dump truck. You see them heavily loaded with gravel, dirt, and trees. You realize that there is a lot of earth being moved around which is why so many dump trucks live here. There is a quarry near my house and at any time of the day you see the trucks going in and out filled with rock of all shapes and sizes.

I particularly like the dump truck drivers, they all wear hats and grin at pretty girls and their left arm is eight shades darker than their right arm. In this part of the world most of them have a southern mountain drawl, real slow and easy. They talk like they have rocks in their mouth so it takes some getting used to but once you get an ear for it it's like no other kind of talking. Most of these guys (they would say boys) listen to country music while they drive, or bluegrass. They all have an ear for banjo pick'n and a lot of them play the banjo or the guitar or maybe the fiddle and they all have rhythm. Some of them have shiny new trucks that they wash religiously and others have trucks that you swear will fall apart under the loads they carry but somehow they don't.

I often wish I was up there in the cab of one of those trucks riding or driving. It seems like it would be so much fun to be king of the road. You could look down on the rest of the vehicles on the road, puny little cars without power or size, and you could haul loads of stuff to out of the way places and push the levers to make the back raise and the load slide out. I see the men standing on the top of a load sometimes pulling a tarp tight over it and they move so easily, climbing up on the load and over it and then jumping down like there's nothing to it and these are guys older than me which is pretty old to be moving so effortlessly. I think dump truck driving would be more fun than race car driving. You couldn't go fast but everybody would pay attention to your passing. And if you honked your horn you would surely get a response.

Our county may not have many people but we got lots of trees and flowers and trucks. I like it.