Authors: Michael Perry
Truck
A LOVE STORY
ICHAEL
P
ERRY
To all who hold the world together
including
the shaman girl
T
HE STORY BEGINS
on a pile of sheep manure the size of a yurt. Dad stacked it alongside the barn one winter, and I climbed it, a fact documented in a thirty-something-year-old photograph of a miniature me waving from the rounded peak, clearly thrilled to have summited the dung. My jacket is unzipped and the sun is bright, but the landscape is blank with snow, and the shading of the skyâbleached horizon rising to a zenith of cyanotic blue, and not a cloud to be seenâsuggests the day was cold and deepens the green of the tall pines in the background. My hood is up, my pants are tucked inside rubber barn boots, and I am leaning on my sawed-off pitchfork as if it were an alpenstock. I am grinning like the hick spawn of the devil and Sir Edmund Hillary.
That spring, Dad hauled the manure away and spread it on the fields. The spot where the pile once stood was marked by a circle of earth stained dark by all the good juice that had percolated down. When Mom and Dad put in their big garden across the yard that year, they gave my brother John and me some sweet corn and pumpkin seeds to plant in the stain. The plants rocketed from the earth. In another photo taken later that summer, John and I are standing barefoot before the patch. It's fairly early in the seasonâI can see the hay wagon docked at the elevator, meaning Dad was baling first cropâbut the sweet corn has unfurled to the level of my shoulders and the pumpkin leaves are the width of a tractor seat.
I went through a long stretch of adolescence associating the garden with chores (specifically weeding), and then another long stretch of city
living in which I had no garden at all, but when I moved to the village of New Auburn, Wisconsin, eight years ago and found myself in possession of a backyard, I began to get green urges. Beginning with a simple raised bed, I attempted to grow a portion of my own food. Eventually, the garden grew to include eight raised beds, a scattered collection of pots, and a mound of dirt left over when the raised beds and pots were filled.
I have proven to be not much of a gardener. For one thing, I spend too much time away from home. When it comes to gardening, there are distinct advantages to being
present
. For another thing, I lack specific knowledge and discipline. I tend to garden based on impulse and intuition. Apparently there are better ways. If my raised beds have any consistency, it is that they are anemic and squirrel-riddled. My garden gives me inner peace and salad, but it also yields cat turds and wilt. Still, my desire doesn't die. Every year, I want to plant again. And I credit the memory of that sheep manure garden. I keep believing I can duplicate it. That I can just slap some seeds in the ground and they will come busting up. If you drove down the alley behind my old house this past winter and saw the light in the basement window above my gardening bench, or saw me bent over the raised beds transplanting seedlings in the spring or yanking weeds in the summer, or if you saw steam on my windows as I blanched the skins off the last of my tomatoes, that was me living out the annual year of the garden, driven in part by appetite and thrift, but also driven by a desire to reconnect with the little boy who loved to crawl between the stalks to a quiet place where he could listen as the sweet corn leaves scraped in the breeze. To rest his chin on his hands and peek through the shadowy tangle of vines to that one spot where the sun pierced the green canopy in a bright bolt and lit a powdery pumpkin blossom up all electric orange.
That same little boy once rapped his head on the windshield of his father's old International pickup truck with such force that a sparkly spiderweb appeared in the glass. We can only guess what effect this had on the little boy, although we do know he grew up to have trouble doing fractions and once on the way home from swimming lessons at the big green lake in Chetek he grabbed the shift lever on the Inter
national and tried to downshift on the fly, which made his mother say something very sharp indeed, and to this day he is better at upshifting than downshifting, but then isn't everybody? Lately it turns out it might have been his brother who threw the shift lever and he is misremembering, to which he replies, Holy Crap, look at the size of the crack in that windshield. We do know that the little boy grew up to have an International pickup of his own, which he loves very much but has to content himself with admiring it as it sits there, because it is not running and he does not know how to fix it. All in all he is content with this state of affairs because he likes to study the old truck as the still center of all the movement around it, something along the lines of “the sleep of trees or stones,” as Simone de Beauvoir put it when describing Jean-Paul Sartre's discussion of an inert chestnut tree, which we take to symbolize that the little boy is in way over his head. Returning to the adult version of me, prior to leaving on a recent extended road trip, I took my father aside and told him that were I to perish behind the wheel and the Iowa or some other state patrol were to return my belongings, he should know that while I was enjoying the twelve-cassette packet titled
No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life,
I was not completely buying the
Meaning of Life
bit. The amateur study of philosophy is like taking a few laps with a NASCAR driver. You're not qualified to do it on your own, you have no business behind the wheel, but for a few laps or paragraphs, you're right in there with'em, and when it's all over, you've learned something. Or, as my local fire chief once said, you've simply exasperated the situation.
And it remains difficult to get a philosopher to deliver a load of pig manure to your garden. So I really should get the truck going. It sits there falling apart with a case of nuclear cradle cap, thirsty for paint and a gas tank that won't leak. The project would give me license to make numerous trips to Farm & Fleet, where the livestock section feels sadly ever more the equivalent of a hobby section, but the sign over the drinking fountain that says
PLEASE NO TOBACCO JUICE
remains, and consequently, so does hope. I don't expect much, and the little pleasures suffice. This morning for coffee I ground four scoops of Farmer to Farmer Guatemalan Medium and when I pulled the grinder
cap and sniffed, it was all I could do not to flop right over and shake my leg like a dog.
So. The year is planned. Grow a garden and recapture my youth. That, and get my decrepit 1951 L-120 International pickup truck running in time for deer hunting season in November.
Right off the bat, I got distracted by a woman.
I
have the hots for Irma Harding. I wish I might couch my desire in more decorous terms, but when our gazes lock, the tickles in my tummy are frankly hormonal. My feelings are beyond ridiculous and destined to remain profoundly unrequited, but I draw a wisp of comfort from the fact that I am not squandering my libidinous yearnings on some flighty young hottie. Irma Harding radiates brightness and strength. She furthermore appears to have good posture. As a younger man, I would not have looked twice at Irma Harding.
As a younger man, I was a fool.
A man learns to tune his sensibilities. Consider the eyes. Your callow swain will be galvanized by coquetry and flash; your full-grown man is taken more by the nature of the gaze. A powerful woman's eyes are charged not by color but by intent. The strong woman does not look at you, the strong woman
regards
you. Irma's gaze is frank, with a crinkle of humor at the crease of each eye. She knows what she is looking for, and she knows what she is looking at. She has a plan, and should she encounter events for which she lacks a plan, she will change gears without fuss.
In the one picture I have of her, Irma is grinning. The grin is well short of goofy, but it does pull a little more to one side than the other. Her lips are full and gracious, although some might suggest she back the lipstick down a shade. Her teeth are white and strong. The left upper incisor is the tiniest tad off plumb, but as with the faintly lopsided grin, the net effect is to make her more human, more desirable. Irma's grin
is an implication, the implication being that while she would never
tell
a naughty joke, she would quite happily laugh at one.
Irma is the product of a time when a womanâeven a strong womanâstrove mostly and above all to please her husband. There is a danger here, a danger that you will form an image in your head of Irma as a servile drone. Look at those eyes again. They are the eyes of a woman who willingly mixes an after-work highball for hubby, but when she delivers the tumbler it is snugged in a napkin wrapped tight as a boot camp bedspread, and hubby will not underestimate the consequences pending should Irma later discover a water ring on the end table. He will droop home slack-tied and gray from the desk-job day, and she will meet him at the door crisp as a celery stick, her cheeks bright, her backbone straight. She will kiss him and take his briefcase, but he will be left to fetch his own slippers. When he settles in the big living room chair, he will turn an ear to the kitchen, from which will emanate the sounds of dinner under way. Not the clownish clatter of pans, or the careless jangle of cutlery, but the smooth
whizzz
of a blender, the staccato
snickety-crunch
of the carrot being sliced, the civilized
tunk
of the freezer door dropping shut on its seal. Lulled by these muted vibrations of efficiency, the husband will drift in the aura of provision and comfort, and his mind will ease.
But just as he is about to drowse, he hears the meat hit the pan, and he rouses to the idea that food is being cooked. He is reminded that he must dailyâlike any cavemanâuse his hands to put food in his face. He feels juices release, and his gut rumbles. And that's why Irma gets me bubbling. She may be cast as the stereotypical nuclear housewife, she may be complicit in the premise that a man is to be served, but when I lock on those eyes, I hear the sizzle in the skillet, and I know Irma knows: no matter how you tweak the parsley, eating remains a carnal activity.
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Two winters back, a man knocked at my front door. I like to look folks over before I step into the open, so I paused a moment to study him from behind the glass. He had backed away from the porch and was standing on the short patch of sidewalk beside the driveway. My driveway could use some work. I'm no home improvement specialist, but I admit that if
you have to
mow
your asphalt driveway there's work to be done. When I opened the door, the man turned to look at me but held his place on the walk. He had one eyeball smaller than the other.
“That truck for sale?” He squeezed the small eye shut when he talked. He was pointing at the old International Harvester pickup parked in my driveway. It's been there awhile. The tires have formed depressions in the asphalt and a sapling is growing through one wheel well. The sapling is six feet tall and thick as a buggy whip.
“Sorry, nope” I said.
“That got a six-cylinder in it?”
“Yep.” I hoped he wouldn't get any more specific. My capacity for mechanical minutiae doesn't go much past lug nuts. One question, and he had nearly depleted the store of my knowledge regarding the engine. Embarrassing, for a guy to have such affection for an old truck and yet know so little about it.
“I need that thing.” It was a declaration, not a request. He trained his one-eyed stare directly at the truck. “This buddy of mine's got a road grader, he put a six-cylinder International engine in it. Everybody told him you can't run a grader with that little damn engine.” He turned his face back to me and clamped the eye a little tighter. “Hell, he can spin every wheel on that thing.” He spit, poorly. A thin string of snoose trailed in the breeze, then snagged on the stubble of his chin. It was cold enough I expected the string to stiffen and hit the ground with a faint tinkle.
“Dropped that damn grader through the ice last week. Won't run fer shit. Engine's shot. Thought maybe you'd sell yours.”
I scuffed my boot and shook my head. “Nah, me and that truck go way back. Can't do it.”
The truck is unpainted, punched with dents, and runs heavy to rust. I've had it for just short of twenty years. Last time I got it running, maybe six years ago, the gas tank sprung a leak and all the fuel ran out. I have an abiding affection for the truck. During several lean years, it was the only vehicle I owned. My relationship with the truck has outlasted four of my most enduring romances combined, an observation the parties now departed deserve to claim as a key element in their exoneration. I have watched that truck rust in a heap for far too long, and long to hear it run
again. I want to back it out the driveway, clunk the shifter into first gear, and double-clutch my way through the gears until I'm blasting down Five Mile Road like the old days. The truck is on my to-do list. I have a busted screen door on that to-do list. It's been flapping in the breeze since the Clinton administration.
“Don't the city give you no trouble, just leavin' it set there like that?” The man was really squinting at me now.
“No⦔
“It's a damn eyesore!”
“I like to think of it as a sort of a status symbol.” I was trying for a joke. The next-door neighbors have a modest collection of decrepit beaters parked in and around their garage, and the house across the back alley could pass for a smallish salvage yard.
“Jee-zaahs Christ! I'm from Chippewa Falls! You'd never get away with that in Chippewa Falls!”
Well
la-di-da,
I thought. Too bad for you.
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Those of us who covet International pickups nurture a perverse sort of pride. Open the cab and you will catch a whiff of geek. As trucks go, Internationals lack the pop culture resonance of a Ford or Chevy, nor do they have the arcane appeal of the raritiesâsay, a Studebaker Champ. Internationals reside somewhere in the dull middle, associated more with plowed fields than the open road. The heritage of the International Harvester Company is strictly agricultural. Have you heard an International owner make affectionate reference to his truck as a
binder
?
Binder
is shorthand for
corn binder
. How hip can you be, driving a truck nicknamed after an obsolete piece of horse-drawn farm equipment? This is like nicknaming your laptop
the slide rule
. One feels the geek factor giving way to dork factor.
My old truck and Irma Harding share a common ancestry, traceable to 1831, when a group of people gathered in Lexington, Virginia, to see the inventor Cyrus McCormick demonstrate a horse-drawn reaper. In a single day, he cut six acres of grain. The numbers seem quaint now, but they caused a sensation in their time. The reaper's ability to replace gangs
of men with a single machine was revolutionaryâsome historians rate its effect on modern agriculture as comparable to the invention of the plow. (It is a matter of grim irony that some reports indicate the horses panicked during that first field test, and the reaper was pulled instead by slaves.) The reaper was slow to catch on, but by 1870 McCormick was selling 100,000 units per year. When he died in 1884, he had accumulated a monumental fortune and left behind a roaring company destined to change the nature of agriculture forever. In 1902, stockholders merged his McCormick Harvesting Machine Company with the Deering Harvester Company to form the International Harvester Company. True to its name, the firm quickly became a worldwide powerhouse, selling like mad on the home front while exporting its products to Russia, South America, Africa, and the British Empire. By 1906, International Harvester was manufacturing anything and everything agricultural. Reapers, yes, but also plows, seeders, beet pullers, and manure spreaders. Husker-shredders and lister-planters. Pickers and planters, binders and shellers. Hay mowers and hay rakes. Balers and tedders. Grain drills and twine. Feed grinders, hemp cutters, and cream separators. The first International tractor was a natural extension of the agricultural line when it chugged out of the factory in 1906. A year later the company debuted the Auto Wagon, precursor to the modern pickup. The Auto Wagons evolved quickly, and International was soon a leader among pickup truck manufacturers. In 1951, the year my truck rolled off the lot, they were going strong, shoulder to shoulder with Ford, Chevy, and Dodge.
Leveraging its agricultural market, International had begun producing milk coolers for farmers in 1935. Ten years later, the company added a line of refrigerators for the house. Domestic freezers were added in 1948. While I grew up seeing the distinctive International Harvester logo (a red lowercase
i
superimposed on a black
H
) on trucks, tractors, and corn pickers, I was surprised the first time I saw it incorporated into the handle of a refrigerator in the back of the Spring Street Sports bike shopâin, coincidentally enough, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. The refrigerator is still there, covered with racing stickers and stocked with festering burrito scraps. The second was down at our local fire hall. It was painted flat green and on your honor you dropped your quarter through
a slot cut in an old ammo box before taking a pop. I don't believe I've ever laid eyes on an International Harvester freezer. The chest freezer in my basement is a generic undersized cube. Made in China, bought it in a big box store. No character, but it works great. Mostly it contains vacuum-packed venison, chicken, some fish, homegrown herbs frozen in water (so that they will be fragrant when I toss them on the compost heap next summer), and occasionally slabs of smoked carp.
As was the practice of many food and appliance companies, International Harvester attempted to draw attention to its refrigerators and freezers through the publication of promotional recipe books. Just as General Mills had invented Betty Crocker, International Harvester invented Irma Harding, and put her on the cover of
Irma Harding Presents Freezer Fancies
. The cover is dominated by her black-and-white portrait. Her head is framed in a nimbus of white. Tucked tastefully to the left of her collar is a miniature copyright sign. Irma Harding is not real. I do not hold this against her. Her initials pretty much confirm what the copyright symbol impliesâIrma was conceived in the advertising department and delivered by an artist on deadline. My candle burns undimmed.
Irma's career was brief. “Millions Will Follow Her Counsel and Leadershipâ¦Millions Will Call Her Their Friendâ¦,” read the headline from the October 1948 edition of
International Harvester Dealer News,
in which Irma debuted, but in 1955, second-guessing their ability to compete in the domestic refrigeration business, company officials sold the division to Whirlpool, and Irma went the way of the horse-drawn reaper. Pickup truck sales held steady through the 1960s, but Ford and General Motors were selling in much greater and ever-increasing numbers. By the 1970s, it wasn't even close, and in 1975 International stopped making pickup trucks altogether. Tom Brownell and Patrick Ertel, authors of
International Truck Color History,
attribute the decline of International's light truck line (the company continued to make large industrial trucks) to ongoing labor conflicts, turf battles between members of management, the predominantly rural location of International dealerships, andânote for future referenceâ
lack of marketing attention toward women
. Noticing that women were becoming more in
volved in vehicle-purchasing decisions, many manufacturers responded with truck ads featuring women at the wheelâdriving campers, for instance. If a woman showed up in an International ad, it was usually in the form of an accessory.
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I am a sucker for the idea of a time machine, and sometimes I look at my unmoving truck and quite unoriginally wish I could have been the guy to whom the salesman handed the keys in 1951. I'd like to get a look at the country back then, the big changes coming on, but still a lot of dirt roads over which to roll. I imagine myself bumping down a set of sun-dappled washboards, giving the truck its first coat of dust. Maybe I'd be coming home to a wife, and maybe she'd hear me coming and be waiting on the porch in an apron, waving a dish rag, and I would roll in there guilt-free and anticipating beef roast and green beans, having not yet learned I was a chauvinist piggy. Alternatively, my wife may have been planning to gag me with the dish rag, bind me in the apron, and take my spanking-new truck on the lam. In 1951, American women were entering their fourth decade with the vote. They were fresh off the Rosie the Riveter years, when millions of their sisters had shown up for work and proven themselves in scores of traditionally male roles. In 1951, when Earl Silas Tupper became desperate to save his failing plasticware business, he turned not to a man but to a woman: the deliciously named Brownie Wise. The company shortly posted revenues of $25 million, Tupperware entered the national lexicon, and Wise became the first woman ever featured on the cover of
BusinessWeek
. The 1951 debut of
I Love Lucy
put Lucille Ball on a trajectory that would culminate in her reign as the first female studio head in Hollywood history. The first Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Correspondence ever given to a woman was awarded in 1951, when journalist Marguerite Higgins was recognized for her Korean War reportingâthe implication being that a girl with a pen might aspire to more than taking dictation from a man in a suit.