Sudden deflation crisis

The other day I logged onto the computer to see about selling my old Mercury truck. I’m not holding out much hope that anyone will actually WANT it, but at least I can say I’m making an effort—albeit a perfunctory one. I decided to give it national exposure in the old cars magazine put out by the folks up in Vermont—publishers of Hemmings Motor News. I went through the process of describing the truck, even posted a photo of it, which would display for free on their site—at least for a little while, then tried to pay. It was the trying to pay part that got tangled up. When I was down to the very last field, the last tidibit of information that had to be filled, in, the computer balked. Their site up in Vermont had had enough of me and my old truck, apparently—didn’t really want to be bothered. The snafu was enough to render all of my efforts null and void. Thank you for calling, please come again. Have a nice day.

I called the phone number listed to talk to a representative—a real, live human being who might be able to help. She didn’t know what to make of the situation.
“Oh dear,” she said.
“Yes, this is kind of frustrating,” I replied, “Especially since the computer is supposed to make it EASIER to get this done.”
She went and checked with someone up there in Vermont.
“Chances are your ad went through, but we’ll check on Monday to make sure—and call to let you know.”

On Monday I was wrestling with some tables, getting them back into the truck after offloading them on Sunday to help move some big black furniture. Puffy things had been in the new Ohio truck, leather softness with a bed built in, and big cushions and everything lumped together called a “sectional.” I don’t even want to go into it. Not now, anyway. The phone rang. It was my contact in Vermont--cold country, oozer of maple sap, with eight inches of snow just fallen. She was calling to tell me that my ad had not gone through, and would I like to take care of it over the phone? Certainly, I said.

Everything the kindly woman said was perfectly understandable to me, though many miles separated us, and possibly some of our words were transmitted through cold cables buried under New England byways, ragged and forlorn bits of cornstalks withering in the frigid winter air, while we talked of the old truck and what exactly was it that I wanted to sell anyway?

I took a break from my table-moving activities, was not to be defeated in my efforts to advertise the old truck, to see what would come of it. I understood every word of what the Vermont woman said, down to the amount of snow that had fallen. Here is what I must have sounded like to her:

Biff barn bats
Battling worn hats
Hearts won with less
Than tired old cats

Loaded hellers
Half-pint tellers
Mid-day bustlers
In onion cellars

Dearth of mirth?
Nay, aye, nay
NO!
Please say
It isn’t so

So there was much lost in translation, my words maybe leaking into the soft loamy earth under the corn, the rows not rows any more, but uniform white with some corn-markers battling the frigid air.

“The second letter is “T” as in “truck.” This is me trying to impart my email address.
She read back her interpretation, missed almost every single letter.
“Ok,” the cheerful Vermont woman said, “P” as in Peter….” She was going to continue on to the next wrong letter.
“You’re kidding, right?” I said, now incredulous. “I even said: “T” as in “TRUCK.” We’d been going back and forth interminably, it becoming obvious that maybe she had a hearing problem—or just wanted to hear certain things more than others.
“Okay,” she said, then continued, reading back my email address, getting more than half of it wrong. It took SIX tries before she had the seven letters and two numbers correctly transcribed onto whatever instrument she was using in snow-laden Vermont.

I thanked her for her time, said I appreciated her calling back to let me know about the ad. I spent the better part of a half-hour with her, placing an eighteen-word advertisement—the cheapest one I could buy. Since I was now without the service and convenience of the online advertising forum, I imagine I will not have the benefit of a photo accompanying the ad. All of that information had been cancelled, lost, when the computer had balked at my efforts. The woman from Vermont had told me so:
“It’s all gone,” she said.

I put the rest of the tables back, made room on the front porch for my project—which I’d left off Sunday in order to get the fluffy, impeccable furniture on the other side of town. Sure, I have a truck—yes, you can borrow it to get your new sectional furniture. I would have gladly handed over the keys, stayed on the porch cutting wood and screwing it into place. But there was one problem: The truck was illegal in just about every respect. I was driving it with borrowed tags, had not bothered to get insurance yet—and the front tires were on the verge of exploding. All of this in spite of having spent roughly three thousand dollars on safety-related repairs. It remained to get the new tires, have the inspection finished up, and make a trip to the motor vehicles agency to get the truck legally in my name, with its very own license plates, a blanket of protective insurance and maybe even a nice new spare tire to round things out.

But the black and fluffy furniture would not wait, did not want to know about my problems; for my problems now included the massive pieces waiting across town, just on the other side of the harbor—a mere trip through the tunnel and we’d be there. So we met, the furniture-getters and I, in front of the ragged house with the torn-apart porch. And we unloaded the truck of its cargo, the stuff of my business, that should really stay in there, should not see the light of day except for the markets. It all came out. The soft, plush leather of the puffy recliners and sofa bed wouldn’t have it any other way. It was too bulky.

And we carted those other things from across town, stuffed them into the truck any old way, for I am really not a furniture-mover, have only fallen victim to the crime of owning a truck, a strange brotherhood are we: When you have a truck, even a tiny little thing—word gets out. The truck can be running on four flat tires, barely held together with string, but—goddammit—it’s a truck. We can put things in that truck. Lots of things. The ironic part of it is this: most of the time I have been called on to help move things that could have easily been stowed in my little station wagon. But we show up with the big van, the big engine using big gas, the owners of the thing to be fetched convinced that the dimensions of their purchase warrant a big rig—maybe even an eighteen-wheeler, a Peterbilt or Mack. Their ideas of the thing’s importance and stature are all out of proportion. And we place the delicate and diminutive thing back there, with gobs of space all around it, as if it were some museum piece, come to town in a traveling display. Carefully throw open the doors with a bit of drama and ceremony and reveal—what is it, exactly? It’s dark in there, and kind of hard to see. Oh—there it is—a little table! Look! There’s a little table in there! I was expecting something bigger, but it’s just a little thing! Come over and look at this, Mildred—they’re carrying around this itty-bitty thing in that big truck—looks kind of funny, huh?

But the puffy leather ensemble was not an itty-bitty thing. It needed the big truck for once, the illegal vehicle miling along under the radar of law enforcement—for the time being. Until someone ran a red light, broadsided me, sent the puffy things onto their sides, spilling here and there, a curious spectacle for the rainy day crowd, idling by in their cars and SUVs. That did not happen.

We got the things back across town, the only highlight of the day was when I maneuvered ahead in the race to the toll-booths at the tunnel entrance. I had to halt my enthusiasm, realized that I was in fact being an obnoxious asshole, as I now had to squeeze into the line already waiting patiently. They have different booths, see—and I couldn’t use just ANY booth: I had cash, and was only welcome at a cash booth. So I consulted my right-side mirror, saw that a white pickup was going to let me squeeze in front, had no way of thanking him, for this truck has no rear window or way of signallling. It was rainy and miserable and cold out. The wipers washed away the drops to reveal a darkening and dismal end to the dreary day.

At the toll-booth I handed over my money, told the woman I was paying for the white pickup behind me. I drove on, got through the tunnel. On the other side I saw the pickup come alongside, window open, the man waving his thanks. It actually caught me by surprise, as I’d all but forgotten about it—my worried mind dwelling on the marginal truck, the hazards of driving it in inclement weather, the consequences of having a misshap. The next day I would finish up the work needed to make it a legal vehicle. Then I would hand over the keys to all comers, let them take it out on the highways, just leave me alone with my porch and my decaying old house. Just take the truck—and godspeed. But above all—leave me the hell out of the whole project.

The next day I drove down to the tire shop, had them put on two new tires, explained that—no, I don’t want those real expensive ones with the fancy tread. See, I only drive the thing maybe three times a week at most, don’t need all that high-priced crap.
“Ok, we have these tires—for about sixty dollars less apiece.”
“Yes—yes, those are the ones I want,” I said. “Do you have anything cheaper?”

The tire-man—the young fellow who actually installed my tires—had a line on a good used tire that I could have as a spare. He brought it out. The thing was actually brand-new, looked to have no wear at all, even a sticker still applied to it.
“Twenty bucks,” he said.
It was a done deal; he even mounted it on my spare rim, took the old worn-out spare, a dismal example of a tire, and discarded it. I couldn’t have been happier. Now it just remains to fix up a mounting bracket under the truck, secure tools down there with the tire and hit the road—confident that I can handle a “sudden deflation crisis” with ease.