Young Pete Fan is No Stuffed Shirt

Valente Gonzalez

YOUNG PETE FAN IS NO STUFFED SHIRT
Sixth-grader Valente Gonzalez, age 11, of La Mesa, N.M., got into trouble recently for wearing his “How’s Your Peter Built?” T-shirt to school. Sent to the office, he had to call his mom to bring him another shirt.

Valente’s parents, Arnulfo and Leticia Gonzalez, are owner-operator flatbedders who own two Petes. “I really didn’t and don’t see anything wrong with the shirt,” Leticia writes. “I did get into it with the teacher and the principal, telling them that their main concern should be quality education, and not what the kids are wearing.”

That’s Valente modeling the shirt in a photo he sent us. “All you large cars out there,” he writes, “better be careful the way your ‘Peter’s Built’ or your teacher will kick you out of class!”


MAGAZINE HAILS ‘ULTIMATE TRUCK STOP’
Little America on I-80 in Wyoming is praised in “Queen of the Highways,” an article in the April/May issue of American Heritage. “Little America is the ultimate truck stop,” Steve Sanger writes, “big and classy, an oasis in a high desert of sagebrush and solitude.”

S.M. Covey, who opened Little America in 1934, claimed to have camped there during a blizzard when he was a sheepherder and later wrote of it as a “godforsaken spot.” Fittingly, he named the truck stop after explorer Richard Byrd’s base camp in Antarctica, and its mascot is a penguin to this day.


BULLDOGS GO ‘FULL THROTTLE’ FOR NEW DRINK
Fifteen Mack trucks adorned with the Full Throttle logo are touring this summer, distributing free samples of Coca-Cola’s new carbonated energy drink. The citrus-flavored Full Throttle contains B vitamins, ginseng extract, the amino acid taurine, and extract of guarana. Oh, and caffeine – lots of caffeine. The target market, Coke says, is men in their 20s.


WORTH A SECOND GLANCE
“People look into the cabs of a truck from a distance and rarely get a good look at the person behind the wheel.