Thoughts In A Truck-Stop Diner Poem by David Welch

This place is tucked out of the way,
across river from the city,
most folks don't even know it's here,
and I suppose that's a pity.

Maybe the truck-stop that it serves
is what drives some people away,
but their hash-browns are masterworks,
so I come here most Saturdays.

Attached nearby is a small lounge
with massage chairs and a big screen,
and nearby showers you pay for,
an odd spot, but they must stay clean.

Nearby is a convenience store,
it's several times larger than most,
snacks, westerns, and toiletries are
a few of the things that it boasts.

But the diner is why I come,
can't drive a truck to save my hide,
I find it a relaxing place,
no hint of pretension inside.

A third of the clientele are
just hungry locals like me,
the others are the long-haul guys,
slumping wearily in their seats.

They're literally the lifeblood
of a nation awash in goods,
yet so many look down on them,
I don't understand why they would.

The elites who like their gadgets
seem to think them a lower class,
tet were there not men out driving
they'd run out of gadgets real fast.

I even heard a professor
use them as a cautionary tale,
but those guys have traveled further
than any professor who rails.

Once my very own uncle said
that they're working class, and thus poor,
but some pull down sixty thousand,
my uncle can't make that, I'm sure.

I was born to that ‘elite' class,
the son of bureaucrats, lawyers,
raised to believe that a man should
go make a living by his words.

And yet I feel comfortable here,
I guess they'd say I've fallen far,
but we could live without lawyers,
without these men here, we would starve.

Some call suck folk ‘deplorables, '
but why is it a hated thing
to do the jobs someone must do
if people are to keep existing?