Ode to a Trucker

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<div> <B><U>ODE TO A TRUCK DRIVER</U></b></div> <bR> <div>      One fine day a few years back I wandered into my little town's favorite coffee shop, a place I "owned" by virtue of the number of cups of coffee bought and consumed on the premises and the fact that I so regularly held court there with my cronies that I had a seat no one else would sit in.  Just as I sipped the first swallow of the morning's fresh brew, a fella slid into the seat next to mine real smooth and easy, but careful like, surveying me and the other customers at the long counter.  A softly drawled "Mornin'," came along with his friendly grin.  We fell to talking in the comfortable manner of strangers having a one-time conversation.  I discovered that my companion of the moment was a truck driver down from Atlanta enjoying his favorite vacation spot, Fernandina Beach, Florida.  Seems the man with the curly dark hair above a pair of mischievous eyes nestled in laugh lines liked to fish and read, two of my favorite pastimes.  Came time for the truck driver to head back to the Land of the Big Chicken, that famous landmark of Marietta just north of Atlanta, and so I gave him my phone number and invited him to give me a call the next time he was in town if he wanted to go fishing.</div> <bR> <div>      He did, and thus started one of the most improbable friendships of my life.  Glynn Jackson, country boy and proud professional driver of an 18 wheeler, somehow took a shine to the patrician elder statesman 20 years his senior in age and light years away from his world of trucking.  Maybe it was the contrasts in our lives that was the attraction, perhaps his appreciation of veterans of a war he just missed or maybe it was just plain curiosity on his part, for curiosity is the tractor that pulls his trailer through life.  One thing is for sure: we both love books, only I believe Glynn has read more of them over a wider range of subjects and genres than I have despite my 20-year head start on him.  Well, I first thought to myself, what the hell kind of truck driver reads everything from <I>The Atlantic Monthly </I>to Cormac McCarthy's <I>All the Pretty Horses</I> to Pat Conroy's <I>Beach Music</I>?  I was to learn that this was but the tip of his literary mountain of books read.  Seems the Old Truck Driver had the habit of pulling off to the side of the road, getting out his folding chair and spending an hour here and there along the way reading instead of playing video games in truck stops.  Got himself an awesome education along the way, too. </div> <bR> <div>      Finally, I discovered that Glynn liked to write down what he saw along those long ribbons of concrete he traveled.  His writing is to prose what Grandma Moses' painting is to art  -- primitive portrayals of subject matter near to the American heart and Heartland.  You can read one of his vignettes in less time than it takes to smoke a cigarette, but it stays in your mind for a whole carton's worth of time.  You could do worse than pause here a while and see what it's like to watch a rough-hewn Old Truck Driver stop and smell the roses.</div> <bR> <div> His Friend and Admirer,</div> <bR> <div> Jack "Dutch" Mann</div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>