Trucker Timothy Anderson of Washington co-wrote the chapter “The Chicken Haulers and the High Liners: CB Talk among Interstate Truckers,” with Seattle Pacific University Professor Debra Sequeira when he was a student at SPU and after graduation.
TRUCK AND CLUCK: CB SCIENCE
Where can you find “grunts, whistles, heavy breathing, raspy pronunciations”? A. A pornographic movie. B. Presidential candidates on the stump. C. Chicken haulers talking on the CB.
If you guessed C, you’re probably a chicken hauler yourself – or perhaps you’ve peeked at a new college textbook, Communicating Cultural and Ethnic Identity.
Trucker Timothy Anderson of Washington co-wrote the chapter “The Chicken Haulers and the High Liners: CB Talk among Interstate Truckers,” with Seattle Pacific University Professor Debra Sequeira when he was a student at SPU and after graduation.
The research notes that CB talk along I-40 and I-10, often frequented by chicken haulers, reflects “a combination of Southern slang along with new forms and elements that have been passed down,” the researchers wrote. “Words are stressed differently, and there is a series of grunts, whistles, heavy breathing, raspy pronunciations and unique vocabularies that distinguish chicken haulers from other drivers.”
HEY, I DIDN’T ASK FOR CHANGE
It’s not every day that you run across a $1,000 bill, a denomination taken out of circulation in 1969. Experts say collectors will pay up to $3,500 for the $1,000 notes, which portray President Grover Cleveland.
Retired trucker Curtis Smith Sr., 71, had such a bill – until being found sleeping in his truck in April and arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Pine Lawn, Mo. The mayor of the St. Louis suburb pulled a switcheroo on Smith after police confiscated his cash, returning his money in more common currency, reported various news media. After Smith demanded his original bill back, the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s office said keeping of the note appeared improper. The bill was returned to Smith in January.
DON’T GET MAD, GET PUBLISHED
“I would get irate. I would yell out the window,” said Richard Freer, who drives for Stroehmann Line-Haul of Horsham, Pa., in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. “One day, about 10 years ago, I got really mad at a guy, and I realized I was killing myself with stress. It really did change my life.”
While waiting at docks or on breaks, he started jotting his observations about safety and road rage. Freer last fall self-published his musings as a book, Survive Your Drive: A survival guide for driving in the new millennium.
“I’d like to sell books, sure,” Freer told the Inquirer. “But I really want to save lives. If I could save just one life, wouldn’t that be great?”
LUCKY LOGGER
“I damn near trash-canned it, ’cause I don’t have no luck
