An older, almost mythical relative drove “over the road” back in the ’60s and ’70s. I remember being told if we were verrrrrry lucky, we might arrive at a family gathering while he was in town and get to actually look inside the truck compartment where he slept. Now, looking back, I’m not actually sure why this was used as a way to get us to family gatherings, much like you might get to eat some of grandma’s fresh brownies for a normal family.

Was it a Texas thing? A working thing? A steel and metal finish fetish my family had? I’m not sure. I remember a boy once I knew who loved to see the garbage truck roll by. Large and noisy, with a purpose. He could watch a whole street’s worth of garbage being collected much like someone else might watch tv.

So, there is apparently some kind of mystique that starts among the young that large, smoke billowing machines make a sort of hard working music as they clatter down the street. Maybe that has something to do with why trucking songs have had such a comfortable place in country music.

My personal favorite is Six Days On The Road. The pace of the song perfectly mimics the feeling of hurtling over the road to get back to your sweetheart at home. Written by Carl Montgomery and Earl Green, it was first made popular by Dave Dudley. The song got a second wind in the ’80s when Sawyer Brown brought it back with a vengeance. Somewhat unique for a country song, the lyrics make it clear that this boy does not cheat while out on the road. Tammy Wynette could stand by this man without as much heartbreak as she normally seemed to endure.

I started to re-listen to Convoy for this article but I just couldn’t do it. It has won so
many”worst ever” awards that I’m afraid I would hear it now with different ears. I don’t think I could bear that. Or, maybe the kitsch would sit right with me. Regardless, I can say that my family sang this song to death in the ’70s, including getting a cb radio for our Volkswagen in case we ever found a trucker to talk to.

I think we even had a “handle,” though I can’t remember what it was or even if we ever raised any one on the radio to speak with. I do believe my mom once did. Believe it or not, back then, it was considered good to have one “just in case,” much like cell phones were first thought of. (This was before they were round the clock business and personal necessities. Cells, that is, not cbs.)

That cb radio was our ticket to ride if we ever broke down on the highway. Of course, the only time we did break down was at the grocery store, when a guy stole the battery right out of the Volkswagon while Mom was shopping. Instead of calling on the cb, though, she used the store phone and Dad picked her up. I guess it lost its charm when push came to shove. Or, maybe Harried Housewife was not a handle that attracted a lot of responders on the cb back in the day.

Remember 10-4 Good Buddy? The ten code part of the cb language got its start in the thirties with police lingo over the radio. Ten was used as the first, filler word usually spoken as it was generally rendered unclear by the older devices. So, having an easily expendable first syllable was handy. By the sixties, truckers had evolved their own language to discuss anything from police (smokeys) to children (ankle biters) to gator guts (shredded tire on the highway).

It’s said that younger truckers now speak with less jargon and that more old fashioned truckers are annoyed by this, preferring the cbspeak of the sixties and seventies. I tried to research this first hand by flagging down a trucker on the roadside but not one would stop. Perhaps they thought I was a ratchetjaw (someone who talks a lot but says nothing.) You have to wonder, though, if this love of cb language is one generation’s revenge on the next as the texting idiom is just as obtuse to the older folks.

In fact, maybe cb lingo was the texting of its day.

If you need to get your truck on, consider a few of these: Truck Driver’s Blues (from the ’40s), Truck Driving Man or White Line Fever. There’s also Truck Driving Son Of A Gun
and Truck Driver’s Prayer.

A Steve Earle fan? You might also check out his version of Six Days On The Road. Finally, if you’d like to have a merry trucking Christmas this year, start saving up your pennies now to buy Six Tons Of Toys for all your little girls and boys.