"Convoy," the 1975 novelty country music song that inspired the 1978 Sam Peckinpah movie of the same name, spoke to me as the Lord speaks to Jimmy Swaggart. I was 10 years old and in 5th grade when the song hit the Connecticut radio waves. Kids brought their copies of the 45 into school and begged our teacher, Mr. Cashman, to let them play it on the classroom record player. Sometimes he said yes; we all sang along.
The song sparked my interest in CB radio. I loved the crazy lingo -- "pregnant roller skate" for a VW bug; "bear in the air" means a police helicopter; "brown paper bag" indicates an unmarked police car -- and even bought a book about it so I could learn and use it. Sometimes when using my walkie-talkie with friends, I picked up trucker conversations and was thrilled beyond belief.
During this same era, I watched "Movin' On," a TV show about truckers, starring Claude Akins and Frank Converse. I was also completely and totally in love with the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies during this time. When I was 14, I watched "BJ and the Bear," a TV show about the trials and tribulations of a trucker and his pet chimpanzee.
At the Big E when I was in junior high school, I bought a metal belt buckle with a semi-truck on it.
You get the idea. I was into big rigs.
I never would have guessed, when I was 12 years old, straddling my yellow three-speed bike by the side of the main road that ran through my town and giving truckers the "blow your horn" signal, that 10 years later I'd be a free spirit, too, bombing down America's highways in a van with three buddies.
Read all about my trip in my new memoir, Great/Dismal: My Four-Month Tour of Duty on the Battleship Patchouli.
No comments:
Post a Comment