chapter 15: ford f-750

I’m waking up. I go out to the living room. The red-haired girl is laying on the ground. I tell her good morning. She looks up and smiles at me. “Are my legs even?” she asks. I look down at the floor. I pull her left leg down a little bit and tell here they are now. “Good,” she says. I make coffee. I give her the remote. She turns on the news. I tell her to turn off the news. I don’t like watching the news. The only reason the news exists is to make people feel afraid, and it works really well. I already feel afraid. I don’t need the news. She turns it to one of those house renovation channels. There is some guy with a beard talking about how to “install ductworks to reflect the feng shui of the house.” Whatever that means. I don’t think it means anything. While she watches the show and drinks coffee I look out the window behind us. I can’t see the man in the brown hat from where I’m sitting.

When the show ends she tells me she needs to go home. I tell her she can stay if she likes, and that I could go get some more wine at the liquor store. She tells me she needs to do some painting, and that she is feeling inspired lately. She smiles at me. It feels nice. I drive her to her car at Vito’s. I drive home, pour some whiskey in my coffee, and then I feel tired. Happy and tired. I go into my room and start to fall asleep.

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I’m awakened by a banging on the door. I look through the blinds at an angle where I cannot be seen. There is no sign of the man in the brown hat, but Tanner is standing outside of my house. I open the door and tell him hello. He tells me he texted and called, and since he was driving this way anyway he thought he would stop by. I tell him to come in. I get two Budweiser Lights from the fridge and hand one to him. I ask him what he’s been up to. He tells me he hasn’t been up to anything. “The Reds are playing right now if you get ESPN.” I tell him I do and turn on the game. We watch the game for a little while. The score is 0-0, and the announcers keep talking about how the pitcher from the Astros has a chance to pitch a perfect game. Tanner tells me this is when no players from the other team ever get on base. I can’t help but think about how it wouldn’t be my idea of a perfect game to watch a guy throw a ball to a catcher for 4 hours. That’s the opposite of a perfect game. A perfect game would be exciting, not more boring than it normally is.

It strikes me as odd that Tanner would just swing by my house. He’s never really asked me to hang out, and today he just showed up at my house. Something must be going on, but I don’t want to ask. We aren’t close enough friends yet to talk about anything really serious.

Tanner is drinking beer really fast. By the end of the game he has had about eight Budweiser Light, which isn’t too crazy for a big guy like him, but he starts to loosen up. He starts to talk about work, and going to Al’s last night. When the game ends Tanner tells me he covered the spread for the Reds game since that guy pitched a perfect game. He claims he won over a thousand dollars. That seems like a lot of money to me. He tells me he has been gambling a lot on baseball and has been doing well. He tells me he has a system. He claims he has researched every ballpark. I guess in baseball you can build your park to any dimension. He says some stuff about how certain batters can’t hit well in certain parks due to the dimensions and wind flow. I don’t really understand it, but what I do understand is that Tanner has made a lot of money, and clearly has done his homework. He tells me he is going to go truck shopping, and asks if I want to go with him. I’ve had a lot of beer so I feel like leaving my house.

We go outside and get in Tanner’s truck. As he’s backing out of my driveway I see the back of the Hudson Hornet. I turn to Tanner. He had to have seen the car. I’m sure he would have said something if he saw it. But then again maybe he wouldn’t. We drive to the Ford dealer on the North Side of town. Tanner tells me it is “Ford Truck Month.” He turns on some country singer on the radio. The country singers that Tanner listens to are actually just pop singers. Most of them went to fancy music schools. They all sing about farming, hard work, church, beer, family, back roads, fishing, and trucks. I bet most of these pretty boy country singers grew up in the suburbs and now they live in giant mansions. Country music was the easiest way to make money. They just decided to sing about country topics because people like Tanner love that stuff, and they can make a lot of money. People like him also don’t think about the fact that millionaire pretty boys singing about blue collar life is hypocritical, they just like the way the music sounds. I guess that is okay.

Tanner pulls up to the Ford dealership. A fat man with slicked back hair comes out and greets us. He is wearing khaki pants and an UnderArmor polo shirt tucked into his pants. He comes out and looks at Tanner’s truck. He has on a pair of Sperry Top Sider shoes that don’t seem to fit with the rest of his look. They look like shoes he thinks he should be wearing rather than shoes that he actually wants to wear. “This truck ain’t too bad, guys. In fact my brother drives a truck just like this. It does the job for him. But then again he doesn’t really haul anything. You know he mostly just drives it to his office job every day. It’s okay for getting around in, but if you want something with power I could get you an excellent deal on the Ford F-450.”

Tanner looks right at him, and says he wants to drive the brand new Ford F-750. I didn’t even know they made trucks that big. The guy smiles at Tanner and tells him we can test drive one. Tanner says he would like to. The dealer leaves, and returns with a giant truck with two huge smoke stacks bellowing out smoke. The actual cab of the truck is as long as an SUV. It has seating for up to seven inside, and one of the longest truck beds I have ever seen. It sounds like a Monster truck, and the dealer is only just barely easing on the gas. He pulls up and invites us inside. Tanner gets into the driver seat as the dealer slides over to the passenger seat, and I take one of the seats in the back. The truck roars as Tanner eases it out of the dealership and onto the highway. Tanner just absolutely lays on the gas. “Just make sure you keep it under the speed limit,” the dealer says as he laughs nervously. Tanner stares ahead and speeds up.

As we drive, the dealer turns on the country music station and starts to sing along to a song about driving a truck on a backroad. “Hey, this is the perfect song isn’t it guys? I just saw the other day that Jake Hatt bought the new Ford F-750. I heard he’s writing a song about it. I’d love to hear that song! I really like Jake Hatt. He’s the type of guy you could have a beer with. I even heard that he used to be a bartender in Tennessee. Seems like a real down-to-earth guy.” The other day I actually clicked on one of those terrible websites that said “10 facts about Jake Hatt.” I guess he was a bartender at a college bar while he was a student at Belmont Music School in Nashville, Tennessee. Tanner just continues to stare ahead and the dealer turns the music up, singing along here and there whenever he can remember the words. I get the feeling the dealer just listens to country music because he knows that most of the people who buy expensive trucks also like to listen to country music.

Tanner drives the truck back to the dealership. “I’ll take it,” he tells the dealer. Tanner goes inside to finish up the paperwork with the dealer. He is going to trade in his old truck for value. I tell him I’m going to go across the street. There is an Applebees and I decide I’ll drink a few beer while the two of them work out the details.

There are three other guys at the Applebees bar. One of them is wearing a brown hat. He’s a hipster. He’s drinking PBR, and talking about how Applebees is just as good as any local bar. This has to be fate. I sit down at the edge of the bar, as far away from the man as I can get. He just keeps talking: “Most people think Applebees are garish. They think it is lower class, but it’s a working class bar. Sure it’s corporate, but everything in America is corporate. I’m sure at one time Applebees was just a local restaurant, but then they started to franchise, and before long they had them all over the nation. You can’t get mad at a company for trying to make money. We live in a capitalist society, so why do we get mad when people play by the rules. You know what, I'll take an Applebee Appletini. They’re just $1 right?” The server goes to get the hipster an Applebee Appletini. The other two men at the bar are completely ignoring the man in the brown hat. They’re watching the television. There is another baseball game on. They are both drinking Coors Light, and they silently sip from tall frosty mugs as they watch the game. The score is 1-0, and it is the bottom of the eighth inning. The Cardinals are beating the Brewers. This hipster has to be the man in the brown hat. This is him. This is James, or Jim, or Jeff.

As I watch him light up an American Spirit cigarette he starts to talk about the “cultural appropriation of the Native American man.” “A lot of people argue that we cannot use the culture of the Native American man, but I don’t think that’s true. We’re honoring them when we use their culture. What are we supposed to do, ignore them? I mean it is sad that we are on their land, but what are we supposed to do, give it back? I don’t think you can complain about the way we treated the Native Americans while you live on the land your ancestors stole from them. That to me would be the ultimate hypocrisy.”

This man clearly loves to talk. It seems that he has no real audience. No one is listening to him. No one is paying attention to him. They’re all just going about their business. I keep thinking about the word he used: garish. When the dealer had first driven up in the Ford F-750 I kept thinking that word in my head: garish. I would never use a word like garish, because there is no point in using excessively big words. If you can communicate in a simpler way then you should always do this. Tanner and the dealer wouldn’t have known what garish meant, so why would I use that word? It would only make things more complicated, and there was no reason to complicate things. That would be an extremely garish thing to do.

I watch the man continue to talk at the end of the bar. Now he is talking about “community” and how Applebees actually did more to celebrate their own “community” than America had done to celebrate the Native Americans. “I mean look at that. You have a picture of your local High School basketball team behind the bar. Is this cultural appropriation? You clearly only do this to make more money, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are still taking an interest in your community. I think it’s a good thing, and I think Applebees is the heart of what is at the essence of true Americana. This is our culture, and their Applebee Appletinis are way too good to only be $1. This is my bar, and these are my people.” No one even looks up at him. They all just continue to watch the baseball game. He goes on, “The greatest Americans were Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan, and John Wayne. Most people hate at least one of these people. I mean Elvis became a cop. Ronald Reagan and his bitch wife declared a war on drugs, and John Wayne was a racist prick. That’s not what I’m talking about though. They set the paradigm for what was uncool. If it was not for them you wouldn’t be able to rebel against them. You need bland squares before you can have rock n’ roll punks. That’s why they’re the greatest Americans of all time. If we didn’t have them we would have nothing else. You need terrible people or else everyone becomes secretly terrible. If you put a terrible person on display then everyone rebels against it. They’re like a sacrificial lamb.” The man takes another sip from his Applebee Appletini and then he looks back up at the bartender. “Everyone always asks when the first sign of civilization was. They point to all types of crazy shit. Well I’ll tell you when the first sign of real civilization was. It is whenever humans brewed their first beer. You don’t see monkeys or ants drinking beer do you? No, you do not. Pleasure is what makes humans special. We know how to make and create pleasure. No other creature can create pleasure. They only seek pleasure. Sometimes they find it, but usually they are just acting on instinct and survival. We can brew 12 oz of pleasure in a little can. That makes us superior. That makes us artists.” I start to tune the man out and look back up at the television. Pretty soon the Cardinals win the game 1-0, and I get a text from Tanner. It says that he is outside.

I go out to the car. Tanner looks better. He asks me if I want to go to “Bad Ass Truck Accessories.” He wants to get some custom accessories for his new truck. I ask him if we can wait. I tell him I want to follow someone. He doesn’t even ask me who we are following. He just turns on the country music station, and tells me that sounds great. He needs to get his mind off of things. I notice the Hudson Hornet parked in a handicapped parking spot. It has a handicapped sticker on the license plate. This is the guy. This is James, or Jim, or Jeff. After about an hour the guy walks out. “That’s that fucking little douchebag,” Tanner says. I smile at him. “Fuck that guy, man. He has a nice car though.” He gets in his car, and pulls onto the interstate. We follow in Tanner’s new Ford F-750.