by
Robert LaFrance
And so they go into the woods –
grim-faced men intent on the hunt. They return a few hours later by the same
route, but this time their trailer is full of stovewood cut in 16-inch sticks.
When they get home, they will rent a wood-splitter and reduce the sizes until
the ‘better half’ can lift the blocks into the wood heater while the male of
the species sits back, reads the paper, and sips on a lemonade.
I mentioned that their trailers are
full of stovewood, but you will note that I mentioned nothing about the box of
their pickup truck. No, no, NO! The wood might scratch the paint.
You know you’re getting absolutely
ancient when you can remember the time that ‘half-tons’ or pickup trucks were
actually used to carry heavy loads. My last pickup truck (unless I win a
lottery) was a 1974 GMC that I bought from Jim Dixon. Although it was six years
old at the time and only cost me $1500 or so, I received a good warranty: “It’s
a 30-30 warranty, Bob. Thirty minutes or thirty feet.”
In fact that truck lasted me five or
six years with little trouble, except for the time it caught fire up around Two
Brooks or Blue Mountain Bend and I got out, all set to let it burn and collect
the insurance, but a truck driver stopped and brought out his fire
extinguisher. I told him to let it burn, but he said his religious beliefs wouldn’t
allow that. Instead of getting $1500+ in insurance payment (that was when
insurance companies actually paid legitimate claims without argument) I ended
up with a $496 bill for replacing all the wiring, plus the towing bill. I
hadn’t set the fire and felt properly aggrieved, but now I would look at it
differently of course.
Back to the subject of how pickup
trucks have changed over the years: I mentioned that I had bought mine for
$1500, but today that MIGHT buy the ashtray in a new Dodge Ram. I say again
that another big difference is that back then we actually put things on the
backs of pickups. Mine would hold half a cord of stovewood. Seen any new trucks
these days with stovewood on the back? If it were ever to happen, the owner of
that $45,000 heavy-duty limousine would have to buy a $2000 velvet cushion to
protect the paint.
Another thing about that 1974 GMC I
used to own: It was the last vehicle I ever owned that I was able to repair.
The alternator ‘went’ on it, and I actually took wrenches that I kept in a
container called ‘a tool box’ and took off the alternator. A friend drove me to
Walter Hurley’s garage in Andover where I got new brushes and had it rewound,
whatever that might mean. I took it back to Birch Ridge where I was living at
the time and put it back on the truck, tightening both the belts. It started
right off.
Picture doing that today to your
2011 Altima or Toyota. You would need three electronic technicians and a canary
to help you do the job, as well as ‘an automotive technician’ and seven or
eight psychologists to deal with all the emotional stress involved in replacing
every sensor on Plant Earth. Contrast that with the way I took off the
alternator on that 1974 GMC halfton. I reached in the old toolbox, picked out a
half-inch open-ended wrench, unscrewed two bolts so I could loosen the belts,
then I took out the alternator. Pretty complicated.
The worst thing – or, as they say in
Germany, the wurst thing – is that, when I was halfway through this column,
a fellow from Sisson Ridge came by and
he was driving a pickup truck. It wasn’t one of those $45,000 vehicles that
won’t hold ten sticks of wood, but one quite similar to my old GMC. The box on
the back would hold sheets of 4’x8’ plywood, or half a cord of wood. I said to
myself: “There goes my credibility!” I didn’t think there were any of those
left. So, pretending I was trying to get rid of an annoying squirrel, I shot
the driver of the pickup and parked the truck in the woods out back of Moose
Mountain. I hope no one finds out.
I suppose my point, if I have a
point, is that people are paying an awful amount of money for vehicles that are
of little use other than for going from Point A to Point B. I stood along the
sidewalk in Perth-Andover one day last week and talked to a chap from Plaster
rock. As we talked – and it wasn’t any more than seven or eight minutes – I
estimated that the purchase prices of the vehicles, not counting
tractor-trailers, that passed by would have exceeded half a million dollars.
Enough to move five or six Perth-Andover houses to higher ground.
-end-
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