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Frank had done one side of the built-in box with "Seattle or Bust", the other sid^^
with "Westward, Ha!", and on the back it said "You're following a couple of Dolls".
This proved totally tantalizing to many who could hardly wait to pass the truck as it
lumbered along the freeways. Most often their faces gave them away when they saw that
whatever that sign meant, it didn't mean bimbos.
The Doll:-: worried a bit about someone trying to get into the truck at night. They
calmed down aflE^orthey had printed a small sign beside the padlock. It said "You toucha
this lock, we breaka you head." One senses, of course, that the truck, unlike a Luis
Vuitton suitcase, did not offer the would-be thief any glittering possibilities. It
appeared to me more a vehicle that poor migrant workers would use to transport their
meagre belongings in.
In Seattle, the Dolls had planned to sell the truck and fly home. They figured
they would be bounced to pieces after that trip. Oddly enough,they found themselves
putting off running an ad. Then, when they did run it, they got picky about people who
rang up [like they wanted to ask 'em for references and things like that!]. Suddenly
it dawned on them that they couldn't part with Big Red. So they threw their suitcases
into the now empty box behind and started hone. In Missouri they pulled into a place
that had old booze barrels cheap, and they tossed in some of those fragrant things.
By the time they got back to the weigh station in Kinston, North Carolina, that truck's
inside smelled pretty ripe. And, to the surprise of no one who knows Murphy's Laws,
that was the only weigh station on the whole journey that checked on anything. Not
another place anywhere has there been the remotest interest. No problem, though, they
had the papers and all was in order. Luckily, the guy in that station had no sense of
smell.
And so Big Red began to grow older. It had to be taken more often to Charles
Barnes, the truck doctor in Morehead. Charles pampers that truck as if it's a brand
new Cadillac. And it stays in working order. It's got to; people need it for every
thing. Before Bogue Banks Country Club got is own truck. Big Red was borrowed countless
times for heavy duty jobs over there. Kids move back to college with it, people move
stuff from one house to another, and it got a good workout some years ago when volun
teers decided they would clear the lot for the new Town Hall, not trusting it to a
bulldozer!
That truck's been taken many times to haul boats, clams, crab traps, garbage, pine
needles, logs, manure [talk about smells!], and just a couple of weeks ago a group of
wcanen from Greenville rode in the back wearing custom made T-shirts that said, for un
known reasons, "Fruit of the Dunes Against AIDS".
It got painted again recently. Bill had this spray gun and, after taping all parts
that weren't meant to be painted, he went wild with that thing. When he finished, there
stood Big [Brighter than ever] Red, looking like a solid truck-shaped thing from outer
space, surrounded on the street by spilled paint that made it seem as if a murder had
been committed on the spot. Bill, at last, after almost 15 years in the South, was in
deed a true red neck, and it took half a cup of paint remover to get his neck back to
its normal color, by which time that neck was about to blister from so much attention.
The red truck restsquietly under the trees between jobs. It is still available
to anyone in need of its services. There is never a charge; a nice gesture, though,
is the putting in of some gas at the end of a run.
oOo
MARY DOLL