The Continuing Saga of a Boy and His Truck

Copyright 1996 by Kathy Biehl. All rights reserved. Permission is granted for electronic replication of this article only if you include the copyright notice.

Once upon a time a boy named David (also known as Fellow Buddy) bought a Ford truck. This was not your ordinary truck. Oh, no! This one was not content just to be driven here and there, to work and to school and to the mall, maybe even occasionally to one of those really cushy multiplex cinemas with cup holders in the arm rests. No, this one did not live just to fulfill the transportation and light hauling needs of its owner. It had very strong needs of its own, needs for lots and lots of attention. And while it welcomed attention from any source, there was one it craved above all: the sure, strong touch of a mechanic's hands.

The special nature of his truck was not immediately apparent to David. But it soon made itself known to him, quite well indeed. The hints were never subtle, but as they escalated in number, they became unmistakable, particularly the summer when the air conditioner required adjusting every six weeks. Rex Celestis (involved in the truck's on-going dramatics by nature of being longtime companion to Fellow Buddy) opined that the Ford slogan is truncated in the transmission of advertising, and is, fully. "Where quality is Job One...and Two...and Three..." The human pair determined that what the truck was really after, in its regular mechanical trysts, was Quality Infusion.

Like any obsession, the truck's addition proved unquellable, each contact only heightening the desire for the next, escalating in desperation, culminating in the inevitable, a failed but dramatic suicide when it plunged from a shop jack to the ground. Resilient as ever, the truck survived the leap, and also a later collision with (and occasioned by) a Ferrari. This December it reached a milestone fanfare, please visit number 25 to the shop. The impetus, a noisy muffler, seemed simple enough, but in honor of the special occasion, its manufacturer made sure that the truck enjoyed a prolonged stay in its home-away-from-home. Three separate Ford representatives delivered the wrong muffler, a turn of events that ensured an overnight stay. This being such a very special truck, its vehicle identification number was not sufficient for the parts distribution center to locate the proper muffler. In fact, the center announced that the VIN didn't match any muffler at all in its inventory! Having an entirely different concept of customer service, the managing mechanic removed the extant muffler, took it to the center and proposed that since Ford had installed this part in the first place, it was bound to have a counterpart somewhere. And lo and behold, it did.

Excerpted from Ladies' Fetish & Taboo Society Compendium of Urban Anthropology
Winter Wonderland Vol. VIII, No. 4
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