Girls and Trucks

We have a truck.  It’s a big truck.  It’s the kind of truck that ecological advocates sneer at and rage against as the big evil that is helping to taking down the ozone.  I know this because I am one of those people who rage against giant American automobiles as polluters & wasters of gas.  I am also the proud partner of a woman who is harbors a redneck teen-aged boy deep down in her soul. 

Black Hair is educated.  She comes from a good family.  She has a well paying job and she is a good provider.  However, lurking inside her is a teen-aged boy who dreams of driving a giant tricked-out red neck truck with huge tires and a muffler with noise issues.  She wants one that is painted orange and blue.  She wants one with four-wheel drive so she can go deep into the woods.  I don’t know what she plans to do once she gets in the woods since she’s afraid of spiders and snakes but none the less, she wants to be able to go there.  She wants a truck that will make other teenaged boys dizzy with envy.  Because she has so many great qualities, I accept this about her. I just laugh a little when we pass those giant trucks while we’re out running errands and she heaves a huge sigh of longing and stares after them as they rumble past us full of testosterone and teenagers.  This is also one of the reasons I am now the co-owner of a large, hard to park Chevy Silverado. There are other reasons but I’ll get to those in a minute.

When Black Hair and I met, she was the owner of a tiny little black foreign car.  I don’t remember what it was but it was little and affordable and a good steward of gas money.  I drove a Mazda covered in grateful dead stickers and filled with take out bags.  It didn’t take long before she traded the little black box for a little truck.  I think it happened right after I convinced her that we could bring four landscape timbers home from Wal-Mart if we lowered them through the sunroof.  We did get them home after having the Garden Center dude stare at us like we were insane while we loaded them in the car (picture me standing on the hood lowering them in and you’ll get why he was transfixed) but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t long after that that the first little truck came home.

I didn’t complain.  It was little and got decent gas mileage and she was so happy I just couldn’t say a word.  Besides, now I could pick up stuff off the side of the road with abandon and she really couldn’t complain.

See, that’s the real reason I don’t complain about the trucks.  I admit it.  I have a touch of Sanford & Son deep in my little soul.  I like to think of myself as an ultimate recycler but many might just call me a collector of crap.  That’s what my mother thinks anyway. Every car I have driven as an adult has to have a trunk big enough to pile stuff in and having a truck is even better.

The first thing I convinced Black Hair to help me haul home was a little red table that I found out by the curb in front of someone’s house.  We had to shove it in the back seat of the little black car.  She was humiliated and accused me of stealing.  When that didn’t work she mentioned dumpster diving but I was unmoved and that little table cleaned up nicely and is still in my house to this day.

Since that day so early in our relationship, I have brought home many treasures from the side of the road.  Black Hair now just rolls her eyes and asks where we’re gonna put it and then rolls her eyes again when I say I don’t know yet.  My oldest girl child has even become my accomplice, and helps me spot stuff we could use.  The truth be told, Black Hair even slows down the truck without having to be asked when we pass a pile of stuff on the side of the road so I can check it out for “recyclables”.  My chicken pen was free, my chicken coop was free, my raised garden beds were free and some really cool architectural elements in my house were free and are mine because Black Hair has a truck fetish and I like to sift through other people’s cast-offs.

OK- back to the trucks.  The first little truck just didn’t cut it when Black Hair decided she wanted a baby.  No back seat.  Therefore, off she went to the dealership and home she came with a four-door truck with a backseat.  It was still small but she was pleased.  Until Girl Child 1 got big enough to turn the car seat around and began kicking her with reckless abandon.  Not so pleased any more.  Plus, we looked like the Clampetts when we travelled.  She got a bed cover but you had to have a PhD in engineering, and the muscles of a linebacker to get the thing snapped correctly over the back of the truck.  It wore me out…it really did.  So then, we traded the truck for a very nice SUV, but for various reasons, one being it looked like a drug dealer’s car, we both hated it.  This could be incorrect in terms of sequence but the theme remains the same.  Black Hair needed a big truck.

So…this leads us to our current Chevy.  It’s huge.  It’s a serious gas guzzler.  It looks like a farm truck, and when she called & asked me if I wanted to look at it to buy, I was at the Humane Society holding a Cheweenie that weighed 17oz and was the cutest thing I had ever seen.  She drove over, picked up the dog and I, and home we drove in our new giant truck with our tiny little dog.

She still sighs dramatically when we pass the monster trucks but she is more content now that she has her own giant truck.  And I’m not complaining much, because as I drove to work this morning I glanced in the rearview and saw the free side-of-the-road toddler swing set in the truck bed.  We saw it on Sunday and she drove the kids and me home and went back for it in the truck without a single comment or eye roll.

 I plan to throw it in the garage with the two free couches, various garden implements, “art” parts and tools until Girl child 2 can sit up on her own.  And, just for the record, it’s Black Hair’s fault the garage looks like it does.  If she didn’t just HAVE to have a truck, I wouldn’t be able to bring home so much crap.

Earth Momma

PS- Does anyone need a couch?