Republican Party Reptile(31)
That was New Year’s Eve, and we celebrated that night in the MGM Grand. I’m sorry to say that the Ferrari does not confer great good fortune at the blackjack table. But we were paid a fine compliment the next day at Caesar’s Palace. Instead of making us wait for valet parking, the lot jockey rushed up to us where we were fifth or sixth in line. “No receipt necessary for you, sir,” he said, and swept the car around in a tight U-turn and parked it right in front.
And that evening we headed up the Barstow incline to Los Angeles and got our ticket and I dropped Julian off so he could return to the staid world of business acumen, if he can. I kept the Ferrari for as long as I could the next day, roving around Beverly Hills and driving up and down Mulholland Drive, but it had to be delivered to Ferrari’s West Coast headquarters in Compton by five o’clock. It was a terrible thing to give it back, but I headed down the Harbor Freeway feeling every bit as good as I had for every moment since we first hit a hundred back in Delaware. It was a glow that wouldn’t fade. And I still felt good when I flipped the keys onto the receptionist’s desk. And I still felt good when I hopped into the limousine I’d thoughtfully charged to Car and Driver to ease the pain of transition. And, in fact, I still feel good today.
But the story ends on a sad note. The movie that this incredible car traveled all that way to be in will be called Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow in Hawaii, so maybe western civilization hasn’t quite been perfected yet.
High-Speed
Performance
Characteristics of
Pickup Trucks
I’m an experienced pickup truck driver. I was driving my pickup the other Saturday night after having—as I made very clear to the police—hardly anything to drink and while going—honest, officer—about thirty miles an hour when, I swear, a deer ran into the road, and I was forced to pull off the highway with such abruptness that it took the wrecker crew six hours to get my truck out of the woods.
An experienced pickup truck driver is a person who’s wrecked one. An inexperienced pickup truck driver is a person who’s about to wreck one. A very inexperienced pickup truck driver doesn’t even own a pickup but will probably be mistaken for a wild antelope by people jack-lighting pronghorns in somebody else’s pickup truck. The foremost high-speed-handling characteristic of pickup trucks is the remarkably high speed with which they head from wherever you are directly into trouble. This has to do with beer. The minute you get in a pickup you want a beer. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but personally I blame it on Jimmy Carter having been President.
You see, everyone in America has always wanted to be a redneck. That’s why all those wig-and-knicker colonial guys moved to Kentucky with Davy Crockett even before he got his TV show. And witness aristocratic young Theodore Roosevelt’s attempt to be a “rough rider.” Even Henry James used the same last name as his peckerwood cousin Jesse. And as Henry James would tell you, if anyone read him anymore and also if he were still alive, the single most prominent distinguishing feature of the redneck is that he drives a pickup truck. This explains why all of us are muscling these things around downtown Minneapolis and Cincinnati.
You may be wondering where Jimmy Carter comes in. Well, Jimmy Carter was a redneck just like we’re all trying to be, but he was a sober redneck. Most of us had never seen a sober redneck, and we have the Reagan landslide to testify that none of us ever want to see one again. It was a horrifying apparition. And ever since Jimmy Carter all of us rednecks have had to be very careful to be drunk rednecks lest we turn into some kind of awful creature with big buck teeth and a State Department full of human-rights yahoos.
Thus the pickup truck has become the world’s only beerguided motor vehicle. Let’s examine one unit of this guidance system. Let’s examine another. Let’s examine the whole six-pack. Now let’s drive over and see if any ducks have come in on Hodge Pond. Whoops! Crash! Forgot the camper back wasn’t bolted down.
THE PICKUP: DESIGN AND
ENGINEERING
A pickup truck is basically a back porch with an engine attached. Both a pickup and a back porch are good places to drink beer because you can take a leak standing up from either. Pickup trucks are generally a little faster downhill than back porches, with the exception of certain California back porches during mudslide season. But back porches get better gas mileage.
Another important difference between back porches and pickup trucks is the suspension systems. Back porches are most often seated firmly on the ground by means of cement-block foundations. Nothing nearly that sophisticated is used in pickup trucks. The front suspension of a modern pickup truck is fully independent. Each wheel is independently bolted right to the frame. The rear suspension is a live axle usually attached by a rope to someone else’s bumper while he tries to pull you out of the woods.