Brilliant … But Bouncy

We Have a Truck!

“I bought us a truck,” Larry said.

“A what?” I was on the payphone in the dorm hall and didn’t think I’d heard him correctly.

“A pickup truck!” There was pride in his voice. “It needs a little work to get it runnin’, but it’ll run.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, it just needs a blah blah for the blah so it can blah blah and it’ll be fine.” (Coincidentally, my current husband uses this phrase a lot.)

A few weeks later, I had my first ride in a very old black Ford F150 pickup truck. It was creaky and loud and smelled like gasoline and oil. I loved it instantly.

“Ya just gotta keep dumping oil in,” Larry explained. A permanent oil stain magically appeared everywhere we parked.

Best of all, I had to climb up to reach the cab. Disintegrating running boards graced each side so I could push off mightily while climbing. Every time I landed in the seat, I felt like I’d just conquered a mountain. I was the coolest, toughest chick on the planet.

Before heading back to Ohio, Larry gave me the keys – as if this were normal. For a 37-year-old, maybe it was – but I was 21.

I climbed up into the pickup with a feeling of invincibility I’d never had before.

Not only did someone hand me a vehicle, but it was a truck. A big ol’ dirt-hauling, oil-leaking beater that I could drive however I wanted to anywhere I pleased.

I immediately drove to Mount Union.

“You have a truck?” Bonnie squealed.

“We have a truck!” I answered. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Who fuckin’ cares?!?” she screamed, running outside. We hopped in the truck and headed out.

This went on for the rest of the year.

Bonnie and I went to Dairy Queen a lot. Blizzards had just been invented and we wanted them all the time. We went to Burger King a lot. We went to the drive-thru beer place a lot. We’d been walking to these places previously but now that we had a quick way to get there, we could be gone and back in way less time than it took to get subs and beer delivered.

We always had beer, except in the mornings when we’d finished it all.

One day as we completed our visit to the Burger King drive-thru, the truck stopped. It just conked out, right in the middle of the road in front of Burger King. I tried to restart it but it just made a coughing sound and didn’t move.

The truck was diagonally parked across the road, blocking traffic on both sides.

“Oh well,” Bonnie said. “Let’s eat!”

“Burger!” I agreed.

We opened our bags and ate our food, right there in the center of the street. I remember shoving fries in my mouth and laughing hysterically at the cars who were honking at us, begging us to get out of the way.

Mouths full, we screamed “we’re in a fuckin’ truck!” at everyone who passed.

After our burgers, we got out and stood there, staring at the pickup. An older man in another pickup finally stopped to help.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It just stopped.”

The man tried the ignition to no avail. “Did you have gas?”

“I don’t know,” I said, quite honestly.

“I’ve got a gas can in the back; let’s see if that works.” He went away, came back with gas, and dumped it into the tank.

“Try it now,” he said.

The truck started right up.