Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 14, 1995 TAG: 9511140046
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I predict this personal topic will also be of wide general interest, because I'm about to speak of something special to many New River Valley people, myself included.
This is a column about a pickup truck - but not just any pickup truck. My pickup truck.
Recently, along my daily commute between the New River and Roanoke valleys, my truck flipped - odometrically speaking.
Now, 200,000 miles is a long way, but we've been there, together. My redneck sports car may not look like much. If I screeched into a parking lot, spewing gravel and turning figure eights, you'd laugh.
But I can say confidently that my truck and I have a most satisfactory and productive long-term relationship. Like all modern-day, would-be cowboys, I prize my truck and consider its bulldog ugliness to be prestigious and honorable.
For seven years I've depended on my truck to carry me as I've worked and gone to school. Most of the mileage has been racked up in small increments, yo-yoing back and forth along Interstate 81, U.S. 460 and various back roads.
Along the way, I've never broken down, through four sets of tires, one new muffler and tail pipe, a carburetor, three sets of head lights and countless air and oil filters. Everything else is either original or fell off long ago.
True, my truck has dents and scratches on every quarter panel and a gap in the grill that looks like a lost tooth. During a snowstorm six years ago I put the chains on wrong and pulverized the mudflaps. A guy on a bicycle knocked off the driver's side rear-view mirror.
It's a lean machine. I don't have a gun rack. I don't have a radio for bad country music or uppity NPR. I don't have one of those window-stickers you see a lot of these days, with the cartoon strip character Calvin precipitating on Dale Earnhart's No. 3 or Chevrolets in general.
I don't need any of that stuff, as long as other drivers give my bad truck some room. They assume that the pickup's driver is dangerous or simply doesn't care. I like that. My day will never be ruined by a small parking-lot dink. It is better to inflict than to receive.
As you folks who have been married know, quirky partners are part of a relationship, and you just have to adjust. I'm willing to pry the tailgate open with the lug wrench. I've stopped worrying about the truck drinking too much oil, or being too light in the rear.
It's beautiful to me because it always goes. My friends agree - especially those who move furniture, haul junk or burn wood. They're eternally grateful for our help, but I bet they'd drop me in a heartbeat if I drove a Corolla.
I'm amazed when I think of all the roads my truck and I have traveled, through fog, rain, snow, anger, joy, sorrow and a window-steaming romantic encounter or two.
Doing the math, I find that 200,000 miles on my truck equals eight times around the equator and nearly all the way to the moon. In the process I've consumed about 9,100 gallons of gas, which makes me feel like I'm to blame for air pollution and the Gulf War.
Much of that fuel has been expended during efforts to propel my underpowered truck uphill. The method is simple: Floor it on the downhill slope. There's no other way to avoid being gobbled by all the pushy tractor-trailers who drive the same way.
I have no idea how much longer all this will go on. Perhaps the New Century Council will magically unite the Roanoke and New River valleys before my truck dies, abandoned by the roadside with a white towel of surrender waving from the window. Perhaps the humane thing to do would be to park it in a field, raise the hood and shoot it - before some oil-covered emergency room mechanic tells me it's terminally ill.
But I'll have none of that, not as long as it gets me where I need to go. At this point I'll probably get $3 for it as a trade-in, but some things are just priceless. All I can say is, "Thanks for the rpms."
I know there are a few folks out there in newspaper readerland who treasure their faithful pickups. So I salute you, too, good buddies. Keep on truckin'.
by CNB