{"id":2868,"date":"2026-10-04T12:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2868"},"modified":"2026-10-04T22:25:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T22:25:55","slug":"ten-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2868","title":{"rendered":"Ten-Four"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
I recall, on this day,
those endless holiday road trips 
crawling in bumper-to-bumper 
snaking lines of tail lights, 
slug-like cars with blue-black exhaust rising,
as we traversed from Maryland up the Eastern Seaboard
following I-95 in search of our Thanksgiving turkey feast.

Mom behind the wheel, 
she would call out directives to her navigator, 
my Dad.

And he would reply 
with his whole chest:
\"10-4! Over and Out!\"

Citizens Band, CB radio code speak,
he would remind us, 
every fourth hour in traffic.
\"Trucker Talk\" 
he'd re-tred his words.

Ten four. 
Code for:
Message received.
Short-hand for:
A-O-Kay. 

On this waterlogged quiet Sunday,
thirty years removed 
from being contained and constrained
 in the family sedan,
I find myself exclaiming to an empty room:
\"10-4! Over and out.\" 


<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cTen-Four,\u201d a short nostalgic memory of a father’s favorite Trucker code, written Sunday, October 04, 2026 poem 277 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026.Photo: “Bumper to Bumper in the Clouds,”  by Diana Ludwick \u00a9 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1573,1438,1572,2,776],"tags":[2987,2991,2677,2988,2994,2997,2995,739,2989,125,2990,2993,1616,2998,2996,331,2992],"class_list":["post-2868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-generational-of-place","category-nostalgia","category-of-place","category-poems","category-short-form-musings","tag-10-4","tag-a-ok","tag-autumn","tag-cb-radio","tag-eastern-seaboard","tag-empty-room","tag-exhaust","tag-fall","tag-family-road-trip","tag-holiday","tag-i-95n","tag-navigator","tag-october","tag-over-and-out","tag-sedan","tag-sunday","tag-waterlogged"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2868"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2874,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions\/2874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}