OLD TRUCKS

 The door of an old truck reaches higher on your face than a car door, and the creak/thunk of open and close have a more important sound, the way a bass guitar outranks everything onstage.   As the dusty heat of truck air grabs you and lifts you in, you settle into a waft of old motor oil and sometimes old ashtrays, with the whiff of good honest sweat, yesterday’s KFC, and a lingering reminder of whichever ole Dawg goes along for the ride.

 

A heat-crisped, flutter-edged checkbook and several topless Bics wedged down into the seat-corners are a must, as well as a few empty Dr. Pepper bottles rolling the “flow-boards,” countless coffee-ringed cups---bought and “from home,” various tools and weapons, and at least one greasy seed-cap hanging from a rack-post beside the well-oiled 410 and a .22.

 

 Old trucks don’t take off or peel off or even start off like their younger counterparts; they Ease Off, with a dignified rattle and huff, much like arthritic turtles hearing rabbit snores.  The words “ease off” have already entered the vocabulary of many a farmer, trucker, and any other owners of trucks in general.   My Alabama brother-in-law hardly ever goes anywhere, or goes home from where he's been---he just says “I think I’ll ease off down to WalMart,” or “I better ease off home,” and is away with barely a whisper.

 

The aura of a well-used truck is of the dust of gravel roads and plowed fields, the dried coffee-rings of countless planting dawns and chaff-filled midnights, of cargo too varied to name, of gun oil and accumulated paper and worn seats and grimy handprints and scuffed, buttery leather and the boot-scars of a thousand harvest days.

 

Some may hold relics of past Saturday nights’ gatherings in an empty field or down by the gravel-pit, with a few sun-bleached Bud bottles rolling out their days in the truck-bed beside a ratty old blanket and an empty Coleman, testament to 2 a.m. dancing to four radios at once, blaring Kenny and Johnny and Garth into the late-night air, as boots and sandals and bare feet raised more dust into the circle of headlights than a midnight combine.

 

There should be a joke about “Where’s the one clean spot in an old Pickup?”  The answer would be just THERE, where the countless shirt sleeves and bare arms and occasionally the fur of a happy, lolling old dog with the wind in his face have polished the resting-spot in the middle of the open driver’s-side window to the sheen of a well-loved Camaro. 

 

If there’s ever an Anthropology course in Pickup Ephemera, I’m signing right up.  Old Trucks are Rolling History.