Tag: trucks

Seeking the Sikh truck drivers

Many people assume that their family immigrated to the United States legally, or did it ‘the right way.’

Sikh-TruckdriverOver Thanksgiving weekend, CBS News ran a story, at least twice, about a nationwide shortage of truck drivers. To my surprise, more than 30,000 Indian-American Sikhs have entered the trucking industry just in the past two years.

“More than 50,000 drivers are needed to meet the demand. One group of drivers, Indian-Americans who practice the Sikh faith, may well be a big part of the solution…

“‘For Sikhs, they want to keep their articles of faith, turban, unshaven hair, beard, moustache — it’s a safety hazard for a lot of jobs that require it. So in trucking, they can keep everything, and still make a decent living,'” trucker Mintu Pandher indicated.

“Pandher bought a used tractor-trailer 13 years ago. Now he owns nine rigs, plus a truck stop in Laramie. With so many Sikh truck drivers, he even added a Sikh temple to his truck stop. And his kitchen offers Indian specials that attract new fans as well.

“But it’s more than a friendly truck stop that’s drawing Sikhs to a career behind the wheel. Recruiting videos that look like something straight from Bollywood promise a glamorous future…”

Overdrive magazine notes “Sikhs have been a growing part of America’s professional driver force for three decades.” The Economist indicates the Sihks have an “outsize part of Canadian trucking.”

This got me to thinking how desirable a reasonable immigration policy looks like. The idea that we should let in only those with specific skills seems limited, not just for them but for us. After all, those Sikhs didn’t know they were going to become truckers whey started coming to the US in the 1980s.

From the American Immigration Council: “Many people assume that their family immigrated to the United States legally, or did it ‘the right way.’ In most cases, this statement does not reflect the fact that the U.S. immigration system was very different in the past and that their families might not have been allowed to enter had today’s laws been in effect.”

But some things haven’t changed much. Read of the process immigrants went through when they arrived at Ellis Island in the late 1800s. It included waiting and long lines, a barrage of questions, detention, and hearings

“The definition of who is ‘legal’ — and who is not — changes with the evolution of immigration laws. In some cases, claiming that a family came ‘legally’ is simply inaccurate — unauthorized immigration has been a reality for generations.”

Listen to Immigration Man – Graham Nash

Won’t you let me in, immigration man
Can I cross the line and pray
I can stay another day

I am a collector

Yes, sometimes, I would manually calculate BA and ERA, because it was fun.

Chuck Miller wrote a piece about collecting, which inspired this.

Stamps

My actual stamp collecting was only for a year or two when I was eight or nine, but I have my great aunt’s book of stamps from around the globe. It’s a fascinating tome, mostly unfilled, but it tells an interesting story of the world from the period before World War II.

There were times, particularly in the 1980s and I was doing mail order when I would keep an interesting stamp that came in, but it was in no particularly organized way, and I have no idea where they are today.

Coins

I used to collect pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars. I knew about the mints in Philadelphia (P) (generally unmarked in the day) from Denver (D) and even San Francisco (S). But the theft of the half dollar coins in my childhood soured me.

I was getting the Presidential $1 coins, but they are so unpopular with the general public, they are only available to coin dealers. So last year, and again this year, I capitulated and spent $2.95 each for a P & a D for each $1 Presidential dollar, starting with Chester A. Arthur. Ticks me off that Americans haven’t taken to the dollar coins, because I love them.

If I see a wheat penny (1909-1958), I throw it into my Mickey Mouse bank that I’ve had for decades.

Baseball cards

From about 1960 on, I was collecting baseball cards. Most of them were from a company called Topps, but I also had some that were on the back of boxes of Post cereals, e.g. I remember some gold and red cards, but no longer its provenance.

What I do remember is reading the backs of the cards to read each position player’s AB (at bats), number of H (hits), 2B (doubles), 3B (triples), HR (home runs) and the BA (batting average.) Pitchers were measured by W (wins), L (losses), K (strikeouts), BB (walks), IP (innings pitched and ERA (earned run average). Yes, sometimes, I would manually calculate BA and ERA, because it was fun.

Unfortunately, I had left my cards at my grandmother’s house when I went to college, and kept them in this olive green container, which was stolen in the great theft of 1972.

Subsequently, I bought a couple season sets of Topps cards in 1986 and 1987. Alas, they were in the damp basement of my current abode, and they’ve stuck together in a mass i just can’t bear to look at. Maybe a few are salvageable.

Hess trucks

I described this collection here. Not much more to say except it remains on my annual Christmas list. My friend Mary still has some earlier ones I’ll buy when I can afford to.

Comic books

I wrote about the origins of my collecting in this narrative for Trouble with Comics. In college, I was buying my new comics, first at an inconvenient convenience store in Highland (NY), then at the Crystal Cave, in New Paltz, one of the first true comic shops. But in addition to the store and mail order, you could buy comics at garage sales and the like.

In the 1980s, I was buying virtually all the Marvels, plus almost all the “independents”, such as Pacific, First, et al. Not so much DC, though the stories not so tied to the universe, such as Warlord, I’d get. Once I left FantaCo in 1988, and wasn’t getting a discount anymore, I cut back, getting most Marvels, but also the weirder stuff.

By the 1990s, it wasn’t that I hated comics, but I hated the comic market, with innumerable #1s and even #0s. So I sold my collection in 1994. It wasn’t until this past summer that I came across a cache of comics I bought in 1993 and 1994, unread. So maybe it WAS also that comics themselves had lost their luster for me. I also found, only this summer, a magazine box of Savage Sword of Conan, and the Hulk, and Marvel Preview, which I had meant to sell two decades ago, but somehow missed.

Almost every year the first Saturday in May, I go to Free Comics Day, and it’s like visiting a place I used to live. I pick up random items.

I do still have books of comic art: Elfquest, Groo, the original Dark Knight saga, Swamp Thing, and those Marvel Masterworks, among others.

Enough of this; next time out, books and music. A LOT of music.

T is for Toy Trucks

As it turns out, Hess trucks have been coming out since the mid-1960s, and some of them are quite collectible.


I’d been married to Carol for about a year and a half in the late fall of 2000. She was trying to figure out what to get me for Christmas. I made some passing mention that there was a really cool toy fire truck being sold at the local Hess station. I might have even seen an ad on TV for it.

Still, I was quite surprised when, on Christmas morning, she (or Santa, I forget which) actually got it for me. I must say that I really loved it. It has a couple of different sirens, and flashing lights, and a workable ladder.

So before Christmas 2001, I subtly hinted that I wouldn’t mind getting that year’s model, which was actually a helicopter with a motorcycle and a cruiser. This too was a hit with me; the helicopter features, among other things, rotors that really spin!

Thus a tradition was born, with me getting all of the items through 2010. Along the way, I also picked up a 1998 model.

This does not include the mini-trucks, only one of which I own, and that by happenstance.

I have this friend, Mary, who had a husband named Tom, who I was very fond of. Unfortunately, he died in November 2004 at the age of 49. He had started collecting Hess trucks long before I had. Just this month, Mary sold me Tom’s 1997 and 1999 editions, because she thought he’d want me to have them.

As it turns out, Hess trucks have been coming out since the mid-1960s, and some of them are quite collectible. Check out the lists HERE and HERE

At least in recent times, they’ve been running TV around Thanksgiving for the current year’s models. Here are the ads for 2006 and 2008 and 2009 and 2010 TV ads, all to the unlikely tune of “My Boyfriend’s Back.”

Someone put together a video of all the trucks.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

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