When I was growing up, my father had a 1972 mustard-yellow
GMC pick-up truck. It ran…rough. At some point in its history, my father had
lost the gasoline cap, so he had cut off the top of a Coors Light can and slid
it over the gasoline intake. It had a
cover over the bed, and the back could be converted into a make-shift child
storage facility, complete with bench seats and carpet. Or it’s probably more suffice to say that the
bench seats were covered in carpet.
Gray-black, course, itchy carpet.
I know this, because my brother and I spent almost all of our vacations
sitting, playing, and laying on it as we trekked around the country.
My father had built the benches himself, and they could
easily be pulled in or out of the bed of the truck. They opened up so luggage and things could be
stored underneath them. All in all, it
really wasn’t such a bad setup, except for the heat. Summers in the south are brutal, with
temperatures easily reaching triple digits.
But what’s worse than the heat is the humidity. And there was no air conditioning in the back
of that truck. The cover had sliding
windows, which we opened when we could, so we could get a breeze, and my father
installed these miniatures fans in the back to help with the air flow. But it was still incredibly hot, and the shag-carpet
benches only made it hotter.
My father had replaced the back window of the truck with one
of those sliding windows, so we could access the front cab if we needed
to. My brother and I would take turns
sticking our heads through the sliding window into the cab to enjoy the air
conditioner. My father didn’t like us
doing this, because it let all of the cool air out and all of the hot air in,
so he’d generally make us go back into the bed.
The upside was that we had all of the snacks in the back, so we
controlled the food supply to the front.
We used this to our advantage to gain air conditioning privileges.
So, this is how I spent all of my childhood vacations. Lying in the back of a mustard-yellow truck
on an itchy shag-carpet bench, hot air and gasoline fumes blowing through the
open windows, playing with Legos and GI Joes, fighting with my brother, and
hording the snacks. And that was the
backdrop for some of my fondest memories.
