The Truck Drug

I had been working hard – teaching extra classes and summer school – for quite a few years. With all that discretionary money burning my pockets, I started jonesing, craving, hungering for something special, like a pickup truck. I wanted it bad, had the fever, needed a fix -- even if I needed to fix it. But it had to be cheap.

I found one for sale by a guy named Ricardo who agreed to meet me at a westside park with the truck. Ricardo spoke only Spanish and had some trouble with one of his eyes. It squinted at me. I love Spanish, have lived in Mexico and South America and sometimes have trouble with my eyes too. All of this was perfectly exciting, haggling, and biligualing -- all part of getting the deal of a lifetime. I have paid my dues. I deserve this thing. We spoke Spanish and agreed on a price.

Ricardo literally ran out of the bank after I gave him the money. I saw him enter an alley and keep going. Nothing strange about that I said to myself. But I had to think hard to remember if I had ever run out a bank and into an alley before. Oh well, never mind. I had it, the machine of my emerging manhood.

The truck fit something missing in myself, some need to be mobile with manly style, a ticket to outdoorsman cred. Those truck ads between news spots in the morning had done spun their spell. I wanted to lift a bulldozer engine-block high above the truck with a crane and then drop it in the bed. Slow-mo video would show the springs absorbing the crushing load while some gravelly voice said "Truck Month."

My new truck was waiting for me outside, and only one of the tires was going flat. Hmmm. I didn’t notice that before. And when I put the key in the ignition it would not stop beeping. It must need gas I thought.

After gas and tires and a few days driving around listening the beeps, various rattles, and creaks, I let my wife drive it. She said that her father had told her that the most important part of making cars last was keeping the oil changed. She then asked me if I had bothered to change the oil of my new prized but squeaky possession.

I decided to get the oil changed.

OK, so it all started with that simple refresher of life-giving lube – not even a fully necessary lube job in my eyes. But, given the wife had been driving the truck, I suspected she had been out drag racing while I was sleeping.

Speedway Boulevard, down the road from our quiet little house, does that to late middle-aged women. They motor down there on a Saturday night, and a vehicle like a Ford Ranger pickup truck with a 3.0 V6 engine becomes a whip to dominate prepubescent boys driving nitro-charged Mitsubishis.

So, anyway, the wife had been driving the truck and it likely needed an oil change – if not primal scream or electro shock therapy.

First thing in the morning I dropped the key off in the secret slot at the shop. I went to a coffee shop to wait and think about my life. Mainly I stared off into space and thanked my lucky stars that I had a job, two legs, six fingers, and working bowels. These are hard times after all.

I sat that way (semi comatose) for about half an hour when I got the first call. “Yes, this is he. Did I know that the oil pan gasket was leaking? No. Is it bad? It's THAT bad?? And the right wheel bearing is about to go out, making it likely that the front wheel will fly off in traffic at a high speed while I am surrounded by semis during rush hour in central Los Angeles? And the fitting on the radiator is bad too?”

He goes on to mention something about a condenser, a sensor, disforbibulating microtizer, and a couple of other simple parts that he just happens to have in stock. Just for good measure he asks if the truck was ever raced on the NASCAR circuit or if it had been in a wreck, oh, and, why the seats are so ugly.

Also, he wondered why there had been so much welding underneath the truck, like compartments had been added and then removed.

“What was this thing used for?” he asked.

Exactly.

My craving for the truck drug had landed me a drug truck.

No problem. I can handle it all. Oil! Gas! Mobility! Broadcasting a manly image!

My attempt to frenzy my way to clarity soon fizzled.

So I just sat there and attempted to digest the news.That didn't work so well either because it just made juices bubble down in the pelvic region.

Rather than digest, I decided to block it out and go to my inner quiet place and say yes, yes to repairs, to mechanical optimism, to Allah.

MMMM I think to myself. I am here now in the open euphoria of truck present. It is time to release, to let go. I will let go of my attachments, even my garments if that is necessary, the shirt off my back.

Then I get the next call. The radiator it seems has joined the rest of the car in full frontal rebellion. Each part had decided to take the day off, go on strike, call in sick and generally retire. Only the radio soldiers on. It plays Mexican polkas and nothing else. OK, well I can sit and simmer under the Arizona sun in my dead, serene, peaceful pickup and listen to polkas as long as the battery lasts.

I wonder how to pay for all of this. The voice says they will consider collateral or payments that extend into the next millennium. He worked with me, was creative with collateral, quick with number crunching, perspicacious with the big financial picture.

“My Mother?”

“No, she is dead...”

“Wife?”

“Only in her mid 50s.”

I hear some talk in back and something about that should cover part of the radiator.

“Dogs?”

“Nope, no dogs.”

“ Kids?”

“Yes. Two. That’ll cover the rest of the radiator? Good, we’re getting somewhere.”

We go back and forth about my real estate holdings and retirement plans before haggling some over the value of my soul. Eventually we settle on indentured servitude for the remainder of my days, along with a payment plan that will be passed in perpetuity to all my heirs, their heirs, and so on.

“That should work,” I say.

You might think this is a high price to pay just to burn up non-renewable fossil fuels as the planet slides into decay, but hey, when you think of the millions that can be made betting on drag races, it’s a ganga neighbor.