My Truck Takes Me For A Walk, Part 1

Lose the “old truck” and an aging man is that much closer to dead.

I grew up where (and when) most men had “an old truck” in the backyard. (I grew up in a poor rural area.) That rusting derelict mattered. It was the physical avatar of the hopes and dreams of what in past generations would be called “the man of the house”. Wives bitched about the eyesore and kids grumbled while mowing around it, but if the beast was hauled away it was a death blow to its respected owner. The lawn would be cleaner and maybe a few hundred bucks would change hands but what’s the value of that if the owner suffered injury to his soul?

Material things are not spiritual things, they tie us to earthy existence. Usually this is bad but a little connection is good. Lose that little bit of hope for the future and a man begins to wonder what’s the point of it all; especially in old age. (Bachelors never have this problem; who’s going to bitch about a bachelor’s junk? I never explored what happened to city people who would be lynched by the local HOA if they had an “old truck”. I assume “a step closer to death” is unavoidably truer (in terms of physical connection) when one lives where every house is less a “home” than a nearly fungible asset class. They’re already “unrooted” compared to recalcitrant old rural men on their farmland.)

The “old truck” didn’t have to be a vehicle and it didn’t have to be rusting in the yard. It could be anything in any condition. The classic is a muscle car that hasn’t run in a decade, but the same could be said of a rotting sailboat, a Harley from back when the man looked like Fonzie, tools for a forgotten hobby, or a dusty musical instrument in the closet.

It’s a thing cast aside (theoretically temporarily) to make room for society’s more immediate burdens; hopefully well offset by the joys of home and family. Harried family men would say “someday I’m gonna’ fix that old Mustang and get it running”. They almost never did; though occasionally you’ll see a geezer beaming with joy at his restored Model T or whatnot. For most of us, kids and wives and taxes and age bleed money and time until there’s not much left. That’s why the old truck matters. So long as that old truck was there, gathering weeds or not, there was hope. That’s all you need; hope.

I bitch about my Dodge and get starry eyed about my motorcycles but like men of a different generation I also have a couple hunks of “yard art” and an old truck in an old barn. I’m not going to tell you the details of the machine because that’s not the point. The point is, I actually pursued the cause. I am ever so grateful to live a life where I get that option. I worked hard for it and I was patient and careful. I saved for years. Last spring I dropped most of that savings on “getting the old girl running”. Now it runs.

There’s things about a “classic” vehicle you don’t know if you don’t know. The first one is there’s always something not yet properly mended. In my case the list is long. I had plans (and more savings) for a second round of repairs and improvements this spring. Alas, those funds went toward travel and assorted funeral expenses; life is like that. The second thing is that machinery seems to last better if you use it once in a while.

Today’s mission was to pay for a cheeseburger I’d shamefully “bought on credit”. It was the weekend. A good time to baby a decrepit vehicle. Flinging rust and dirt, I trundled down the road in a cacophony of rattles. I was happy. My dream isn’t dead; in fact it’s firing on all cylinders.

Another thing about “old trucks” is that every parking lot is stocked with old men and often children that come up to the vehicle and strike a conversation. Occasionally a young gearhead will appear; though most young people can barely drive and won’t pull their nose from their pocket Moloch. Little kids (boys and girls both) just like the machine because it’s “neat”. They know about Herbie. They practically want to hug cool machines.

Old men ask where I got it. Young gearheads ask about the engine. Most young gearheads can barely run a stick shift. I can tell from their questions they have no experience with a machine like mine and I try to be extra nice to encourage them.

Only rarely it’ll get positive attention from an adult female. The sexes may be equal but they are not identical. (Some college age twit is hyperventilating that I’ve typed those words but I’m not wrong. Nor do I need life advice from youth. I’ve got socks older than the average college student and the socks might have more wisdom. Social Justice Warriors are just inexperienced meat robots. You can tell this by watching them earnestly ignore ten thousand years of human existence, about which they know nothing, just to repeat the words some professor chewed up and regurgitated into their fledgling mouth.)

As for my truck, “the bones are there”. Most of its problems are in appearance or detail. With a little choke and some prayer, the beast fires to life. It gradually warms up. Once warm, the engine runs about as well as ever… though I’m going easy on the old gal.

It’s a 4×4 and when it was in it’s prime I’d pilot the beast straight into the teeth of hell. I happily beat the crap out of it. After decades hiding in a barn, I’m amazed it runs at all. I’m gingerly “breaking it in gradually”. I’m too chickenshit to flog it. I’ll need a lot more testing before I’m ready to go nuts.

After I’d paid for my burger I stopped for gas. The brake fluid was low. That’s why I was doing a “shakeout run”. I spilled fluid on everything but eventually got some in the proper reservoir.

Then it started to rain. The wipers are at least 24 years old! They do nothing! Last year I bought new wipers but never installed them. So I dug through the box of parts. (All old trucks have one or more “boxes of parts”. I bring the box with me.) I found the wipers but had no idea how to install them. Being an old vehicle, the wipers aren’t “plug and play”. With a Leatherman and a prayer I tinkered with the wipers under the gas station canopy for at least half an hour. Then I bought windshield wiper fluid and spilled that everywhere to go with the brake fluid.

I drove out into mild rain. The wipers had been formerly completely useless. Now they were only “mostly useless”. They cleared about ¼ of what they were supposed to clear. Good enough. I’ll tweak the wiper arms some sunny day.

I had plans to do some mild dirt roads and had stashed outdoor gear in the truck with me. Alas, the weather deterred me. I drove straight home and pulled into my driveway. The mild rain abated.

That’s when the truck had it’s say…

Tune in for part 2.