I previously posted a photo titled Old Red Truck, oil on canvas from artist Michael Meissner.
Still working on blog repair: have completed years 2004 through 2012, as well as 2017 through 2022. So only four years remain.
Below is an excerpt from a July 2012 post that drew on memories from around 1987 and inspired today’s choice of a painting.
[The truck I borrowed, Big Red] was an ancient pickup–I can’t remember if he was a Ford or a Chevy, but he was beat up as hell. He’d been part of a working ranch or farm… so he’d earned every dent, scratch, and faded bit of paint he wore. Every time I clambered into the cab, slammed the door, and cranked him up, I slipped inside the pages of a Larry McMurtry novel. And I love Larry McMurtry even more than red trucks, so I am talking BLISS.
I know that one day, somehow, another Big Red will come into my life. If he’s not pretty, I don’t care, as long as what’s under the hood will keep us on the run. And if it doesn’t happen before I check out, then I can’t think of a better way to be imagined: tooling through the universe–make me young and thin again, with long brown hair whipping around me, and all the dogs who went before me taking turns riding on the seat next to me. Whenever you’re sitting at home or inside a place of business, and you hear a bit of music as someone drives by–and if you know me, you’ll probably know what music is likeliest–then think to yourself, There goes Becky. Or, you know, Aunt Becky, Beck, Becks, Beckster, or any of the BettyPeggyBetsyDebby names I’ve been miscalled through the years. It’s all good in a red truck.