Tag Archives: truckers

06/13/12

Nothin’ Worse Than an Arkan-san Trucker Speakin’ Spanish

There it is–looking oh so pretty, but pretty darned impossible to find if you’re a trucker not familar with Spanish… 

The dispatcher, Howard Jolly (I kid you not—that was his name), told my hubby he’d need to go to La Hoya…and that’s what hubby remembered.  Oh, my man was methodical and always prepared. 

Hubby’d been trucking for years and he knew to write down all of the addresses.  It was well before the time anyone had a GPS strapped to the dashboard. He wrote it as it sounded: La Hoy-a.

You see, truckers need to be attentive to details and find destinations on their own.

After all, it’s not like a trucker manning a big rig can pull that baby up to a corner and yell out, to any passerby: “Hey, fella (or ma’am,) do ya know where La Hoy-a is?”

No, siree, that won’t work.

Ok, so he went all over the region he’d been directed to, and he just couldn’t find La Hoya, anywhere.  It wasn’t even on the map, for God’s sake. He looked and looked.

Now, at the time, there was no Siri on the cell phone…No Google to look something up…No anything that takes “stupid” out of the equation. He was on his own.

Finally, on his third go-around in the general region of 12 miles north of San Diego, he caught a break.  Pulled alongside another trucker who solved the mystery for him. La Hoya was actually “Lo Jolla”…a Spanish word.

No, it doesn’t sound like it’s spelled—especially if you’re like my hubby–an Arkan-san (that’s not Arkansaw-an).

What did this experience teach trucker Paul Wesley Gates?  How very difficult it must be for Spanish-speaking truckers to understand American road signs.  They’ve got a whole lot more to process than he did with understanding that one town name.

Yep, this La Jolla  (pronounced La Hoya) thing gave him new appreciation for what his Spanish-speaking brother and sister truckers go through as they perform their jobs. And he salutes them everywhere…

“Hasta Luego, Amigos…”

***Stay tuned for the Grandpa and the Truck stories (first children’s book went to the printer yesterday—ready soon.)

 

05/18/12

“Grandpa and the Truck” Stories for Kids: A Tribute to the American Trucker

 

For latest updates to how we’re doing as we get the word out about Grandpa and the Truck Stories, scroll down.  It’s there, I give running updates…

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Truckers are key to the American Success Story. How?  They transport every product we use in our daily lives.

The “Grandpa and the Truck” stories focus on the career experiences of one of them.  Written for kids ages 4-8, they show what truckers deal with via Mother Nature, crazy drivers, and tough road conditions.

They teach important life lessons as well.

The stories are based on the career of veteran, long-haul trucker Paul Wesley Gates, one of Atlas Van Lines’s “Elite Fleet” of drivers who logged millions of miles without accident.

He drove the big rigs for 30 years, clear across America, from Canada in the north, to the Gulf region in the south, and from his home port of Rhode Island on the east coast, to Washington State, in the west.

And in that job, he became expert at many things: how to run a business…how to interact with people..how to deal with emergencies. He met extraordinary folks and faced almost-insurmountable tasks.

But he is forever grateful for a job that taught him much about life and exposed him to the wonder of America with its diversity, amazing geography, and the goodness of its people.

His stories are from the perspective of “Grandpa,” and they’re the tales he told me.  Then, I told them to our 3 grandchildren.

But make no mistake:  Grandpa’s tales are the stories of all truckers as they go about their business every day—moving America.

For that reason, Grandpa’s stories are a tribute to them all.

Colleen Kelly Mellor (author of “Grandpa and the Truck” Stories and wife to this trucker)