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Thrillseekers... Across the road from here, people skydive, en masse, every weekend. An Upstate New York Grrl at work belongs to a rollercoaster club. Stalking thunderstorms (hmmm...that was yesterday) gets some people off. Not enough at stake. What jerks my chain? Driving a thirty-five year-old unlicensed "Farm Use" truck with unknown history past the local sherrifs department. Now that's entertainment. In the driveway, Behold... Ford F-100, circa 1967. A good year for Sgt. Pepper. LSD. Fashion. Alas, the years have not been good to this battered aqua beast of burden. Long In The Tooth, is a fitting expression. Cancered at the corners. Festooned with Grateful Dead stickers. Rattling away like a diesel. One speaker and a dollar-store stereo. Do I hear Robert Mitchum singing "Thunder Road"? Time to live... dangerously. An innocent shake-down cruise... from hell. What is a truck good for? Anything you wouldn't want to do to a car. Which is why I loaded up a pile of crap that had accumluated, and fired up this clattering monstrosity to see what fate had in store. At the landfill. Many years since I last drove three-on-the-tree (shifter on the steering column). Kinda like playing the drums... all of your limbs in motion, which wasn't a forgotten art, after all. And onto the concrete sea we set sail. Surprisingly sedate ride for a geezer. No sportscar, but tracking straight and braking confidently. Past the lawman's hornets nest, the load jettisoned... I'm feeling like writing a check for this puppy. Now it gets interesting. Rather than take the highway again, I find a narrow two lane to loop triumphantly back home. Not noticing that the lump under the hood sounds like chains in a laundramat dryer, until I reach the stop sign. At precisely the same place where my old Rambler American expired on ITS first cruise, so dies the progeny of Henry Ford. After the hail of blistering curses, and laying on the unresponsive starter, I let the old bastard drift downhill with the clutch in, selector in second... drop the clutch and it lives again. Until the nest stop sign at the highway. Hacking valves threatening to rivet through the bonnet. No choice but to drift backwards in to the lot of a country store (whose most memorable bumpersticker was "I Got My Crabs At Gas & Stuff"... not something I'd brag about), and see if some cooling-off will remedy the situation. Eventually. With a mad double-clutching, rev-blipping dash to the driveway, I make to safety. One more six-cylinder spasm later, I slide from the oily vinyl replacement seatcover onto terra firma, turn 'round... and produce proudly my middle finger to the best-selling truck in America. Which had not a drop on water in the radiator, since the lower hose had never been connected. I guess this means "No Sale." A Dukes Of Hazard moment, without the comedy. Or Daisy. But... just one of those experiences that may not have been fun at the time, but what a RIDE. PS. On the subject of thrill rides... later, I was drawn into watching an Old Harold Lloyd silent film, "Girl Shy." A sweet little Art Deco story, with a monster chase scene. It all goes around in a circle, don't it? |
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