The Truck Stories
The story I am about to tell you is probably my all time favorite high school story and the closest thing I have to being an irresponsible, daring teenager. But before I can tell you Our Truck Story, I have to tell you THE Truck Story.
My best friend Laura’s dad was the high school science teacher at our small Christian school. He was (and still is) one of the favorite teachers at that school. He could make science interesting and he had certain traditions that were legendary. (Making peanut brittle in chemistry? Awesome!) The Truck Story was one of them. There is absolutely no way I can do the story justice, but I will attempt it.
In addition to being a science teacher, Mr. W had a dairy farm. On this farm, he had an old truck that he used to get around on the farm, move hay bales, and other, uh, farm-ly duties. (I may be from the country, but I’m quite ignorant of actual farm life.) Over time, different parts of the truck wore out, but it still ran. You just had to do certain things differently. For example, in order to crank the engine, you had to actually go under the hood and start it with a screwdriver. It was something he’d done a hundred times, but one day, something different happened. He opened the hood, started the car, and another problem reared its head. The throttle got stuck and the engine roared. Nothing too out of the ordinary, so he slammed the hood, and then yet another problem emerged.
The clutch tended to slip the car into gear sometimes, and when he slammed the hood, the car slipped into reverse, and since the throttle was stuck, the truck took off, barreling backwards across their yard. Then, it hit a pole, shifted into drive, charged Mr. W, and then veered off into the pasture. The last thing he saw was the truck, continuing to accelerate, going over an embankment and through his neighbor’s fence. He eventually found it a half a mile from his house, through five fences and a swamp. It had climbed a utility pole and was quietly idling.
It’s so much better to hear him tell it, and over the years, he has really refined the story. It became one of those legendary traditions, and every year, all of his classes begged to hear it. We heard it in 7th grade Life Science, 9th grade Physical Science, and 10th grade Biology.
The summer after our 10th grade year, Steve, Cody, Laura, and I were hanging out at her house, and we decided to go for a ride in the legendary truck. Laura and Steve were in the front, and Cody and I were in the back. Over the years, a hole had worn in the middle of the bed of the truck, and some barbed wire to repair fences was stored in a loop around the hole. I didn’t think much of it and took my perch on the side of the truck. Laura took off into their huge open yard, bouncing over dips and bumps and continuing to accelerate. She kept going faster and faster, sharply turning left and right.
I went from sitting on the edge of the truck, to sitting on the tire hump, to eventually bouncing on the bed of the truck, trying to avoid the barbed wire and the huge hole in the middle of the bed of the truck, and Cody was no help at all. He was in the same situation on the opposite side of the truck. I was screaming, Cody was yelling, and we were both holding on for dear life. At this point, Steve stuck his arm out the passenger side window and sprayed something at us. Since I was screaming, it got all in my mouth. Then, mercifully, Laura slowed down. I scrambled back onto the tire hump and away from the barbed wire, and she banged on the side of the truck. I knew exactly what that meant…it was the signal to her old dog, Lady, to jump into the bed of the truck.
Let me take an aside here and tell you a little bit about Lady. She was a hound dog mutt that they had reluctantly started feeding a few years back. I loved dogs, and I was always very affectionate with Lady. She was sweet, if somewhat dim. She seemed to be perpetually pregnant, but she was a poor mother. In an effort to protect her pups from the hot Texas sun, she would carry them off, hide them, and bury them in the dirt, where they were almost always suffocated before anyone could find them. She also had the largest…well, my mom called them “dinners”…that I had ever seen. They sagged nearly to the ground and were generally leaking. Sorry to be so graphic, but the mental picture is essential to the story.
So…Cody and I were in the back of the truck. Lady jumped in too, and Laura took off again, seemingly going faster than before across bumpy pasture land. Of course, Lady was excited to see me, and when I started screaming again, barbed wire still poking my butt, she licked my face and essentially got to first base with me. I screamed at Cody to help me, but he shook his head, mouth shut tightly, trying to avoid Lady’s advances as well as the barbed wire and whatever Steve was spraying at us.
Eventually, the truck ride ended, and that’s when we found out Steve said he would give Laura $5 if she could throw one of us from the truck. He sprayed tire sealant at us in an attempt to help her out.
Twelve years later, Cody, Steve, Laura and I are all still friends, and, whenever we are all in town at the same time, we almost always rehash this story. Usually, it’s me telling the story because I still get so animated, so outraged that tire sealant was sprayed in my mouth, that barbed wire poked my butt, that a dog gave me my first kiss. It’s been a good way to initiate the significant others who have come on the scene. The last time we revisited that night, telling Steve’s now-wife about our crazy high school shenanigans, I looked around at my friends and realized that we’ve all changed a lot, and our friendships have changed too. But we still laughed at that story like we’re hearing it for the first time.
