Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Clouds, wind, snow flurries, 25 degrees
7 February, 2012
If you don’t relate to the story that follows, it’s alright.
You’re probably a city person.
This is country stuff – about trucks and dogs – in Moab, Utah.
We don’t relate to a lot of city things - like rapid transit, for example.
The most common rapid transit we experience is moving from the car to the bathroom in the house after a long drive home.
SHAGGY DOG STORY
In small towns way out west most families own a pickup truck.
These vehicles are not transportation so much as they are necessary tools. And no matter how thoughtful you may be about environmental concerns, if you don’t have a pickup truck or a friend or uncle who does, you are living a handicapped life.
Here’s a taste of the attitude of which I speak:
Two men in the Ace Hardware store, at the checkout counter.
One guy looks out the window, turns back to his buddy, and says.
“My god, there’s Woody getting out of a brand new Prius.”
The other guy says, “Yeah, he went over to Junction and bought one for his wife because she’s been yammering at him. But he’s still got his pickup.”
“Well, then . . . he’s OK.”
Now a Prius is a fine and righteous car – don’t get me wrong.
But you just can’t put a chainsaw and a full load of firewood in a Prius.
You can’t haul all the junk in your backyard to the dump in a Prius.
You can’t go off-road up-hill cross-country in a Prius.
And if you get your elk or deer, you can’t bring it and your camping gear and your guns and your dogs home in a Prius.
You can’t even tie the elk on the roof or the hood or the fender of a Prius.
And you can’t fit six kids and their sleds into a Prius.
For all of these endeavors you’ve got to have a 4x4 pickup truck.
(If Prius starts making a pickup truck, well, then, maybe . . .)
When you do get a pickup, then your first after-market accessory is a dog.
If you’ve already got a dog, fine.
But if you don’t, you will need at least one big outdoor dog even before you get a front-end winch and a gun rack.
The dog is required equipment for a pickup truck.
And if you don’t understand why, then you are city, not country.
And it won’t do any more good trying to explain that to you than if you tried to explain the meaning of modern jazz to the guys in the Ace Hardware.
I tell you all this as a set-up for a circus act I witnessed today.
I went into town to the Ace Hardware store to get a gallon of black paint.
Most of the vehicles in the parking lot were pickup trucks.
All but one had a dog or two in the back bed.
(As an aside I’ll mention how you can tell a city dog from a country dog.
A city dog will bark at you from its safety behind window glass.
But a country dog will ignore you – unless you touch its truck . . .)
So. An old guy in an old blue Ford pickup backed out of the parking lot and drove ahead of me down Main Street, which is also Highway 191 South.
His old dog took up its position in back – two legs in the bed, two legs up on the narrow shelf at the edge of the bed, and head sticking out around the side of the truck, pointed into the wind.
Big black-and-white, flop-eared, long-haired mongrel animal.
A truly shaggy dog.
With me following behind in my old Ford Expedition (an almost truck), the blue pickup moved along in no particular hurry, headed south out of town.
There’s one stop light before the open road. Out by the McDonald’s.
The light was yellow, so we coasted on through – or started to coast on through . . .
Suddenly a couple of tourists in high-tech Lycra outfits and Martian helmets shot out of the McDonald’s parking lot on a tandem bike, not yet coordinated enough in their co-cycling moves to pay attention to the on-coming traffic.
The old guy in the pickup truck hit his brakes hard to miss the bicycle.
The sudden stop caught his dog by surprise, and it was propelled forward in slow motion over the roof and hood of the truck.
Disaster?
No. No, not at all.
The dog rolled a couple of times, made a re-entry recovery move a high-diver would be proud of, and landed safely on its feet . . . in a run.
The driver of the pickup truck slowed down alongside the running dog, honked his horn, and the dog leaped back into the bed of the truck, and resumed his post.
And the truck rolled on down the highway.
Damn! That was good! Not the first time that’s happened, I bet . . . maybe they’ve even practiced it a few times out on the ranch.
I picked up speed and passed them.
I honked and waved to the old guy in his old pickup as I passed him.
He waved back.
The old shaggy dog looked over at me.
I know dogs can’t smile.
But if he could’ve, he would’ve.
