Truckless in Homer

Thirteen miles from our doorstep, wrapped in the cold steel arms of an auto body shop parking lot fence, the blue Tundra sat minus its front grillwork and sporting a random-looking collection of florescent green circles that marked dents and dings in need of repair and new paint. We arrived on the first day of our shared holiday vacation, Patrick and I, to transfer the truck’s contents into two much smaller cars—one a white four-door rental, the other a small pre-owned SUV we’d purchased two days prior. Out of our vehicular element by a mile and nearly two decades, we worked with few words between us and a mutually tender understanding of our shared sadness over this particular loss filling the episodic silence.

In late October, we’d managed to total both of our trucks after two deer strikes one week apart. Patrick went first, driving the red Tacoma to work one dark and rainy morning, and I returned the favor as I drove to a friend’s farm to pick up a small batch of laying hens on a Sunday morning in broad daylight. The buck was a majestic 22-pointer, as long as the Tundra’s grill was wide, his rack visible well-above the hood (remember—Tundra. Toyota’s largest. 5200 lbs that can tow up to twice that. BIG.). I stayed center, didn’t swerve, practically stood on the brakes seconds before impact—that sickening crunch still echoes—and watched as this beautiful relative stumbled over to the guardrail to thrash out the final moments of its life under blue autumn skies in a wooded roadside gulley. I called 9-1-1 to ask if someone could come out to end his misery, then drove back home in my own to let Patrick inspect the damage. Both trucks were drivable in the short term, so we went on to pick up the chickens that Sunday morning and Patrick drove the Tacoma to work a few more days before the insurance claim came through with the rental (a white Toyota Corolla, four-door and way too low to the ground for our pockmarked gravel driveway). We worked one claim at a time, dropping the red truck off for assessment and repairs while I drove the blue truck to the office on Mondays. For ease of reference in the rest of this story, we’ll call them Red and Ol’ Blue.

Red was my truck at first and for a long time before Patrick laid reasonable claim to it. I’d had a gold Tacoma for years until the company recalled it for unfixable defects and we got to turn it in to be shredded (I still want to see the machine that can shred a truck). The payout was generous enough to allow for the purchase of Red when she was brandy-new, maybe sixteen miles on her when we drove her off the lot. I bought vanity plates that read GRYFNDR (an homage to Harry Potter’s house) and a vinyl decal for the tailgate, “My other ride is a Firebolt”. Hey—when your nieces turn you onto a franchise, you go with it and earn your “Coolest Aunt” title with every mile. Someday, if I ever come into money, I’ll own one of those Hello Kitty-wrapped Volkswagen bugs, you just watch.

We hauled everything in Red, from the weekly trash to rocks and tree limbs and auction finds, and I think one of our nieces had a go at learning to drive in it, taking the hairpin curves in our agri-hood with her elbows locked, corkscrewing her arms until Uncle Pat showed her the hand-over-hand steering method. On balmy summer evenings, we’d toss sleeping bags and pillows in the back for an easy overnight camp-out in the flat part of the meadow beneath the Old Man sycamore tree by the creek and look for falling stars until morning found our heads asleep on our dew-dampened pillows (inevitably, one of the cats would join us somewhere in the night, and what a jolt awakening that would be, as we own tuxedo kitties and at first glance in a groggy state, they faintly resemble skunks). Once I chased a poacher’s hunting dog off the land in such a fury I didn’t pay attention to the thicket on the driver’s side and scratched the length of Red’s flank. Patrick would not let me forget that; we never touched them up with any matching paint. Some scars are best and most helpful left in the rough.

Then Ol' Blue came along after an unexpected windfall (we don’t play the lottery, honest. These things just seem to happen to us at the most perfect opportune moments). Patrick wanted a truck that fit him in the seat and shoulders and would be sturdy enough to cover the miles it took to deliver him and two weeks’ worth of supplies to Sundance grounds in South Dakota every June for ceremony (while I stayed home most years with Red). The Tundra fit the bill; I’d help Patrick load up the night before and wave goodbye before heading back to the house to dress for a day of early summer gardening work. I accompanied him out west in 2018 and 2019—Ol’ Blue’s last trips to that sacred place. It was cool for this 5’2” gal to ride shotgun and way high above the little sedans and sportscars to our right and left on the freeway. We could each rest an elbow on the console between us, and I think last time I counted, there were a total of fourteen cup holders in the cab. No one needs more than two at a time of course, but the other twelve never went unemployed; we packed them with a first aid kit, lint roller, tape measures, road maps of Indiana and Iowa, bottles of hand sanitizer and Armor-all, nail clippers and handmade cloth drawstring bags of loose tobacco. Fast food napkins still had their place in the glovebox on top of the envelope that held our registration and proof of insurance. Patrick bought a matching cap for the bed after the first year, making our eventual trips to the farmers’ market to sell granola an easier haul—folding tables, canopy and storage totes of inventory fit neatly back there and were well out of the weather.

Red was totaled first. I didn’t cry, but I was hard to cheer up for a few days after we got the call from the insurance agent. We took bets on what the payout would be and made cautious plans to purchase a new vehicle, knowing that even a used truck would be out of our financial reach. Patrick is a negotiating genius so I left that to him, tossing in a few bits of logic now and then about the finer points of our mobile lifestyle needs. We landed on an SUV that would have just enough driveway clearance when the snow fell in drifts and be economical enough to handle Patrick’s longer work commute (I’m working from home most days, so my gas footprint is smaller for the time being). We were just about to close the deal when we got the call about Ol’ Blue. The cost of repairs was more than the insurance wanted to pay, so another total loss. Patrick isn’t often speechless, nor am I for that matter, but this one made us go still for a couple of hours. While we’re not one paycheck away from being homeless or in over our heads with the most basic of daily living expenses, we certainly can’t replace two trucks in as many months. Hard decisions lay before us, modifying our options and calling to task our preferences for travel, taken for granted up until now.

We are looking down the road of being a one-car household for the indefinite future. Borrowing time from the pandemic’s strange gift of working from home for one of us, and banking on a smooth handing over of the keys in the late spring when Patrick no longer reports to work to drive his students when the school year ends, we think we can make this work. But on the day we unloaded Ol’ Blue of his burden as he sat between two equally-pitiful banged up and dismembered cars in that auto body parking lot (the market supplies and equipment still in tow in the capped bed), it was the end of an era for us. We reached back in our collective memory and confirmed that we were truck owners for at least eighteen of our twenty years here, and made unintelligible sounds at the prospect of not having at least one on the land to haul the trash to the end of the driveway. Even with a reasonable payout, we’re still miles and months away from being able to add a second vehicle of any sort to complete the fleet we need. The word “need” has changed now, and we’re learning to be ok with that. We consoled ourselves with carryout pizza before heading home, the two cars packed to bursting with stuff we had to repatriate in the barns. Ol’ Blue was also a storage container on wheels. We’d forgotten that.

We do realize—immediately and continually and deeply—how lucky we are not to have added personal injuries to our respective deer strike claims, that we’re still employed and all family members are COVID-free, there’s food in the fridge and the sump pump is working as it should during a rainy week. The list of “thank goodness” is still longer than our temporary woes and will always be that way, based on how we choose to look at things. But as we both prepare to end our holiday vacations and return to a familiar work schedule, we occasionally glance out the front door to see if Red and Ol’ Blue have reappeared in their former shiny glories. They haven’t, and we wince a little, grateful for the memories of road trips and summer camp-outs and nieces taking hairpin curves…

There are some stories only trucks can tell.