Sports car can’t cut it

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A few years ago, I went out and bought myself one of those sexy convertible imports. Maybe it

was a crisis of middle life.

Maybe I thought owning such an automobile would take away notice of the creeping years. A guy driving a sexy convertible import - a flashy red one - is conquering hills in a metallic blur, not going over them into the land of arthritis and prunes on the other side.

The trouble was the car never quite fit me. Perfume on a hog, that sort of thing.

I looked and felt out of place in it. People would see me in it and look at me as if to say, “Look at that old man driving his kid’s car.”

Or they would say, “Look at that person having a middle-age crisis. Why doesn’t he get a Lincoln and join the AARP?”

I was terribly fastidious about the car as well. I wouldn’t even allow my dog Catfish, the black Lab, to ride in it.

I was afraid he would drool on the expensive leather seats or leave a hair. He would look at me as if to say, “You love that stupid car more than you do me.”

One morning I went out and found a flat tire on my sexy convertible import. It looked like something had gnawed the air out of it.

The good news here is I no longer have that car. I traded it. I did what very few people have ever done.

I traded my flashy red, sexy convertible import for a truck.

I think it was a sign I am over any crisis of middle age and I am aging gracefully and I am a mature individual.

I had a truck once before. The speedometer went out when it had 120,000 on it. I drove it another two years before it finally rolled over on its back one day and passed away.

I didn’t worry about Catfish drooling or getting hair in that truck. That’s what trucks are for.

But instead of getting another truck, I went for the import, and it has taken me this long to come to my senses.

The guy made me a pretty good deal. I did find out that 14 minutes after you purchase a sexy convertible import, it loses about 60 percent of its value.

“This is all this car is worth now?” I asked when told what it would bring. “My dog never set foot in it.”

The guy showed me the book that lists what cars are worth.

“Best I can do,” he said, jingling the change in his pocket. When a car dealer starts jingling the change in his pocket, he knows he’s got you.

But it’s a pretty truck. I got red again. It’s got everything on it but a CD player, which I didn’t want anyway because I don’t own any CDs and, even if I did, the CD player probably would break or my CDs would become the first in history to rot.

But I’ve got a tape deck, a radio, air conditioning, power windows and locks, and there’s a luggage rack on top. Catfish gnaws one tire on my new truck and he rides up there.

I went on my first drive. For the first time in years, I felt comfortable on the road again. I felt like an adult, not some 24-year-old with the top down, the wind blowing through his flowing locks as he cruises for girls who pop their gum and use “goes” in place of “says.”

My new truck is American-made, too. I feel a lot better about that.

And it will save on gas, which will help me pay my fair share of taxes after getting so filthy rich during the Reagan and Bush years.

I took Catfish on my first ride in the new truck. He sat right up there in the front seat and drooled and shed happily away.

But we were a team again. A man, a dog, and a truck. All is right with my world.

Nobody can tax that. Can they?

Aug. 8, 1993

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