Planes, Trains, Trucks Sham

Planes Trains Trucks Pillow Sham

See the big coal truck on your pillow sham? That’s me, Colin Coal Truck! You should find me resting on top of your bed above the bedsheet and comforter, and in front of your pillow. I have quite a story to tell. Pillow shams see lots of things. I’ve even been part of an important rescue.

Now, although I am on your pillow sham, the real home for a coal truck is the Appalachian Mountains in East Kentucky in the United States of America. (If you don’t know where that is, see if your story teller can find a map in a book and show you.) The Appalachian Mountains are famous for all the black coal that lies beneath them. Coal is used to make the electricity that warms our houses, heats our stoves, runs our TVs and lights up our houses at night. Look up at your light in your room; if it wasn’t for coal, you might not have that light. Coal keeps the factories working that make all the things we need.

Many people are not happy about coal these days because, when people burn coal to make energy, the smoke that comes from those burners floats in our air and causes a lot of problems. People are trying to find other ways of making energy so that coal does not cause a problem for us. So I might have to carry other stuff than coal some day.

Mining coal from deep in the ground is a dangerous job. Coal miners go into the mines every day to bring more coal to the surface. Every day each miner’s family worries that they will come back up and come home at night. The walls of coal mines are known to collapse on top of miners trapping them deep under ground.

This happened one day on the mine I work with. My job was to shuttle loads of coal from the mine to the railroad station where they load the coal into train cars that take the coal to harbors and waiting ships. I like travelling along the roads. Some other people on the roads in their cars are afraid of me because I am so large and heavy. Sometimes I like to give them a big fright by honking my loud horn as I come around the corner. I can see the car driver and passenger jump and I chuckle as I drive past.

Some playful kids like to give their parents a fright. They put their hands up and tug down the same way my driver has to tug on the chord attached to my overhead horn. Then I know they want me to blast my horn. When I do it, the parents up front jump out of their skin and the kids at the back just crack up laughing.

I was just entering the yard when there was a loud rumble from deep down in the mine. Alarms went off. Miners were now trapped under ground. Other miners moved quickly. I saw them looking at maps that showed the layout of the mine tunnels under ground. They shouted eagerly and headed down a different mine shaft. They were able to get to the trapped miners from another direction and get them out before any rescue trucks even arrived.

The mine supervisor signaled to me. There were some miners that needed to get to the hospital quickly. They were loaded onto the load bed at the back of my cab and I was told to: “Make it fast!” I took off, thundering down the road and blasting my horn a lot. This time is was not a game. I was going fast and people needed to keep out of the way. I got the hurt miners to the hospital just as the emergency vehicles were fixing to leave. I never found out what had delayed them, but I was glad to hear later that all the people I drove to the emergency center got home safely that night.

So here I stay on your bed at night. I’m not just a coal truck on a sham. I’m here to remind you that as you grow up, you should think about the world you live in and about everyone’s safety. You may have to stand up one day and tell people that there’s a better and safer way to do things. In fact, start by looking around your home and seeing if there is anything unsafe in your home. Start pointing it out to your parents. They may not have noticed.