I have this editing job I really don't want to do, but I have to because it's money. So I dutifully assume my Edition Position (sideways on couch, manuscript on lap)--and abruptly think, "Hey! I know how to get that rosebush out of there!" Papers go back on the floor, and I go outside and survey the situation.
I have to hack away about a ton of pampas grass before I can even see the base of the damn monster mostly-dead rosebush; this is like trying to disassemble a sofa with tweezers, and it takes half an hour. Then, I fire up the Bronco and back it around into position, loop one end of a nylon rope into the trailer hitch receiver (I loaned the actual hitch to . . . somebody, sometime--who remembers?) and weave the other around the base of the offending bush. Hop back into the truck, reignite, put it in first gear, and motor majestically across the street, one eye on the rearview mirror, where I see the big nasty Thing slowly, slowwwwwwwly lean, seem to stretchhhh--and then POP! right out of the ground and come flying toward the car, at which point I speed up so it doesn't hit me. And somehow manage to STOP before driving into my neighbor's living room, dragging my trophy behind me.
The Bronco: is it a car, or is it a truck? It's the baby-version Bronco II, the first SUV of its size back in 1986. My mother bought it to tow behind her RV--and then discovered it's not the towable kind; in order to do so, you have to drop the driveshaft, etc. etc., which I inadvertently did while speeding up I-95 in New Hampshire one December day; in 7 degrees (25 below freezing, if my math is right), the driveshaft snapped--dead of shock, no doubt--an unforgettable experience as I was alone and dressed for a party, not for hiking across the freeway and standing in a phone book, shrieking at the AAA. Pneumonia followed.
Anyway--car or truck? I favored Truck until my friend Kerry, a merciless truth-teller, dryly observed, "That's not a truck, Doc, it's your mother's car. You don't need 4-wheel drive to bring home the groceries!" And the LOML, way back then, observed in astonishment that sounded a lot like horror, "This is a discretionary-income item!" (Now, of course, he has one.) Well, OK, maybe overall, it's a car. But surprisingly often, it's been a truck--just to get out of my driveway in Cambridge, for instance. It's always at its absolute best in bad weather, especially torrential rain, which it knows a lot about. And today, wrangling that rosebush, my Bronco, now at 150K miles, was a Truck.
OK, now I really do have to get at that manuscript. REALLY, this time.
Sometimes, if it weren't for deadlines, nothing that was supposed to get done would ever get done. Perhaps if you lined up your deadlines properly, you'd stay insanely busy? Of course, if you keep pulling roses out of the ground with a Bronco, maybe you're half way there already?? :)
Posted by: Tom Montag | September 21, 2004 at 05:57 PM