Why I Love Trucks: A Memoir by Jenny "Small Truck" Van West In first grade, my class took a field trip way out River Road, past the shopping malls sprung up practically overnight in our suburb of Washington DC, out into the rural land near the Potomac River that was home to miles of wooden fences and horses. We visited a working truck farm-that's where vegetables are grown, not trucks- laid out in gently rolling hills, free of asphalt and commotion. Food grew out of the ground, we were given hayrides, and there was space to run around endlessly. There were bumpy roads that churned up clouds of dust when we drove on them. My father, a Washington, D.C., lawyer, was greeted that evening by my request that he buy a tractor, dig up the zoysia lawn he'd so carefully planted, and start farming. He gently explained to me that he could not do that. I was perplexed. It felt so good, so right. In second grade, I went to spend the night at Priscilla's. That afternoon her mother drove their pale blue pickup to the grocery store, with Priscilla, her brother, and me in the back. We were going faster than I'd ever gone outside a car. As we drove along at 25 mph (seemed so much faster), the breeze blew my hair around, and I hung onto the side of the truck bed in the back. No seats, no seat belts�.this was fun. Looking back on that day, I understand why dogs stick their heads out the car window, why they walk from side to side in the back of a moving pickup. They ride along without any confinement whatsoever, free to immerse themselves in the sights, sounds, and smells of motion. At fourteen, while eating peanut butter toast and watching afternoon specials and MASH reruns on TV, there would occasionally be a low-budget ad for a local diesel truck mechanics school. The ad would explain, "You can be a diesel mechanic!" and show a fellow (always a guy) leaning in under the huge, looming hood of a tractor-trailer. Then they would show the truck driving down the road again, and give an 800 number. It looked so easy and sounded so practical. At that time concrete tasks were incredibly appealing, something that would give structure to my increasingly hormone-ridden, peer-pressure driven melee of an adolescent life. I did not go to tractor-trailer school. Instead, I went on into high school, and eventually to a private boarding school in New England. Despite this high-falutin environment, or perhaps because of it, I still longed for the orderly, more rural life. In eleventh grade I received a brochure for a farm school in Vermont where I could spend a semester splitting wood and driving tractors while studying calculus and French. I signed up the very next day. The following summer, when I was seventeen, I got offered an internship with the press secretary of a member of the US House of Representatives. Many of my classmates would have given their eyeteeth for that experience, but I could not forget about the farm where I'd spent the previous fall. A month before I was due to show up for work, I called Congress to let them know I'd be farming for $10 a week instead. The farm truck there in Vermont may have seemed an ugly beast to some, but to me she was sheer beauty. A big V8 flatbed truck with a stick shift that came up to my shoulder, and steering wheel so large I had to look through it. No power steering, and no power brakes-I had to downshift and then stand up on the brake pedal to stop the thing-100% machine. The body was rusting and it was nearly impossible to get from second gear into third. Trips to the dump, with the back full of spent barbed wire and fence posts, were a challenge. Halfway to the landfill, the road curved to the right up a long hill, which would almost always send me straight back into first gear for the remainder of the trip. I'd spent too much time in neutral looking for that elusive third. The lure of the farm truck continued. Through college summers, I rode out to the fields in the old Ford pickup of a small farm on a island to pick squash and weed onions with the rest of the farm crew. At lunch the truck would bring us back to the farm stand or to the local deli. I was in heaven: tan, hair blond from the sunlight, a long twentieth summer spent loading and unloading crates of eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins out of the back of that truck. Today I drive a beloved '83 Toyota pickup around the asphalt and concrete streets of Seattle�.orange paint and green racing stripes fading, brown upholstery sagging, the bed often empty but for spent oil and antifreeze containers. The body shimmies and rattles like a pocketful of quarters on all but the smoothest city streets, and the steering wheel shakes over 55 mph. The radio tuner's been busted for years. Once, out of sheer luck, my husband managed to tune the middle FM button to 91.3 KBCS, my favorite local folk & jazz music station, by pushing the other two buttons simultaneously. When I drive now I live on a steady diet of Cab Calloway and bluegrass fiddle. I drive this truck not because it is particularly practical here in the city, but because of how it makes me feel. Rolling down the window, the wind tousles my short hair, while the sun-albeit an elusive sun-tans my already tan left arm�now that feels good. Driving to visit clients in suburban business parks, and parking between a Mazda Miata and an Audi-a thrill. Being a woman driving a truck, even a short little orange truck with bad carpeting and a broken bumper, makes me feel strong and beautiful and mysterious. I can look under the hood and check on the thermostat I recently replaced, or pour in oil (for the second time in a week) to bring the oil pressure back up�right there in the parking lot at work. And it's hard to get too serious for too long about anything driving a little, funny looking, beat-up truck with fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. And when I load the rusty, scratched bed with groceries or garbage or compost for my garden, I feel a little of that quiet satisfaction I felt on those dusty farm roads so long ago. I momentarily drive a little closer to that rural life I lived once and still dream about. Read the poem "A Truck for Nola" Like this story? Check out the American Truck Historical Society