Old-timers who try to tell you what long-haul trucking was like in the 1970s will start with the frenetic rhythm of the highway and then somehow end up talking instead about the other guys lapping up the pavement, guys who were out there on the road, too. Back then, Merle Haggard crooned on the local all-night country station about Will Chandler and Sonny Pruitt making the white line move. There were, and still are, those famously long stretches of solitude, man and machine rolling on together against the peculiar luminescence of the great American unknown. Then, there were the 10 codes coming in low across the CB radio waves, the familiar faces at truck stops and diners, and the guys who showed up outside of Tulsa or Little Rock or Detroit to help out in a jam. The truck driver, the old-timers will tell you sheepishly, is the last American cowboy.
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