The Rules of the Universe

Pickup trucks, fascism, and more...

I’ve been under the weather this week with a sinus infection so I’m reposting this from July 2023. It’s one of my most popular columns.

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Dad was a carpenter.

I remember when I was very young he kept his tools in the trunk of our only family car, a Chevy sedan. Every morning he would lift the trunk lid and put his sawhorses in, and in those days before bungee cords he would tie the trunk lid down with rope so the sawhorses wouldn’t fall out, and then drive to the construction site where he was working. Every night, he would take the sawhorses out and put them by the side of the house, and slam the trunk lid shut so the tools wouldn’t get wet or stolen. I learned that to those in the construction trades back then and probably now, there were few people lower than a tool thief because stealing a man’s tools destroyed his livelihood. And back then probably his family’s as well.

They hanged horse thieves in the old west, which on principle I understand.

I remember that image of Dad moving the sawhorses in and out of the truck from before I was in school, which means I was probably four or five years old. Which made Dad 25 or 26. 

Dad’s boss was a guy named Larry. I remember his last name, but I’m not going to share it. He likely has descendants who loved him, even if he, and possibly them, are dead. In my memories, he wore a straw or canvas fedora and had a nice smile.

But Larry didn’t always make payroll on time, so one day Dad went to the bank and got a loan, and the next day he had a construction business. The few guys who worked for Larry came to work for Dad, and it wasn’t long before Larry’s main client, a lumber yard in Prairie City, contracted their work out to Dad, because apparently Larry wasn’t good on that end of the business world either. By the time I was a teenager and working for Dad in the summer when I was out of school, we were framing a house a week, helped by some of my buddies and some old hands, who were mostly my cousins and uncles.

Shortly after he started his business and had some success, Dad bought a pickup truck, and I learned that having a pickup truck is one of the most significant material blessings a person could have. Now he could put his tools in a toolbox in the back of the truck, and pile the bed high with sawhorses, ladders, lumber, whatever he wanted. Even men. Riding in the back of the pickup truck was always an option. To me, it still is. Dad’s purchase was a monumental event. He had escaped the limitations of the trunk of his Chevy sedan. It was a miracle.

I learned from Dad and other men with pickup trucks that no one actually “owns” a pickup truck. It’s on loan to you from the universe so someone will take care of it. It belongs to all of humanity. You can’t “hog it” or be stingy with it. If someone asks to borrow your pickup truck, the only correct answer is “yes.” If you don’t share your pickup truck, it’s bad karma for you, and the cosmos teeters on its axis a bit.

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Through the 70s Dad had two or three pickups at a time for his construction company, all blue. He loved the color blue, as do I. One of those old pickups fell into my hands, and it made me feel that I had arrived as a construction worker. With a truck, I could do anything. Haul wood, sawhorses, tools, and even men and boys. It was a source of power and respect among those in the business. Despite this opportunity, other circumstances demanded that I leave that world. 

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The last nail I pounded for Dad was on the roof of Grandma Fenner’s new house he built for her in Mitchellville. It was maybe 1974. It was just the two of us, and he started laying shingles on the front of the house, and me on the back. We laid shingles all day, and as it was our custom, we raced to beat the other to the top, knowing that each of us would nail six nails to a shingle. At the end of the day, we both drove our last nail at the same time, stood up, grinned at each other, and then capped the roof together. I think he slowed down for his last few shingles, letting me catch up. He’d let me tie him, but never beat him.

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A few years later the farm crisis hit, and it sucker punched the construction industry too, and Dad’s business fizzled out. You regularly hear about the problems the farm crises left for farmers, but carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and more suffered collateral damage that lasted nearly a generation. It’s a good thing I didn’t join Dad in the business after college. We would have both been busted.

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Over the years, I’ve had a couple of new pickups but didn’t like worrying about the first scratch or dent, which I know will always happen. I prefer to buy used pickups, and I drive them into the ground. I squeeze the last dab of use out of them, and then most of the time near the end I give them away to mechanic friends who possess enough knowledge to keep them running without costing an arm and a leg. One time I gave a 15-year-old pickup that I thought was on its last legs to a custodian friend in Albuquerque, and he drove it for five more years. 

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In my line of work talking to people, and as an anthropologist, I never want to drive a better truck than the person I’m talking to. If someone thinks they are better than me because my truck is old and beat up, it doesn’t bother me. They’ll still talk with me. Alternatively, I never want anyone to think that I think I am better than them because I drive a better truck (even if I wouldn’t). That might shut them up. You may find this odd and believe that I’m overthinking human relationships. Maybe, but that’s what I do.

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In the ’80s and ’90s, working on the Zuni and Navajo Reservations in New Mexico and Arizona doing archaeology and historic preservation, a pickup truck for hauling equipment was a necessity, and we piled students and workers in tight, just like we used to do in Iowa on construction jobs when we needed to. It was the only option. 

And if you are an insurance agent pooh-poohing and tut-tutting about financial liability and safety, you can kiss my ass. People do what they gotta do.

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Working in the Chihuahua Desert in Mexico, I learned the importance of picking up hitchhikers, who would tell you where they were headed, and then hop into the back of the truck. Leaving them alone on seldom traveled roads in the desert would have been inhumane.

One time about 40 miles from the nearest town, I picked up an old man who was limping, and I invited him up front. He apologized for how he smelled and pulled up his pant leg to show me that he had a compound fracture of his leg. Three or so inches of bone had pierced his skin from inside out like a bone arrow, and the skin had nearly healed around the bone. I asked him why he hadn’t gone to the doctor, and he told me he didn’t have any money. I nodded that I understood, and he shrugged.

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One time in the 90’s in the middle of the Mexican desert on a road that didn’t exist, I got high-centered in a deep rut and knocked the muffler and tailpipe off my truck. A couple of people were riding with me.

I got out of the truck, grabbed a shovel from the bed, and tossed the hot muffler and tailpipe into the back using a shovel to protect my hands. I got back in behind the steering wheel and drove away, more careful this time, the truck growling, because, of course, it didn’t have a muffler or tailpipe.

One of the people riding with me was a young woman.

She looked at me and said, “You didn’t yell, swear, or throw and punch things when the muffler came off.”

“What good would that do?” I replied. “It’s not going to put the muffler back on.”

We were married a couple of years later and our kids are now grown and gone, living their best lives. 

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Now I use my pickup mainly for hauling wood and making trips to the landfill. But I would still be lost without it.

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When Dad died, his last truck was a 20+-year-old red Chevy S10, a small truck. My sisters didn’t need it, but I could use it. When I cleaned it out, it had lots of memories of him in it. Receipts from lumber yards, notes, and pair of the thin brown jersey gloves we carpenters used to wear in the winter years ago. Maybe they still do. You can’t “finger nails” in thick gloves, and it took only an hour or so of “fingering nails” in the winter before the fingertips of the gloves were gone. Most people don’t know what “fingering nails” means. It’s an art. When pounding nails, the best carpenters establish a rhythm keeping the hammer in motion. The swinging and the hammering never stop until the wall, or whatever you are building, is done. While the hammer is on the upswing, one’s weaker hand (my left) is “fingering nails” pulled from your nail bag and placing them to get the head up and the point of the nail placed on the wood where it needs to be before your hammer strikes. Along with the efficiency of the rhythm, comes pleasure when the nail is driven perfectly.

This, of course, was before nail guns, which are faster, but the results are sloppy and ugly. There’s no art to it and your house is looser than it should be.

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My mechanic friend Kenny sold me my current truck in the top photo for $2,000. That’s a price I like, and I’ve driven the truck for a few years now. It’s a bargain, but its new truck smell was gone before George W. and Laura Bush settled into the White House for the first time. Kenny has retired, but he was the best mechanic anyone could want. One time after I drove by his shop, he waved as I passed, then texted me that my right rear passenger side tire was going flat. Everyone should have a mechanic that cares like that. Kenny wouldn’t want me to tell anyone this, but sometimes when people needed their vehicle repaired but didn’t have enough money to even buy a loaf of bread, he would fix it and let them pay him after payday. He’s “retired” now, so I can.

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Dad’s truck sat in our yard for a while before COVID hit. I drove it every once in a while to keep its fluids from jelling and battery charged. I knew I should get rid of it, but couldn’t because it was Dad’s. Besides, we didn’t know how bad COVID and the economy would get at the time, and I figured that if a friend out of work missed too many car payments, I could give them Dad’s truck if they lost theirs to the system. It was like having a truck in the bank.

Somewhere in that time we were out of town for a week or so to Colorado to visit family, and the trans teenage son of family friends took care of our cats and dogs. I knew he didn’t have a vehicle of his own.

When we talked to him at the house after we got back to pay him for helping us and give him a cool touristy Colorado t-shirt, I asked him, “Do you want that red pickup out there in the yard?

He smiled but didn’t quite know what to do with the offer.

Maybe a month later, his mom was sitting at our kitchen table having a conversation with Annie, and I walked by and asked, “Does your son want that red truck out there?”

She smiled, and asked, “How much?”

“A dollar,” I replied.

As I remember it, the next day the young man and his father came by and looked at the truck. The father is a big burly construction worker who likes tinkering with and fixing vehicles. His grip is strong enough to crush a walnut. I told them what I knew about the truck, and they found out some things that I didn’t know like a windshield wiper was broke.

As they popped the hood and peered inside, I felt the warmth of Dad beside me as they inspected his truck.

I don’t know what Dad thought about trans people. It was never a topic of conversation. It wasn’t an issue. For him, for us, or for the American public in general. It wasn’t part of public discourse like it is now.

Dad lived long enough to tell me he thought Trump was a con man and people who followed him fools. He died before Republicans in elected office started demonizing trans kids, librarians, teachers, and minorities and rewriting history. He was a voracious reader of 20th-century history and was a lay scholar of Churchill, Roosevelt, World War II and knew fascism when he saw it. 

I suspect Dad would have seen the parallels between Hitler’s demonization of Jews, the Roma, homosexuals, and more, and Republican rhetoric and policies today. 

Regardless, when the young man drove off in his “new” truck with a smile on his face, I knew that Dad would have been more than happy his truck had provided a kid his “wings.” Dad loved kids, and he would have loved this one and others like him no matter what. Like we all should.

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A month or so after the truck changed hands, we had a problem at the house I couldn’t fix. The construction worker friend whose son was now driving Dad’s truck came over to help me.

He fixed the problem, and I was next to worthless standing beside him, watching him work. So, I asked, “What do I owe you?”

I was ready to write a check when he stood up and looked down at me with a steely gaze.

“What do you owe me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“What do you owe me?” he asked again.

I nodded.

“Nothing,” he said. “You gave my son a truck…and you know I’m a gearhead. My son was never interested in mechanics before, and now we work on his truck together, and I have now bonded with my son like we never have before. Thank you.”

He packed up his tools, turned, and said, “You will never owe me anything.”

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I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please check out our work here. Subscribe! Become a paid subscriber if you can afford it. Please and thank you. We need you. Thanks for being part of the team! Want to buy me lunch or a cup of coffee? Venmo @Robert-Leonard-238. My friend Spencer Dirks and I have a podcast titled the Iowa Revolution. Check it out! We can get ornery. And have fun! I also publish Cedar Creek Nature Notes, about Violet the Dog and my adventures on our morning walks at Cedar Bluffs Natural Area in Mahaska County, Iowa.

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