Thirty years ago that
pick-up set me back a hundred bucks, plus another eight dollars a piece for
used front tires.
“Course
they’re not much good if you’re gonna drive across the desert or anything,” the
tire salesman joked, winking at the cleverness of his hyperbole.
“No.
Like I’m ever gonna do anything like that,” I deferred, lying.
In fact, I
planned to drive it from Wisconsin to California, through the Rocky Mountains and across the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahua Deserts, in winter.
To
the unloving eye it was what we called butt ugly -- rust rotted floors that let
cold November air chill our feet, legs, and nose despite warm boots, long
underwear, and ski gloves -- dented hub caps, cancerous quarter panels. But I patched the rust holes, changed the
oil, and bolted a ski rack to the roof.
My weakness for beauty shone through in my need to polish the hood, with
its rounded lines and last area of remaining intact paint, to a brilliant,
glossy red that reflected the sky and passing trees.
With
adolescent flair for the dramatic, I left home after dark and drove through the
night and the next day to Colorado with stops for gas, hashed browns, and
hitch-hikers. The tips of my skis danced lightly in the wind, happy to be
pointed west. They had cost three times
as much as the truck.
The
hood of the truck lost some of its sheen as the winter wore on and I wandered
from job to job, ski area to ski area. But that truck started the night I slept
out under the stars, waking to snow and frozen fingers. It held corners around
mountain ridges where a slide would have sent us both into a snowy oblivion. It
made it to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. I was proud to have a valet park it
when I walked into the MGM Grand Hotel wearing my dusty blue jeans. That truck
carried me and a family of four back across the plains. We wrapped up in a sleeping bag and tent in
the bed of the truck to stay warm through a Kansas ice storm.
It
held together until I got home.
That
night, the door swung loose, a tail pipe fell off and one of the tires blew
out.
I
guess the truck knew I had given up on the road for a while, and needed to sell it.
I unbolted the rack, fixed the tire, door, and tailpipe, polished the hood so
that the world shown back in beautiful, red, fisheye distortion, and sold her
for tuition.
That
truck is probably keeping company with other old trucks in some Wisconsin junk
yard, but I bet the hood still shines, keeping track of the seasons and the
lost miles of memory.
