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Everybody has things or items that they cherish the most. Special
things that mean more to them than anything else. I myself used to
have one of these special items, but I let her slip away. Her name
was Lucile. She was God’s greatest gift to Earth, and she meant the
world to me. Lucile was my first pick-up truck, and she was the best
around. If that truck could talk, Lord knows the things it would
say. Lucile was more than a truck, she was a machine.
Lucile was a 1986 Ford F-150. She was two tone, white on top,
blue in the middle, and white on the bottom. My baby had carpet interior,
with electric locks, windows, and automatic transmission.
I also had a Pioneer CD player in her with Pioneer highs in the doors,
an Alpine amp, a punch 100 amp, with a MTX cross-over, and two ten inch
Pioneer IMPP’s. Those were just in case I felt the need to jam.
She didn’t have any fancy rims on her, just factory with street tires on
the front, and 31 inch mud brutes on the back. And boy did she love
to get muddy. Which takes us to a couple of her stories.
For instance, I and about six of my podnas were at school one day.
It was dinner time, and about a three inch rain came through flooding the
cane fields and pastures pretty good. We decided at school, we would
all take our vehicles mud riding, which sounded good at the time.
Three o’clock came and we headed out. We decided to go to our friend’s
horse pasture where they had a water hole that was thought to be pretty
deep. When we got there, we all dove off into the hole. Lucile
was just a pumping, those mud brutes were eating that mud like it was Thanksgiving
dinner. Lucile was the only truck to make it across the hole.
I turned around, went back through it, stopped, stood on the roof, and
laughed at everybody that was stuck in the hole. We got everybody
out at about 7:15 p.m., which wouldn’t have been bad if we weren’t supposed
to be at a parent/student senior meeting at 7:00 p.m. To make matters
worse, all our moms were head of the senior meeting. We walked in
the meeting about 30 minutes late, with mud from head to toe. Our
moms gave all of us a look the devil himself couldn’t make. Lucile
made her mark on the world that day. To be honest, she was named
Lucile on that particular day, after Waylon Jennings’ song, “Lucile”, which
was playing while I crossed the hole.
Another time Lucile made her mark was at a camp out. This time I wasn’t as fortunate. We decided to camp out that night. There was an old slew that ran into Plaquemine Bayou not far from where we were going to sleep. It was a pretty night and we were all sitting around the fire getting drunk, when the question was asked. They asked to try and make it down the slew with Lucile.
The first couple of beers I said no. I guess I should have stopped
drinking at that point. But, before you knew it, we were all piled
up in Lucile going to the slew. I got to the slew, paused, and plunged
in it. I guess she made it about 100 yards, before we hit a very
deep and muddy hole. It felt like we came to a dead stop when we
hit it. I tried to rock it back and forth a couple of times, but
she wouldn’t budge. I stuck my hand out of the window and my hand
was soaking in water. Lucile was in a bind. She had water up
to the seats in her. I didn’t want to leave her alone, but I had
to until morning. We walked back to the fire, drank a beer, and went
to bed.
The next morning, we had to get a bulldozer to pull her out, nothing
else would budge her. When we got her out the hole, she cranked off
like nothing ever happened. That’s how Lucile got her respect.
Lucile will always be loved and respected by me and all of my friends.
We see her on the road still kicking every now and then, and it helps us
to reminisce. I’d do anything in the world to have her back right
now, but I know it will never happen. So to all you truck lovers
out there who cherish their truck as much as I did, I advise you to never
sell it. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
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