How Billy Jones Became A Famous Poet
Will the daze of my youth ever be the same…
I didn’t become a writer via the paths most often followed by those who wish their fortunes could be made by quill and paper, or fingers on a keyboard. It was life on the road that finally motivated me to press pen to paper.
In the Summer of 1966 I innocently walked into the men’s room of a run down old truck stop on US 301 near Wildwood, Florida, the northern end of the Florida Turnpike. I was 10 years, old and traveling with my Daddy in his big rig on our way to Miami.
On the side of the plywood stall the following words were written in blue ink,
“Here I sit with a broken heart, took 14 pills and my truck won’t start.”
When I finished in the restroom I went back to the restaurant and asked my daddy to explain what I had read but he just changed the subject.
After we made our delivery in Miami, picked up a north bound load, and started back we again stopped at the same old truck stop in Wildwood where I found that someone had penned the following verse in red ink just below the first verse,
“If those pills we worth a fuck you’d get out and push that truck.”
That was the first time I had ever seen the F-word actually written and I had yet to ever say it aloud. That would become the first poem I ever memorized.
It would be a few more years before I said the F-word aloud, and I prefer to shout, Wackemall today.
And while I’m not really famous, now you know how I became both poet, writer, and truck driver, not necessarily in that order.
If you’ve read this far, please continue with October Roses