Every dog has his day and every man has his----

Every man must have his toys and every woman must have her nemesis. Mine is the little red truck in our driveway: a ‘89 Nissan something or other and unfortunately it STILL runs.

When I met my husband, he had this beast of a mobile-- only back then it was sort cool for a single guy on the go. But now, it is just plain ugly. The paint : faded. The interior: smelly old black and reddish stripped fabric. The door panels: missing parts. Now, I will be honest. I don’t know what these parts are, but my husband assures me they are not necessary. Why are they missing? Because he thought it would be a good idea to disassemble the car one day. Why? Lord only knows-- because he is a man and men like to build things.

Do we need said vehicle? No. I have a car. He has a different truck. So why pray tell is this wheeled tomato of a truck still in my drive? Because it STILL runs, and my husband swears he won’t get a good deal for it. It will cost too much to ditch? Heck, I’ll push it over a cliff if it will get it out of my drive.

A few years ago, I thought I’d finally seen the end of my ugly red truck days after I convinced my parents that they needed a truck at their cabin. You know, so they could haul things at their leisure. Unfortunately, trucks are a like stray dogs: they require tags to go out in public and my parents-- well they were from out of state and let’s just say they didn’t get the truck all it’s immunizations. Now (even though it runs) the state enforced ugly car taxes are so high, it would be cost prohibitive to drive down the street.

And so, the truck squatted at my parent’s cabin for a few years, which I think by squatter’s rights should entitle parents to full ownership. Unfortunately my husband has a way with words and managed to get the truck out of “jail.”

He had his reasons for needing the beast. Gas was high. He had a long commute. He had turned 33 and wanted to feel like he was 23. I don’t know ( maybe that was me). All I know is that I came home one day and the red tomato was squatting in my driveway-- just like old times. Good G-D is there not relief!
I asked for divine intervention.

This past summer, I thought I’d found the answer to my prayers when my neighbors started clamoring for the truck. For some G-D awful reason, the old men in our neighborhood had a hankering for the beast (either that or their wives were sick of looking at it too and were willing to pay cold hard cash so they could push it over a cliff and out of our neighborhood). I kid you not two old guys knocked on my door and asked if I was interested in selling the truck. My heart did loop-de-loops. My lungs for got their assigned task. My brain got fuzzy drunk. And then, I breathed and said, “Hell, yes.”

But as luck would have it, it was fire season-- and Benny Boo was the one on the title. Joy to the World, I couldn’t sneak it into someone else’s drive without him knowing about it. What was a girl to do!

Apparently live with the beast for a while longer because while sucking up smoke in the San Fernando Valley, my husband decided the grand old tomato would make a grand old leaf trailer (of course he’d need a few things to accomplish “the transformation” such as a welder and other manly tools).

And so the truck sat-- for months. It got dusty. Birds nested in it. Cats and stray dogs took up residence underneath it (I’m sure of it).

As I waited for the rats, my husband did something amazing-- he cut the darned thing in half.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m taking the rest to the auto recycler.”

And the sliced tomato sat a little longer. It was now a palace for my girls who liked to play pirates in the fallen truck bed (right next to the necessary gravel pile which we absolutely need for driveway maintenance-- or so I‘m told).

A month later, my husband started disassembling it-- what ever happened to the auto recycler?

“I’m going to use the come-along to pull out the engine and transmission tomorrow,” my lovely gadget man said. “I promise I’ll take the body to the dump tomorrow. You won’t have to look at it.”

Oh but I will-- the boat of a bed will still be awaiting the welder and G-D knows what other manly tools we’ll need to purchase so we can save money on a leave trailer.

This is my test. Patience is needed. Womanly understanding could be a tad helpful too. I can endure. I am stronger than a truck. And if all else fails-- there’s still Lookout Point.