This is only a test...

Here is a photo of a 1964 Ford almost exactly like my dad bought from Grandad when I was a kid. He bought it for a buck I think. The most clear memory I have with this truck is with my dad. He was driving me to the hospital. At this point I don't trust any of my memories because any time I offer one up, Mom and JeNeale contradict me with a false version of that memory that they have been collaborating on for years, so I don't have a chance. But here it is anyway. Mom and JeNeale, feel free to correct me. Ha.

My friend Blair Carpenter and I had ridden our bikes down to the "lower" Highlander. (Now bike is a relative term. I was riding JeNeale's old red, white, and blue girls bike with the banana seat and ape-hanger handlebars. Blair was riding an old junker his Dad had picked up at the Base dumpster and "fixed up"). This was in the early days, because the section of the subdivision between Cloverdale and Valley road was not completely built in with houses yet and it was still dirt. Almost. Foolishly, the contractors had poured the cement curbs and had left the whole street unattended for the night. Well, Blair and I (I think I was about 9 or 10) decided to try a physics experiment. We thought we should test the trajectory of a rock thrown against those gorgeous cement curbs to see what direction it would go and how much velocity it would carry. After several tries, we still lacked documented, quantifiable evidence, but we were really flinging those rocks! We got our evidence, however, when, as I was bending down to pick up our next test subject, Blair threw his. Well, as I sat screaming in the street, bleeding in the dirt from a fresh head wound, Blair stood there frozen not knowing what to do, a neighbor lady came out with a bright white towel to put on my head. She drove me home. Mom and Dad debated briefly and Mom won out of course. (Thankfully. Dad would have probably poured alcohol on it and duck taped it). But Dad is the one who drove me to the hospital. As we drove in red Ford to the hospital, Dad tried to comfort me. He said over and over again, "Jay, don't got to sleep. you might die before we get there!" Ha!

Our findings:

1. We found that the rocks went really fast, and location and direction were very unpredictable.
2. The rocks, when richocheting off cement curbs, can cause concussions and cuts that require stitches to close.

Truck: A Love Story

I am sorry for my silence. A six-week hiatus with family and friends was bad enough, but then trying to catch up from said break, starting school and creating a couple of new syllabi have provided me with sufficient justification so as to avoid having to write for a while.

Well, I have finally found an author that writes like I would like to write if I could string two words together in a coherent sentence. Michael Perry. Author of Truck: A Love Story and Population:485. That said, Truck is a better read than Population: 485. There a several swears in the aforementioned book, that while he is quoting other folks, still grate a little. Truck was just pure pleasure for me. Here is a review from Amazon.

"One wouldn't think that repairing a beat-up old pickup could become a life-altering undertaking. And yet, for Perry, it was all that and more: an epic adventure that encompassed love, diplomacy, a little hydroponics, and even some danger (like setting yourself on fire). Perry, who is also the author of -Population: 485 (2002), propels the story forward as if he were writing a novel, helped by a cast of characters who range from the lightly offbeat to the totally bizarre. The prose is straightforward, almost deadpan, but behind the words, the reader feels a heightened sense of irony, as though Perry knows how weird it all is but figures, what the heck, it's true so why not just go with it. The heart of the book tells dual love stories--man and truck; man and woman--that are, in their own ways, equally passionate. Perry writes about fixing his truck as if he was resurrecting it, but in fact, he may more accurately be said to have been resurrecting himself. The truck is transformed, certainly, but the multiplicity of changes that Perry goes through run deeper and likely will last longer." David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

One of my favorite parts of this book is his attempts at growing a garden. It won't be for everyone, but I loved every minute of it. Here's one of my favorite quotes from the book:

"I am happy to live in a place where I can chuck a washing machine out my back door and no one judges my behavior unusual"

Here's a link to an excerpt for the book.

Enjoy.