I Got a Blue Truck

So we own this here truck for no good reason other than we might have to move some big stuff some day. With the truck in our driveway, my husband and I each own 1.5 automobiles. In other words, the truck is extry.

There are parts of me that love this truck but my ass wouldn’t be one of them. The truck rides hard, more like a cart drawn by oxen than a modern automobile. The windows roll up and down; there is air conditioning and a radio but everything is A #1 RUDIMENTARY. This means that I can’t look at the dashboard and see what temperature it is. This is irksome.

One benefit of the truck is that I can potentially indulge my proclivity for curb shopping. My husband is not a curb shopper; he eschews curb shopping, if you will; but I think great deals can be had from the stuff people leave at the curb. My greatest find were two fabulous sofas, found on the same day in a ritzy part of our town, which I made my teenage sons load into our SVU (not then having a truck which could have done the job so nicely).

This morning, coming back from dropping off his car at the shop, I convinced my husband to pull over to check out a truly gorgeous burgundy sectional with a bunch of really cute pillows that was sitting in front of a fancy house a few blocks from us. Never mind that he was in a suit and tie and ready to go to work. We have kids who move every six weeks and always leave their furniture behind or don’t have furniture, who knows? Who wants to know?

So I figured we could put the sectional in the truck and spirit it home, park it in the driveway and figure it out later.

“It’s nasty,” he says, walking around the sectional’s section. It wasn’t nasty; it wasn’t pristine but hey, it’s on the damn curb, folks, and it’s FREE. Plus I tried and I could lift one end. One, two, three and we could have it in the back of our little blue truck and be zooming down the street with all the other pickers.

So we left the sectional there for someone less class conscious. Pity.

We pulled into our driveway. Getting out of the truck, I noticed that there were two empty Arby’s soda cups and an empty beer can in the truck bed. Good Gosh Dang, how did that get there, I wonder? Which of our alter egos is thumping down the highway, poppin’ tops, sluggin’ back, and heavin’ the empties into the truck bed? Where’s the rifle rack and my Daisy Mae’s?

“You don’t love the truck like I do,” my husband said tonight. Oh, maybe not. Maybe.

I love the way the door creaks open and the sound it makes when it slams. I like rolling the windows down and turning the radio on. I like feeling like a country girl, a cowgirl. I like showing up places in an old truck. And I like thinking, that if I feel like it, if something on the damn curb appeals to me, I got myself a truck and I can go get it and bring it home.

That’s some freedom there. You folks driving little Hondas and Toyotas, you wish you had my old truck come moving day.

It’s a treasure. Yes, it is.