Across the Bridge

I couldn’t be busier right now with concerts and festivals stacking up, and the shop getting busy again, and needing to hire new staff for the high season ahead, and, well, life is just busy, too — but in a really refreshing and exciting kind of way. It felt like things were finally coming together — and I could see the light — after a period of hazy obscurity.

But as busy as I am, right now, I feel like I need to just take a moment to write about something that maybe isn’t really important in the big picture, but was to the kids and me — it’s a eulogy of sorts, for the old red truck that’s been our daily driver and good friend for some time now.

Last night, just after midnight, I heard a crash outside followed by tires spinning and screeching. I was still awake and dressed, so I hopped up and ran downstairs, then outside to see what had happened — I guess mostly to make sure everyone was okay because it sounded bad.

But I stepped out onto an empty street with fresh tire marks and my truck totaled on the side of the road, halfway down the block. Neighbors from the city housing development across the street filed out in unison thereafter — and everyone knows my truck, so there was a collective sigh and then lots of unanswered questions.

I was tired and pretty sad, so I called the cops, gave a quick statement, collected my things from inside the truck — kids’ sneakers, a skateboard, concert posters off the dash, a few bracelets that Naia had made me hanging around the rearview mirror — and I said farewell to the trusty ol’ girl who had, despite her age and condition, been as reliable a truck as I could have ever asked for. The frame was destroyed by the impact and the gas tank was punctured in the collision. She seemed to weep, leaking fuel onto the street while being hoisted onto the tow truck before heading to her final resting place at a junkyard somewhere on Stock Island.

And as I walked back to the house alone — kids still asleep, dreaming sweet dreams after a beautiful Hump Day on the island and the newly-formed neighborhood block party heating up with new tales for tomorrow’s Coconut Telegraph — I flashed back to a collective but non-specific slideshow of our times singing and messing around as we chugged about town at a slow-speed with old truck parts clicking and familiar rattles abound in what was probably one of the most recognized automobiles on the island.

It was a truck the kids grew to love.

First weary of yet another one of Dad’s old beaters, they soon realized this one was pretty special. The interior was clean, and Naia had her own space in the low-seated, Naia-sized back bench. Kristian posted up in shotgun, forever on AC duty — which just meant turning the vented windows inward and hand rolling the windows all the way down as needed.

There was a routine for the truck — and we all knew our roles. It was a near-daily happening that someone would speed up alongside us on the boulevard with a thumbs up, a courtesy beep of approval, or a mid-passing holler out the window wondering, “what year is it?” And Kristian, always on the ready, proudly shouting back, “it’s an ‘86!” — Naia in the back commenting with a toothy grin and her signature lisp that “everyone loves our truck”.

It was a neighborhood landmark, with generations-old Bahama Village natives always giving me the nod of approval that earned me the right to park in secret spots that were for “locals only”. The keys were always in the ignition. I never once took them out since the day I bought the truck. And the doors were both always open. I actually don’t know if the driver’s side door even offered the option to lock.

When I bought it, the description said something to the effect of, “it’s such a statement piece so as to render it almost impossible to steal” and it went on to say “always good for gas station banter” — and both statements proved to be entirely true.

As the story goes, it came down from Philadelphia some years ago — without issue — and after the owner got set up in Marathon just an hour up the road, he realized he didn’t need a truck. The same day he made the post to sell it, I contacted him, and he drove it down — telling me everything I needed and would ever want to know about it — and then agreed when I asked him to shave a little off the price. It seemed a small price for him to pay knowing his old lady was in the hands of a worthy caretaker. I offered to shoot him back up US1 after the deal was done, but he just said, “it’s all good — I want to walk around down here a bit, and I can hitch a ride up later.”

Looking back, I bet his mind also wandered and flashed back to his years in the driver’s seat of the tangerine dream. He had just traveled down the road for the past hour on his own with the windows down and the sun beating in from the South through the driver’s side for his final cruise to the end of the road — and I’m pretty sure he didn’t want the shotgun side for his last goodbye.

In my own time with the truck, I never once rode on that side of the stick either.

If there’s a saving grace or silver lining in any of this, I suppose it’s that no one was injured  — not even the driver who fled the scene in what had to have been a completely totaled vehicle of their own.

That, and the fact that the Key West community, true to form and their nature, has been swift and unrelenting in offering help. Beyond the nearly 100 messages I’ve already received to just say sorry and to note that they knew how much the truck meant to us, I’ve gotten a dozen or so messages from people offering use of their own car or truck, or asking if they can help with driving the kids, or wondering if I need help finding the person at fault, or just sending random photos they had on their own phones of the truck at different spots around town. One photo that came in was taken from behind us at a stoplight with the backs of our three heads staggered about the cab, ready to roll.

And still other friends, from parts of the country with higher concentrations of vintage pickups, have been on the lookout for most of the day searching for another one that might do the job, while letting me know that they are ready for a road trip if one of the finds is deemed a worthy replacement.

So, like I said, in the big picture losing the truck means nothing — while the concern and help from friends, near and far, only renews my faith in the fact that most people want to do good. So I won’t dwell on it too long, or look for revenge towards the person who most certainly made a bad decision in the heat of the moment.

And I’ll get another truck — I’ve always been able to find ones that suit my style and needs.

But this one was a trusty friend during a period of change in my life — always there to listen to me sing the blues or belt out a ballad on tough days by myself, and equally ready and willing to play loose-bolt-and-rattling-part percussion while I tapped the dash with the kids singing back-up vocals on a more upbeat anthem — which, thankfully, was more often the case.

As I look back, and if I had to guess, no other truck in the world has listened to Terror in the Canyons, C’est La Vie, or Ride On, Right On by Phosphorescent, or Strangers by Mt. Joy, or November Blue or Morning Song by The Avett Brothers or Highland Grace by Hiss Golden Messenger or The Middle from Trampled By Turtles. The soundtrack and setlist of that truck’s life is worth compiling retroactively — and I’ll probably do that — but the point is, her confines provided a space of comfort during a period of time when that was sometimes hard to find.

Maybe in the end she knew her old bones wouldn’t last forever and that her main job was to get me through that time and place, shepherding me safely across that rickety bridge of uncertainty. And ultimately fate just intervened because I was ready for something new — and, on the side where I now unknowingly stand, another classic looker is waiting to be found, ready to scoop me up for a new period of self-discovery on the open road ahead.

The last song I played in the truck was my new favorite — and one that I’m brutally overplaying at the moment. It’s a soothing cover of Tom Petty’s Square One cut by the band Caamp with the refrain, Square one, my slate is clear; Rest your head on me, my dear. It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears — It took a long time to get back here...