Long Distance Driver

Haiku My Heart

June 17, 2011

Haiku My Heart was started by my friend Rebecca. See more fabulous Haiku from all over the world at her blog, recuerda mi corazon.

Making a living

Attacked by white line fever

Long distance driver

International Harvester CO 4070A I drove this in the early 1970's for Labeled Metal Products

Some time ago, I posted a list of all the places I have worked since I got out of high school. You can reference that post HERE. I was going to go back and edit the list by putting an asterisk by each of the jobs that involved long distance truck driving, or, as it is commonly called, Over-the-Road Trucking. I did take a look and I saw that least 14 of my jobs were in this category.

If you use Einstein’s theory of relativity, that is, when you are moving, time is relative to the speed when compared to the speed of light. I'm actually a little bit younger than most folks my age.

The Grandchildren, on Albert Einstein's lap, Washington DC, 2008

Without trying to do a scientific explanation, the theory pretty much says that if you travel at the speed of light, you age more slowly. So, I take that to mean that traveling a portion of your life, although it is not the speed of light, it is a portion of that speed, and therefore, since I have logged over 2 million miles on the road traveling at 60-75 miles per hour, I’m younger than my 62 years, and younger than most people born on May 10th 1949 at 10:30 AM CDST.

Anyway, I’ve been on the road a lot in my life. Some of it for work and a paycheck and some for pleasure. I can say there is another category as well. The trip I did a week or so ago to go pick up a motorcycle I bought on Ebay was work, but not employment.

By the way, I never minded work. It was always employment that I couldn’t stand.

So, based on Einstein’s theory, I am a bit younger than many of you more sedentary people who need an act of congress to get in the car and head off somewhere farther than the grocery store. By the way, the speed of light is 299,792.458 Kilometers per hour or 670,616.629 Miles per hour. Even though, I still must pass the time I’m sitting there driving. After all, driving isn’t such a strenuous and focused activity if you’re on a freeway.

Driving a dump truck, 2001

I entertain myself in many ways. I listen to books or music. I listen to radio programs. I look at scenery. I think about a wide variety of stuff and I write in my head. At one point, I did have a mini tape recorder and produced many recordings of my thoughts or of stories that came to mind while spending time driving. Sometimes, I write music and musical lyrics.

I shared a song I wrote while on the road going to upstate New York in a recent post. Well, I wrote and edited a few on that trip. There must not have been too much happening on the radio and the CD player is cantankerous in the van and sometimes just doesn’t work.

I’d like to share another song I wrote. I wrote this many years ago, in the mid 1970’s. I was an Over-the-Road truck driver back then, for a job with pay. I wrote about it in this song. I polished the lyrics on this last trip and brought it out again. I used parts of the song in the Haiku for Haiku My Heart today. The rest is just poetry of some kind, I think.

Long Distance Driver

Pulled out for Atlanta

In an eighteen wheel rig

Atlanta to Ohio

Oh my load wasn’t very big

Never had a flat, no

Never touched a jack

Workin’ hard just ain’t my gig

I’m a long distance driver

Long distance driver

Really rollin’ up the miles

When you see me with a lady

All she ever does is smile

Never lift a finger, no

Never like to linger

I like to do it all in style

I’m a long distance driver

Arizona to Virginia

Truckin’ it a long long way

I keep my motor runnin’

Even when I’m out to play

DC to Minnesota

Back to Arizona

Never gonna go to LA

I’m a long distance driver

Got attacked by the white line fever

It grabs a hold of you for life

I wanted glamour and a reputation

All I ever got was strife

She married for the money

Now she calls me honey

That’s my wife

I’m a long distance driver

The Dump and Shortcake Band, Bruce on left, I'm on the right, Halloween in St. Paul, 1979

Dave on guitar, same Halloween party

If you click on the title of this post, you can listen to the original recording of Long Distance Driver. ( I hope this works, let me know, okay?)

That was recorded sometime in the late 1970’s by the Dump and Shortcake Band, which was/is Bruce A., drums and vocals, Dave C., guitar and Yours Truly, bass.

Peace