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Vet puts truck’s dust to work for him as a computer

Have you noticed the majority of new pickups on the road and on the deserted car lots of America are white? Remember when trucks used to come in colors like blue, brown, black and that ugly gold color?

I wonder, are so many trucks white because that’s what buyers prefer? Does it make some statement that the buyers of white trucks are as pure as driven snow, or is it just because white paint is cheaper and therefore more profitable for the struggling car companies?

A car salesman told me white trucks are popular because they are easier to keep clean, but I don’t buy it. A dirty truck is a dirty truck and it doesn’t matter if it’s mauve or puce. I think what he meant was that white trucks don’t show the dirt as much, but one would think that dirt would show up more against a white backdrop.
This subject interests me, because I hate washing my truck. It’s now 23 years old and it’s been washed twice. It’s never been waxed, as I’d rather have a wisdom tooth pulled than to wax my truck.

I get a big kick out of watching car buffs buff their immaculate cars with long dust mops, since it strikes me as being a bigger waste of time than “Donkey Kong.” We don’t even dust the furniture in our house, so why would we dust off a vehicle that lives outside where it might get – how should I say this – dusty?

Because I am averse to washing any vehicle, color is my most important criterion in truck selection. I don’t care if a truck has heated leather seats or two cup holders, but I definitely don’t want a black or dark blue truck; I had one once and it was always dirtier than a Vegas comedian. Ever since then, my trucks have been the color of dirt.

You may wonder why I don’t just take my truck through the car wash – that would mean having to unload everything in the bed. Besides, our only car wash in town asked me not to come back. EVER.

It seems the one time I washed it I left behind so much reconstituted hay that fell off from under the wheel wells, that the car wash was declared a toxic waste site. I think you know what I’m talking about.

The only truck in our town even close to being as dirty as mine belongs to our wonderful vet and the only reason his truck is cleaner than mine is because it’s 20 years newer. When the local 4-H club was looking for ideas for a fundraiser I came up with what I thought was a great idea: For $1 a try people could guess the original color of the vet’s truck and then we’d have a community car wash for it.

The idea went nowhere because the vet insisted that his truck would never be washed. And with good reason – he keeps all his records written in the dirt on his truck. It’s his computer.

My vet’s mainframe is a Ford and if someone calls while he’s preg-checking cows, he writes the message in dust on the fender. He keeps his checkbook on the hood, accounts receivable on the door and a shopping list on the bumper.

Think about it: There are many advantages of a truck over a computer. When the information superhighway is a dirt road, a truck makes much more sense as a computer than does a fragile laptop. There is no waiting on the phone for tech support, you don’t have to upload any downloads and there are no bytes or chips (except of the cow variety).

Best of all, teenage hackers can’t mess with you. Although, one smart aleck did write on the vet’s tailgate, “Please wash me!”
Best of all, trucks don’t crash as often as computers do.

The only time I saw the vet’s truck fail him was when he came out to the place to work on a cow with anaplasmosis. We were in the midst of a long drought, when raindrops started falling from the sky. Children and dogs ran and hid because they didn’t know what they were.

That 1/10th of an inch of rain washed away years of vet records. You could say that the vet “lost his hard drive,” and there was no backup.

By the way – it turns out that his truck’s original color is white.

Readers with questions or comments for Lee Pitts may write to him in care of this publication.

2/18/2009