Hick On The Hill
Hick On The Hill
Originally uploaded by aqui-ali.
I use to know a guy who had a truck like this. It didn’t run very well. Whenever it would rain he would have to sacrifice livestock to make it start. This was inconvenient because we lived in a city and livestock was hard to come by.
It’s handy that the truck was, well, a truck, because schleping out to the sticks to find livestock would be a bitch in a Civic. You couldn’t even fit a goat in one of those things without it tearing up the interior. I bet some people would try to put chickens in the back of a Civic — especially if it was a hatchback. That would be a mistake. They won’t stay there. What were they thinking, putting chickens in the back of a Civic?
We were never shot at while hunting for sacrifice-ready livestock in the busted up pickup. You’d think that being out in Erie and Newton and Hayseville with city slicker tags and city slicker clothes and city slicker attitudes in a busted up truck trying to coax a llama or an ostrich out of its yard would draw more attention and perhaps ire. It did not. Country folk just don’t care about morons in a broken down truck. They’re wise that way. The country folk, that is.
Most of the time we didn’t bring back any livestock. We’d drive around rural Kansas, not stealing things, maybe stop by the Quick Trip for a cool, refreshing Squantrum of soda (or pop: Kansas does not have a cola-nomenclature preference the way Chicago or Los Angeles does). When it would rain we’d have to take my car, which was much less exciting on account of it would always start, even in the rain.
One day, after a particularly good thunderstorm, the truck refused to start. My friend wasn’t in the mood for killing animals so he got a loan at the credit union and bought a used Grand Am. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as the truck, but it had a better stereo (with a tape deck).