Trucks

Fess up now.  If you have either lived with a person who owned a pick up truck or were yourself that person, the bottom line is it had only a marginal connection with transportation.  The relationship was one of love. Backing it smoothly into a parking place causes people to stop on the sidewalk and watch in admiration. No one leans casually against the rolled down window of a coupe to have a conversation. The one handed wave of a hatted driver to another is most impressive from the height of a F-150 while cruising down an almost empty highway in West Texas. To discuss them one uses words like torque, payload, rugged, capable, and that favorite of teenage boys – dually.

Vehicles in our family were gender specific. After a misadventure with a Simca, the elder of the men bought a blue long-bed (another definitive word) to make the run to the chemical plant.  Fondly it was spoken of as the Blue Whale. In the no seat belt era, two young boys, a wife, and a driver could fit across the front seat and try to avoid bruises from the gear shift. It had a trailer hitch just in case, though the in case never came up.  Its most famous uses were to put boys and friends in the back and bounce around some land we owned west of town and to make exciting trips to the town dump with a load of whatever.

Listing in order doesn’t matter. In ensuing years, one teen made a trip  to Maine to work for the summer.  He had a rumpled second hand tan short bed made for adventures.  Some nights it was his bedroom on the journey north.  He came back with a visor sticker that acclaimed: This Truck Made It To the Top of Mt. Washington. Those words gave me bonus points with 4th graders when I had to borrow it for school one day.  In spite of scruffy appearance, it was broken into and stolen twice.  The last time it was returned with a bed full of pumpkins. Had it been especially chosen for an October nefarious activity?

Equal time now for the other boy who is most hard core about trucks.  At this point I have lost track of the number.  Truck #?  is large enough to pull a travel trailer needed for various work occasions.  The most memorable bemoth was purchased with gains from his first job, a massive black two seater designated as The Beast.  It was so high it even had an extra step to reach the running board in order to grab the hand pull and hoist yourself up to the shotgun seat.  It’s very size required reverance.

When I started this I knew there was no Biblical connection, yet maybe there is.  Every trip on the freeway has some truck with family belongings stacked in the bed. These are either tied down or covered with a flapping tarp.  People up front have been called to go forth, and though love may have originated the purpose of purchase, transportation is what is required, and the time of camels has passed.

So Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions with them which they had gathered.  Genesis 12:4