Big Time Truckin': True Trucking Stories
Dispatch 24: Port Huron Blues
by Kirk Gonnsen
Like angry cattle to slaughter the Drivers line up for customs. We are held here
while our paperwork is carved and triplicated. The line of men grows by turban
and ball-cap, by rank of body belching onion stew, curried unfavourably with
each new stale coffee breath and cigarette burn-out. Each new diesel
steer-monkey coughing and choking back mucus, stammering curses to the blank
wall, glaring at the fluorescent lights that hum incessantly. The Driver's
fiddle and flick paper corners grumbling about ex-wives, ex-jobs, expatriates
and expectations of any little joy to relieve them. Looking for any hope of
quitting this two hour line; to smoke, to sleep, to run like the hunted sheep
caught out alone by hungry wolves on a mournful night; to lick the wounds of
self-exile.
In this constant loneliness of the truck they fall short of their
lover's arms and teeter dangerously closer to the lender's foreclosing hands. Their voices
fight one another, accented harshly in contradictions, mixed with each other's
discontent. They are a sour soup of servitude to other men suddenly grasping the
penalty of dimwittedness. They are brothers as prisoners are kin to wanting out.
The elders futilely blame the steady stream of immigrants, while the youth
leaning naively away, blast the failed 'old way home.' But they are all
descendants of one slave mentality.
Starved out, legs cramped, each Driver reaches his moment at the front.
He stares wild-eyed through that glass door toward the polished costumed figures
there. Throned high above us all, the officers beckon the men forward by flick
of hand and each one steps lightly, quietly forward saying nothing, handing over
papers, then scrutinized, then questioned.
Finally we bolt away, miraculously, like half-skinned bucks with the
hunter's knife blade still under our peeled pelts. Madmen thrashing wildly down
the path blinded by rage. Tunneling forward in narrowed vision, seeking any
salvation from this wage of sin. We are suddenly reckless minded, shouting at
every passerby. Screaming our frustrations of decrepitude into the dashboard.
Down the road, that blacktopped river of pained excuses, we gather in
parking lots, pooled together like dead leaves in a stagnant pond. I see this
anger has made a mask upon us all. Carved its crassness of cold eyes under heavy
furrowed brows. To some this anger builds. To the retribution of pulling the
pin on your big rig neighbour ? his trailer sliding off in the middle of the
road, blocking traffic, causing mayhem. And the anger rages on. Builds toward
death in a limb torn vehicular slaughter. Twisted beneath the bellies of these
boxed up possessions yearned as promised individual worth.
In a fog of hatred born from all whom we are meagerly paid to serve we
drag precariously closer to you and yours. You, the 'four wheelers' riding
carefree, laughing in our blind spots, waving like children from your crumple
zones. Dear God, dear pedestrians, understand this - heed the underpaid.
