Fisticuffs?
Last evening, I watched an older movie. Not old; that would make it historic. This was from my childhood. Mid-Eisenhower days. The Long Haul, shot in B&W, in Britain. Left me with a lot of questions.
First of all, did it used to be a thing where, while the truck driver went for coffee, other people robbed the good stuff out of his truck? I noticed that there were no locks in evidence, so maybe this was an unforeseen aspect to transportation.
Did people sit around in rooms and gamble, waiting for a destination that sounded good to be announced from the office? Didn’t that cause delays?
How about fisticuffs? In the waiting room. On the loading docks. In the restaurant where the drivers went for coffee. Was Britain a boxers’ training ground, back in the 50s?
When your truck gets stuck in the mud, in a river that you were crossing without the obvious advantage of a bridge, was it normal to unbolt a tire and “freewheel” it to dry land? Or how about plugging the mud with part of your cargo? Did clients accept short loads as better than loads which disappeared during coffee time?
And finally, the police. There were some, in the movie, but they seemed to avoid doing anything more official than banging on doors. Doorbells?
Overall, I found the movie to be a real diversion, but with so many aspects of how things used to work “back in the day” as unknown (to me), I can’t recommend the movie for historical veracity. Must go and find another film from the period, to advance my education.
