In Which I Drive My Dead Father's Pick-up Truck

It was a 1976 Toyota long bed that I'd originally thought was white, but in fact turned out to be the faintest shade of some kind of odd green.  (I got colour blindness issues - what are you gonna do?) Anyway, the week before my father died, my brother and I came down from northern California to Orange County to see it through, and we were staying at my mother's house (his mother, my father's first wife, died in childbirth).  After my father died, on March 9th, 1987 - just around the corner; I wonder if that's what's put all this in my mind - there were things to attend to, and one afternoon I was out with the pick-up running errands.  When I was done, I parked the truck in front of the house and came through the living room and into the kitchen, and they were both there, both of them staring at me with utter and complete disappointment.  I will never forget the looks on their faces.  They'd seen the Toyota pull up in front of the house, but then it had gone out of sight, and they were wondering if maybe.  And, when it wasn't him...

How can you blame them.  I'd seen that truck pull up in front of 721 N. El Rey Drive, La Habra, CA  hundreds of times myself - I mean I can see it right now, 27 years later - and each and every time there he was, with a sack of groceries under one arm or with the mail in his hands or with a story about something he had seen when he was out.  Each and every time, there he was...

Ah, here he is now...



IBL:mm