A little pick me up

As I wander down my lane one evening I’m suddenly conscious of a low burbling growl behind me. My heart skips a beat and a sweat breaks out on the back of my Deet infused neck. A bear with a chesty cough, may be? A beaver with a tracheotomy?

Nope, the possessor of this guttural vocalisation is heavier than a grizzly, blacker than a beaver dipped in tar and it sports a toothy grin of gleaming chrome.

My neighbour’s pickup is one of the biggest meanest kind on the road. Blacked out windows; a tail pipe erect, sticking straight up behind the cab; four wheels, at the back end; jacked up so high you need a rope and crampons to get to the cab; and a voice that’s either grrrrr or GRRRRR!

The fact that it’s spotlessly clean marks it out not as a necessary workhorse but a very large penis extension, if you’ll pardon my candour. It’s the ultimate vehicular version of testosterone. Macho gone mad.

And yet, I marvel at it. Salivating slightly as this monster cruises slowly by. The driver may well have waved but I couldn’t see him through the tinted glass, for all I know this monster machine is driving itself. I’m left standing in a cloud of dust and bugs: spitting, I realise my mouth was hanging open.

You Canadians certainly like your pickup trucks. Every second vehicle on the local roads seems to be one. They are advertised as status symbols no less: “It’s a work of art that’s made to work,” intones the gravel voice of an actor recognisable to those who watch westerns, in a growl almost as deep as the idling engine of the six litre, leather stitched, chrome infused truck he’s waxing lyrical about.

“It’s got more accessories than you can shake a stick at. And I don’t mean handbags and pumps!” barks the hardass American comedian, over an image of a polished V8 monster traversing the kind of terrain that only one in a million of the pick ups sold here will ever encounter.   

The TV in England is clogged with advertisements for sports cars, hot hatches, family saloons, even SUVs but not one of them takes a special place in our hearts, not one so exemplifies our nation.

Teenagers aspire to a hot hatch – a tuned up, racing striped version of the car most of their mothers’ drive. Mothers aspire to a people carrier – something big enough to be able to sit the kids two rows back from you. Dads aspire to anything small enough that they can’t fit the kids in at all, be that a sports car or a high powered motorbike.

But here there’s only one vehicle for the family, and I don’t mean the one that best fits the family, more the one that everyone in the family wants. Old, young, short, tall, male female, everyone wants a pickup, and most of you own at least one, too.

And you know what so do I, sort of. A friend of mine asked could he park his ride at my house while he worked in Ottawa. Sure I said. The next day a tow truck arrived hauling a rusting GMC Blazer behind it. I am now the proud owner of the most macho lawn ornament in Haliburton. My wife glowers at this slowly rotting hunk of truck and asks just when our ‘so-called-friend’ is going to move it.

Me; I know it’s as close as I’ll get to owning a pickup anytime soon. So, I pat the hood as I pass, and, if no one’s in earshot give a little grrrr, GRRRR!