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What Happens When You Love Your Pickup and Country Too Much

Lordy, Lordy!  All my parts are failing me!


Some guy down I-35 replaced my hip joint without telling me that it involved taking apart all my leg muscles and braiding them together in a creative new way.  A dentist over on Penn jackhammered an old bridge, pretty much filling the channel with the debris.  Then the cruise control in my pickup disappeared, probably on vacation with my eye doctor who has made my right eye into a career, and an Italian cruise.  While they were explaining to me why my truck needed a computer capable of controlling protons aimed at God particles, they also casually mentioned that the truck battery cranking power was down to one crank, so I cranked to Costco for a new battery.  Costco doesn't install batteries, so I did battle with the acid and corrosion in the garage.  


As you recognize, a man and his pickup are not easily separated, or distinguished.  I still do not have a new computer, nor a cruise control mode, since the cost of the critter is pretty much what a new bridge costs.  Driving a truck that cannot control its own speed is pretty iffy, on snow.  Not a lot of snow.  Just enough to remind me that I need four new truck tires, too.  


Congress says it is hard to balance the national budget.  That is not our problem!  Wrong budget!  Wrong solution!  What is hard to balance are Michelin tires with a social security income.  And a battery and a computer and a tooth.   It makes my hip hurt.  


I know what drove Newt Gingrich to leaving his first wife, and his second wife, and Congress:  he loved his country too much, and was working too hard to buy new tires and a new truck computer.  


I have asked Mari whether she would mind if I bought new Michelins, and she suggested something used, or retreaded, but that she was not going to go shopping with me.  So far, all I have is a line of credit at Al's Good As New Previously Driven Tires.  Al suggested a $500,000 line of credit, but I said I could buy a blond whitewall for that.  He said he had sold the last one.  

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