Scanning Frequencies for Signs of the Pork Chop Express
This is Jack Burton in the Pork Chop Express and I’m talkin to whoever’s listening out there…
Now, I’m not saying that I’ve been everywhere and I’ve done everything, but I do know it’s a pretty amazing planet we live on here, and a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we’re alone in this universe.
I grew up maybe five miles from I-70. It was just the highway we took to town, nothing special. It went as far west as Columbus and east to Zanesville, stretching the breadth of my world. We pumped our gas at truck stops and watched for out-of-state plates, listened to truckers on CB radios, and made the arm-pulling “honk” signal to passing semi trucks. Yes, we had maps, and yes, I knew that 70 went much, much further in both directions, but for my purposes as a kid it was the road that took us one way to the Brown Derby and Children’s Palace and the other way to see family.
When I was 20 I drove to Colorado. By that time I’d traveled a bit in both directions, but on this trip it really set in just how far I-70 could take you. (Driving the entire width of Kansas has a way of making you see distance with new eyes.) But you get on this one road, and west (young man) is a reachable destination.
Well once again I live close to 70. Probably within a mile or so, I’d say, if the crow were wont to fly there from my house. And I thought that I should take advantage of this proximity, so I asked Santa for a CB. Santa did, indeed, bring me a nice model (thanks, mom and dad), and last week I installed it in the kitchen so I could listen to the banter of the professional truck drivers who pass through my strip of I-70.
As you can imagine, this is proving to be an enjoyable pastime for me. I’m a man who appreciates his upbringing and the finer things of rural living, and I enjoy myself a conversation with the good ol’ boys. But I also like to poke fun at pretty much everything, and I suspect this will be a rich opportunity for me. Hence this thread.
But in order to get my operation up and running, I needed various accessories, and the local CB Shoppe proved most helpful, although more pricey than I expected. But sometimes it’s good to pay a little extra for input and advice (and shop talk), and of course it’s always a good idea to get your foot in the door with the local “ham”ateur radio enthusiasts. I haven’t found a good way to mount the antenna onto the roof yet, but for the meantime I have it attached to a post I stuck in the side yard. I’d run the cable into the house temporarily last week, just to make sure everything worked properly; today I finally got down into the crawlspace under the kitchen and ran the cable permanently and tied up the loose ends real good. I am set to transmit and receive. Well, mostly receive.
Already I’m reminded of the rich lexicon in use by the men and women of the American Trucking Association. For example, I now know what a “pickle park” is, and will therefore never quite be comfortable in a rest station bathroom again. And already I’ve listened to many great debates, with topics ranging from sports to health care to race relations, and much of the time with arguments sounding like they were chewed out between tobacky spits. I’m looking forward to more, and I intend to share the highlights here.
A few quotes so far:
Today I also got to hear truckers take turns singing “pants on the ground” (and one guy singing “pants on the floor”). I also got to listen to someone making various farm animal sounds, and tax tips from a guy who sounded exactly like Earnest P. Worrell.
Oh man, I really want to hear truckers singing “Pants on the Ground” now. If only to find out if it is as funny as I am imagining it to be.
Man, Im so excited for you to have this – Im jealous. And for those of you too young/isolated to know,”Big Trouble in Little China” is one of the BEST 80s movies! There are SO MANY good quotes in this – heres my fav: “When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have ya paid your dues, Jack?” “Yessir, the check is in the mail.”
I drove 70 to and from colorado (although i wish i would’ve taken a different route home now that i look back) and the trek through kansas was rough especially on the way home, because it was 104 degrees according to the radio station in topeka and my AC wasn;t working. Unfortunately i have no good CB stories other than our old van used to have a CB in it back in the 80s and i didn;t appriciate it then as much as i would now.
Racist Trucker quote of the day:
Just because Vanilla Ice swings from trees doesn’t mean all Caucasians do.
I’m hearing a lot of truckers on the CB who sound like other people. For instance, at any given time you can hear someone who sounds just like Boomhauer. Yesterday I heard someone who reminded me of Jimmy Stewart. I’ve also heard Randy “the Macho Man” Savage, Cooter, Holly Hunter, and That Unintelligible Guy Who Called Me That One Time
Some more quotes:
Right now I’m listening to truckers absolutely fighting about Rush Limbaugh. They’re down to name calling.
Some other quotes from the past couple days:
Like I told my last wife, I says, “Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.”
I think I just heard somebody mention a “Milford man.” I suppose it’s possible he was simply referring to a guy from Milford, Ohio, but regardless, you can always tell a Milford man.
Yesterday I learned all about what’s really in hamburger — everything from stomach lining to kidney to worms. Also, every Chinese restaurant uses their own “Chinese delivery service” so that we white folk don’t know that the meat is really cat.
One of the rare times I’ve heard a trucker argue for outsourced labor: