dented badass dress shoe pickup ashtray smoke
Ok, first it was going to be a post about my truck, which isn’t really my truck any more, and how I’d miss the rattle-trap thing despite the rust, and the wipers not wiping very well, and the way the radio didn’t work, and how I don’t agree with the need for owning a needlessly big, gas-guzzling enviro-killer when all you use it for is to drive to work and the grocery store.
Despite those things I was going to write about how I missed being able to see over most other drivers on the road, missed the comforting thought that it was already so dented and bent and bruised that it wouldn’t really matter so much if I washed it or not, missed being able to give the vague impression of being a redneck badass workin’ man despite the careful elocution and the dress shoes and the lack of NASCAR stickers, and enjoying those handful of rare days in late spring when it is a joy to drive around in a pickup truck with the window down and your elbow on the sill in an ironic proto-country good ol’ boy fashion like a proper Ohio-an. I was even going to write about how I’d miss the dumb ashtray my dad glued to the dash (it used to be his work truck before he retired as a carpenter) despite the fact that I don’t smoke.
But then, somehow, it started to become a post about other things; about cigarettes and smoking, and the way smoking accoutrements-Zippo lighters, old cigarette vending machines (like the kind that they turn into those too-cool-for-words Art-O-Mat art vending machines), matchbooks, and all that other tobacco ephemera-fascinates me, despite the fact that, again, I don’t actually smoke, and I’m not a big fan of the tobacco industry.
It was about this time that I realized that I was-in an extremely roundabout manner-writing about my father.
“Huh,” I said.
There’s an essay by the prolific short story writer Harlan Ellison in which he described how it felt the moment he realized that yes, he really had been writing about his father in one way or another his whole career. It was my turn apparently to share that feeling.