Americans love pickup trucks. When I get visitors from Germany (I work for a German company) we sometimes go out for a beer or dinner after work and the Germans always think it’s funny how Americans need such big trucks. I guess it’s because Americans have a lot of crap. And sometimes we have to haul all that crap around town, or go out and buy new crap (like last weekend when we went futon shopping), or sometimes we have too much crap and have to bring it to the dump in order to make room for more crap.
Now I’m thinking about that F-150. I loved that truck. It was a 1997 black crew-cab, with tan leather seats and aluminum wheels and a cool little lasso emblem on the side. It was great for hauling crap. And even though the seats were too slippery, it was still a good truck, at least for a little while.
When we moved to Arizona ten years ago, I drove the U-Haul, my nephew drove a 2nd U-Haul, and my wife followed me in the pickup. We had 48 feet worth of crap, plus we bought a new topper for the F-150 before we left so we could pile even more crap into the back of it for our big move. But somewhere around Kansas, the “Check Oil” light came on (we were probably hauling too much crap) and in all the excitement we never bothered checking it until I heard a funny knocking noise (and not clown funny) when we stopped to gas up in Flagstaff.
So in addition to a new house and a new job, I also got a new truck when we moved to our new state with all our old crap. But at least I didn’t have to buy new license plates.
I moved a lot crap when I went north 4 years ago and told myself that I would, someday, get rid of all my crap because I was so tired of hauling the shit around. Well, I couldn’t quite part with all my crap when I moved last December, but I did take a good amount to the dump, sold more than a stool and gave away a load. My next move, finally, was only 10 feet in length of crap.