Requiem for a Truck

I bought two things in late 1993 which changed my life. One was this house - built in 1941, it looks all the world like a south Georgia farmhouse except that it sits in the middle of town. It was the first piece of real estate I bought all by myself, with hardly the credit to justify the loan. In other words, I begged the mortgage company; I begged the Visa company for a card since there was almost nothing in my name thanks to a long marriage to an old-fashioned man; and although I have never been my own best landlord and have a passel of undone repairs, this house is, for all intents and purposes, mine.

Three months after the mortgage papers were signed, I bought an Isuzu pickup with hardly a thought beyond "I want a truck". It had air conditioning but no power steering. But it was new, shiny, black and the dealership gave me a loan. One thousand dollars down.

It is still mine, even as it sits in my driveway since yesterday morning, apparently dead from a cardiac arrest or stroke (see, although I never named Truck, I still consider it an aging, loving relative). I plan to have it towed to Billy's Imports - he, being an old Isuzu truck owner himself, is the only person I would trust to issue the death certificate. I hope that he might want Truck for parts to keep his own little 4 cylinder going.

The day before, I drove Truck to Savannah and back. It handily travelled the sixty miles there, but began to jerk and ungear as I headed back home on the interstate. By yesterday morning, I tried to take it to get the oil changed and checked out, and it lurched and heaved and took several minutes of crawling at 7 mph to get it back to the driveway.

Truck has not been pretty for over a decade. First, a rotten ex-boyfriend dropped one of his ever-present Camel Filters onto the upholstery and left a cigarette burn. Later, he drunkenly jimmied the glove compartment and left the door misaligned. Then, in 1997, an uninsured motorist creamed the front right end. I never repaired it. The black paint began to fade, then oxidize in the fierce south Georgia sun. I doubted its salability by 2000, and relegated it to a secondary vehicle after I bought a Saturn.

Truck was a road warrior back in the day. It has taken me to get stumbling drunk in the French Quarter; down south Texas backroads to a Mexican border town; at least two hundred trips between the Appalachian mountains and my Georgia home; to punk shows and jambands, through school carpool lines, biker rallies, camping, Grateful Dead concerts and the gates of Graceland. One pair of South Carolina speeding tickets, one breathalyzer (passed, easily) - those are the only police actions committed while in the truck. It looked so bad toward the end, that I believed that I could haul diamonds in the back (the camper top lock broke years ago) without fear of theft. The worst that I ever transported was a case of Tennessee moonshine for some buddies, and those days are in my past. My beau at the time and I left the remains of a quart jar at the Buford Pusser Memorial in McNairy County, Tennessee. We always wondered what happened when they found that one.

R.I.P. Truck.

NTD