Drop The Tailgate

In our driveway sits a 24 year old pickup truck that my Dad gave me.  Russ drove it to college for four years and Benjamin drove it to and from high school after being home-schooled.  Although it currently has a rear engine oil seal leak, it still runs.  I just have to check the oil frequently.  I'll get it fixed one of these days.  Tricia and I like to drive it down the back roads to a gas station about 5 miles away and buy some boudin balls and a soft drink, sometimes a greasy brown bag full of cracklins.  Then we roll down the windows and play old country music and sing along as we drive about 35 miles an hour on the way home, eating our boudin balls and drinking Dr. Pepper and looking at the scenery on either side of the dirt roads.

As I walked by the truck the other day, I dropped the tailgate and sat down.

In our modern society, we have many apps and tools that help us save time and money.  If we optimize our time, well, we'll be more productive and squeeze more minutes out of the day, right?  But what do we do with those extra minutes we've saved?  What if we did nothing better with a few minutes but sat down and just did some thinking?

And I dropped the tailgate and plopped down and did just that.  I dangled my legs and swung them back and forth and thought at first about nothing in particular.  In my childhood, we did a lot of riding in the back of pickup trucks.  We'd sit on the edge, or we'd sit on the toolbox with our backs resting on the sliding glass back window, but mostly we'd sit on the tailgate as we'd drive down country roads at the farm, spitting on the blacktop road as it passed beneath us.

You don't much see people sitting in the back of pickup trucks anymore.  You never see people sitting on tailgates.  I wonder why that is?  It used to be so commonplace in our neck of the woods.  I'm sure there's a law against it or something.  It is pretty dangerous, I guess, but none of us ever fell out the back. 

In the back of a farmer's truck, there were always several things present.  First, there were a lot of empty Dr. Pepper cans rolling around.  You had to be a little careful during the time that we were water leveling, because we'd catch snapping turtles and put them in the back of the truck to bring to my Dad's cousin.  He would make a turtle sauce picante and we'd go to his house when we'd break for lunch and eat those turtles.  The empty cans in the back of the truck were like an early warning system.  If you heard the cans rustling, it meant a snapping turtle was back there and you'd better be careful.  If they bit you, and old wives tale said, they wouldn't let go of you until it thundered.

There was the ubiquitous shovel in the back of the truck, used to patch holes in levees in the rice field so you wouldn't lose all your water and also for killing cotton mouth water moccasins.  Hanging upside down between the tool box and the cab, was always a pair of Lacrosse rubber boots.  Sometimes you stepped in some deep water or your boots developed a hole and hanging them upside down did the trick of drying them out.

Back then, they hadn't invented fancy steps or ladders that come as attachment or option to tailgates these days, nor did they have a camera mounted on the back that helped you back up to hook up a trailer.  Those inventions had yet to be discovered back then.  The tailgate was merely something you'd drop and plop your bottom down onto to do some high-powered thinking on.  I'm convinced if we'd drop the tailgate, many of the world's problems could be resolved overnight.

The Road Less Traveled

I've posted about this before.  It's something we do on Saturday afternoon.  We are very simple people and like simple things.  Our little Saturday afternoon excursion is so doggone enjoyable.  Here's what we do.  Long about 5 pm, we jump in the pickup truck, roll down the windows and being riding on country roads.  We don't have any set route or travel plans.  Like Jerry Jeff Walker sings, we just kind of let the truck "wander around."

We do have several rules.  First we listen to old time country or bluegrass music.  We both sing to the top of our lungs, especially to Montgomery Gentry's "Lucky Man" and "Amarillo Sky."  We drive very slow and try not to go over 25 or 30 miles per hour.  Oh from time to time someone will come behind us, but we pull over to the side and let them pass.  We are setting the pace here.

We try our darnedest to not drive on blacktop roads, if at all possible.  We put gravel in our travel.

We observe the sights and sounds around us that busy schedules might cause us to easily overlook.  Last trip we saw a coyote.  This trip we saw a rabbit.  I was telling Tricia about shooting the .22 rifle off the gully bridge at snakes and turtles.  We didn't have the rifle this trip, but we stopped nonetheless and saw an alligator lazily swimming in the muddy water.

Other than killing time, we have no agenda, no timetable, no deadline or due date.  Our destination, however, is Peto's.  Peto's is a gas station that sells, among other things, sausage, specialty meats, boudin, duck quesadillas, fried fish, cracklins and boudin balls.  The boudin balls are either spicy plain or stuffed with jalapenos and cheese.  We grab a couple of boudin balls for the road and eat them in the cab of the pickup.  Boudin balls are a special treat!  Now, it is not healthy - it's boudin (minus the casing) rolled into a ball, battered and deep fried.  Talk about good!

We never take the same road home.  We drive slowly by as the sun descends and see parties and crawfish boils going on at people's homes, kids riding four wheelers in the woods.  The pace of our truck as well as life in the country is slow and easy.  I mention to Tricia that you wouldn't imagine that busy I-10 is only a mile from where we are as the crow flies.  Hank Jr.'s "Family Tradition" comes on the radio and we sing along as we see an old truck in all its rusted glory parked on the side of a homeplace.

We take a turn on Dama Landry Road that we like.  The trees grow to meet one another, making a tunnel that we pass through.  One could easily be fooled into thinking we've stepped back in time.  The road dips down and we pass over flowing water.  

All in all we've made what is normally a ten minute trip last an hour and a half.  As we get ready to turn back into our driveway, the sun is dipping beneath the horizon as God paints the sky a dazzling array of colors.

As we pull into the driveway, my wife says, "What a great afternoon.  This is my favorite thing to do."  I must say I agree.  If you have a country road nearby, I highly recommend going out and letting your truck wander around on it.  There are adventures to be enjoyed by simple folk on the road less traveled.