My four-wheeled vehicle these days is a basic Mazda pickup, vintage Ought-two -- four cylinder, 5 speed, vinyl split bench. The bedliner is the only option. No CD player. It's a good little truck when all thirteen hamsters are awake and running to the same cadence. But pitch it an eight-degree slope, and it won't hold 55 in fifth. Gotta grab fourth and make sure your General Karma is all paid up and in good standing.
But I've had half a yard of pea gravel in the thing for the in-laws, who don't have the git up&go that they used to. (And they have a Honda CRV-EX. When did they start naming vehicles after the birth canal!?) And I should get plates that say POOP WGN cuz back when I did garden, I'd fill it with free horse exhaust for the compost heap.
And since where we live there's no trash pickup, my pickup is stuck with taht doody duty. I have to run six cans (what'll fit) up two 8% grades to the county dump. I can do it in fifth, trading momentum for altitude with an eyeball glued to the slowly sliding speedo, just so long as that *&%#@ Buick doesn't pull out of Deadass Road and make me brake to forty RIGHT at the bottom of the hill, only to belch smoke and charge away from me ... oh whole 'nother story.
The kids are getting BIG. Squeezing the three of us side by side, especially with coats, backpacks, lunches and H's clarinet case, is no longer easy. And if H shouts "Barrett!" (our version of "Shotgun!"), T the poor boy is stuck riding Ma'am.
I have two kids here playing (such a tender euphemism) on two clarinets that are one-third note out of tune. Aiyoh crotch on a sharp stick.
cheers js |
