It’s Nothing

Main Street Rag Literary Magazine published my poem “It’s Nothing” this month in their Winter 2023 issue, bless their dear hearts. I hate to tell them, but “It’s Nothing” isn’t literature. It’s a poem about my old truck.

I loved that truck, with a visceral and romantic love. What other reason could there be for allowing it treat me the way it did? I do, however, suspect that our love was one-sided, heavy on my end.

It began in college, when I decided I was ready for a bigger vehicle than my blue two-door coupe. I was ready to haul things.

I cruised the parking lots around campus, learning the different makes and models. I was under no illusion that mine would be a new vehicle. What I was looking for would be in a place for the perpetually broke.

Broncos were nice. Ford F-150s. Jeep Cherokees. And then there she was, the Toyota Tacoma, circa 1996 – nice lines, not too puffy. So many trucks look like they’re on steroids, big muscles around the wheels and hood, man-spreading their chassis across the lanes. The original Tacoma was sleek and simple. It was perfect.

I told my dad about the truck, and he thought it sounded like a winner. So he went out and bought one, silver, just the color I wanted, with the extended cab I so admired.

For himself.

My father is not a cruel man; he said maybe one day he’d sell it to me.

And so, the search continued.

Tacomas were too rich for my tastes, anyway. I set my sights lower, on a late-model Toyota pickup, just before they started making Tacomas. And higher: I wanted a lift kit on it.

Heading home from grad school one day, I drove by the perfect truck sitting roadside – a cobalt blue lifted pick-up with bright orange locking hubs, “Toyota” emblazoned on its tailgate. I made the guy an offer, and he accepted, but I didn’t have the cash in hand that day. I told him I’d get it to him Monday.

By Monday, the truck was sold to someone else.

That truck remains the standard by which I judge all others, the elusive unicorn of pick-ups. Perhaps it’s better this way, as she was never sullied by experience and reality. She remains untouchable in memory.

Eventually, I found my real four-wheeled partner, a gray 1994 Toyota pickup with a three inch lift, manual 4WD locking hubs, and stick shift. She had an extended cab, a narrow bench seat you had to contort past the front seat to access, a space so small only a dog could use it. And I loved her.

I ordered a custom gear shift knob in sparkly purple, put in new a sound system, and she was ready to go.

She then proceeded to break down regularly and spectacularly for the remainder of our time together, even more often than I did.

The transmission went out a few times, and the radiator needed replaced twice. She burned through a quart of oil every few weeks. Three new water pumps. New clutch master cylinder, slave cylinder. Gaskets galore. I lost track of the repairs.

Once, I put an entire new (rebuilt) engine in her, driving to Rocky Mount and stopping once an hour to re-fill the radiator with water and the engine with oil, since she had a cracked head and would’ve died otherwise. We made it, they dropped in a new engine, and she continued to burn through oil and coolant just like before.

And since I lived at the beach, things were always rusting and falling off – wiring, tubing, pieces that held wiring and tubing, wheel axles, and most gloriously of all, the drive shaft.

I was approaching the Oak Island bridge one day when there was a loud clunk, and the truck came to a rolling stop.

I’d learned to throw on hazard lights in a hurry, and I coasted her partway to the side. When I looked under the truck, there was her leg bone, lying in the road. That one set her back a few days.

I couldn’t even begin to count the times she left me stranded, either stopping mid-drive or refusing to start again once parked. On occasion, some good Samaritan got me going again, but just as often, I called my favorite garage and waited roadside for a ride in the tow truck.

I came to enjoy hanging out at the garage, watching the mechanics tinker and chatting until someone had time to drive me home. I liked the smell of garage bays, oil and metal, absolutely nothing clean.

Later, when I married, my husband did not find my truck as cute as I did. He became my ride when the truck broke down and was flabbergasted at the places he had to come rescue me.

“How’d you get way out here? And why? This is the very farthest, most out-of-reach spot in the whole county!”

“I like to drive around.”

No, she wasn’t reliable, but that truck was good to me in other ways.

The four-wheel-drive always worked, so the times I ended up somewhere strange and off-road, she got me out. Sure, I had to get out of the truck and hand-turn her stiff locking wheel cabs (located in the center of the tire) in whatever weather and conditions, but then she’d get moving. She could handle beach cruising and pull trailers.

During my gardening phase, I loaded her bed with mulch and topsoil by the yard, and her shocks took the weight, slowly carrying a loader-bucket worth of black gold to my yard for roses and zinnias, a growing need to nurture.

She carried my dogs, house paints, plants, and stuff that just lived back there – a big green oiled army tarp, bungees, ropes. At times, she carried me.

When I took care of horses for a few years, she carried buckets of feed from one paddock to the next and lead ropes, manured leather boots, and flakes of hay.

She let me see, sitting up high. She made me feel invincible.

When I worked in a trailer teaching science within four miles of a nuclear power plant, I told the kids – if the nuclear alarm sounds, load in the back of my truck like sardines, and we’re out of here.

And being an old gray truck, she didn’t require much of a beauty regimen. I sprayed her undersides with the hose after salt excursions and swept out the bed after hauling dirt. But otherwise, I only washed and waxed her once a year, which is when I also gave her a spray-paint touch-up.

I bought the color to match and spent most of the can on the hood, which always faded first because of how hot she ran, then the rusty spots, finishing at the cab roof if there was any extra, where she peeled in the sun.

She went years with a bent back bumper, after I was rear-ended by a van of folks without car insurance. I dented one side under a house on pilings, and to match, dented the other, too. Those things did not affect her beauty.

I would’ve kept her forever. Until I got pregnant, and that tiny “extended cab” did not have room for a car seat.

So I sold her, pricing her too high at first, unwilling to believe she wasn’t worth her weight in motor oil. The man who bought her had never driven a stick shift and did not speak English. I took him for a ride, ostensibly to show him how the truck worked, but more so, to show how much she was loved.

My mom says she still sees that truck around town sometimes, and I wish I did. Those old Toyotas can go forever, I hear. May the wind be ever under your wings, old girl, and may your drive shaft never fall off again.

“It’s Nothing” (Main Street Rag Winter 2024 Issue)

When I sold my old pickup truck
to a man who’d never driven a stick shift
we went for a ride
so I could show him how to use it.

I spoke of the new engine
that still leaks oil
and the new clutch
looser than the old one.

Third gear’s sticky
reverse is worse
once the drive shaft
just fell right off.

Four-wheel drive works;
I touch up rusty spots
once a year with spray paint
during its annual wash and wax.

Hear that roar?
I like how it sits up so high;
it won’t get stuck –
it’s useful, tough, strong.

No room for a baby seat, though.

The man nodded along, silently.
He did not speak English.
I did not know Spanish.
I hope you enjoy, sir. Gracias. De nada.

– by Jessi Waugh