Just a Good Ol' Boy

It almost happened. I knew that it would. Several months back I moved from my apartment in the city to a home in the country. Not the “quaint” country on the edge of town, where one of your neighbors might have a horse or two in the field next to his vinyl-sided ranch house. I’m talking about the dirt-road-no-streetlight-surrounded-by-acres-of-woods-and-corn-with-a-neighbor-who-raises-pigs-on-his-lower-forty sort of country.
It took me a while to get used to the changes; the deathly-still quiet nights, the giant deer flies strafing me during the hot summer days. And I’ve been told by people who should know that winter on a dirt road is an experience in itself. I’m not wild about the idea of knee-deep mud, but I think I can adjust.
In fact, my main worry since moving has been that I may adjust too much. I’ve been monitoring my behavior closely, watching for any noticeable signs of “ruralization.” Until last week, I had been - to all appearances - unchanged. I hadn’t started replying with a “huh-yup” or “nope” when asked if I were working on my doctorate. I hadn’t retired my Italian shoes in favor of a pair of cowboy boots. And I hadn’t taken to eating possums or the parts of a cow previously dedicated to the bovine digestive process.
My first clue that something was amiss came when my trusty 1970-something Chevy Chevette decided to give up the ghost after nearly two decades of faithful service. I was sorry to see “Old Greenie” go, but it did give me an excuse to buy a new - pick-up truck. That’s right, a pick-up truck. It took me two days to realize I hadn’t even considered another type of vehicle.
Now, it’s important to note that I have never once in my entire life given any thought to a pick-up one way or another. I knew they existed, of course, but they had never been part of my urban lifestyle. And now a move of less than 30 miles was apparently turning me slowly but surely into a “good ‘ol boy.” I seemed powerless to halt the process.
Within hours of Greenie’s death I was pulling into a local used-car/truck dealership, in search of the 4X4 of my dreams. Fortunately for my rapidly-fading urban sensibilities, the dealership had no truck which matched my list of desired criteria. I wanted something big, ugly, capable of hauling 17 tons of logs over a dirt road, and I wanted an automatic transmission and a pair of fuzzy dice. The gun rack was negotiable.
Of course, I don’t actually have any logs to haul. In fact, the biggest load of anything I’ve ever lugged in my life were groceries the week my former brother-in-law was staying at the house. But, still, there’s an appealing masculinity about a vehicle which can pull 47 times its own weight in lumber.
At any rate, the dealership didn’t have a truck I liked and I was getting ready to make a hasty exit before the used car salesman could convince me I’d really wanted a 1972 Gremlin all along. I didn’t quite make it. “How about that one?” the salesman asked, pointing to an attractive city-bred Honda Accord.
“Out of my price range,” I muttered, climbing into my Significant Other’s car.
“Well, how much are you looking to spend?”
Too late. I was now officially trapped in car salesman limbo. Thirty minutes later I drove off the lot in my new Honda. It can’t haul logs. It’s not big and ugly. It has no gun rack and no fuzzy dice. At first, I felt a nagging, low hum of disappointment.
But then something amazing happened. Riding along on cruise control with the AM/FM stereo going and the cushy seat hugging my backside, I realized I no longer had the urge to rush out and buy a Billy Ray Cyrus tape or sign up for line dancing lessons.
I’m going to call that used car salesman up and thank him. For the next 50,000 miles (good Lord willing) my urbanity is intact.