I have never been a big fan of having a sunroof in a vehicle.
Call me old fashioned, but I think only the windows on the sides of a car should open, or the back glass if one is driving a truck. Of course, said window should be of sufficient size to be worthwhile. There was a time I was so overweight that I got stuck in a sliding rear truck window. I had locked my keys inside whilst visiting a business beside a liquor store, but that’s a column for another day.
It doesn’t seem logical to me that one would cut a hole in a perfectly good roof, install an over-engineered window in said hole, and pay extra money for such. That being said, I’ve loved several vehicles that had such a hole; of the three, only one didn’t leak. That one is sitting on three wheels and a concrete block now, facing issues other than a leaking gasket.
It’s been a bad year for trucks at the Weaver household. There was the pretty one, that lost two of its four sets of brakes, two of its four gears, and a fuel pump—all in one week.
There was its ugly cousin, which I loved, that had issues endemic to 20-year old trucks that have been used, well, as trucks.
There’s another one that my friend Carl Clark is waiting, patiently, for me to get out of his yard, but the coordination required to move that workhorse has been something akin to the preparations for D-Day, only without a blank Congressional check or angry Nazis with machine guns.
Then there’s the new one.
My loathing of sunroofs – sunrooves? – is such that it was actually a negotiating point when I bought the truck. I didn’t care about the homemade paint job that allowed the original red to bleed through. I wasn’t really that worried about the non functioning radio. I can get by with window-switches that only work most of the time. And the mysterious smells akin to those from an unsealed Egyptian tomb are nothing compared to me in trapping season. I like my new little truck, especially since the mileage is about double of the larger ones with which I had disagreements about starting, stopping and continuing to roll when told to do so.
I say “new,” although the truck has logged over 200,000 miles since leaving Japan. I also say “new,” even though I’ve had the truck since (naturally) the end of trapping season, yet only managed to put around 2,000 on the odometer. I might have to pick up some new tires before long. Knowing How to choose right tires for you commercial truck will help to keep the truck on the road for longer.
I’d had the little thing for about a month, with very little warning, the transmission gave up the ghost. It was then that I realized that this little truck was just a player in a larger tragedy worthy of Aeschylus, Sophocles, or any of the other Greek tragedians.
When things went too bad for the Greek hero, and there was no way out, those old writers often relied on the deus a machina, a device that descended from above the stage, to provide a sword, a torch, or an escape route for the hero.
Problem was, there was no deus a machina waiting to magically lower itself from my ceiling. I had enough problems with the mechanic a machina.
As the poor little truck was hauled to the shop, the sunroof proceeded to blast off its hinges. It could have happened after the truck was at the shop, depending on who you talk to; for that matter, maybe it was even broken by that aforementioned magical hand, just to rub salt into the wound.
Rather than dealing with pointing fingers, I did what I could to keep the resultant hole covered. The fellow who completed the repair work (not the one who started the project) was kind enough to use about a roll of duct tape to secure a trash bag to the roof. I appreciated the gesture, although after months of rain pouring through what was ironically and diabolically called a “sun” roof, the truck had developed a bad case of mold, and a certain aroma that would nauseate a possum with clogged sinuses.
But hey—I got my truck back.
No more was it a question of how to haul enough food and water in the trunk of the Hun to take care of the critters on the farm. No more did I have to be concerned about whether or not a recently-dispatched coyote might bleed on Miss Rhonda’s heated leather seats. And once again, I could go back to wiping worm guts on the seat of my overalls whilst fishing, without fear of wearing said entrails to the next city council meeting. The gaping hole in the roof was just a slight aberration.
I have driven a completely open truck before—ironically, it was a much older model of this exact same ride, with fewer bells and whistles, and even less roof. The previous owner had tried to install a sunroof, but he used too much alcohol in the attempt. Rather than worry about welding up a repair, he just cut the rest of the roof off, and sold it as a “convertible project truck”. He even was such a nice guy as to drill holes in the floorboards for the water to run out. He called them “drainage vents,” since he had a sense of flair in his salesmanship.
I bought it for hauling firewood and goat feed (that’s also a column for another day) but it became a daily driver when my beloved Jeep Cherokee gave up the ghost. Driving a truck with no suspension, a board for a seat, no roof and no heater during the coldest winter in 20 years quickly makes you appreciate the little things in life.
The new truck is somewhat less Spartan, although we had quite the baptism by fire, if you will. Actually, due to the rain, I guess it was more of a traditional Baptist baptism when I brought the old girl home the other night in a Noah-esque deluge.
The attempt by the mechanic to temporarily cover the hole in the roof worked fine when it was sitting still, but by 35 miles per hour, there was no way I could tolerate the noise of the wind through the plastic. I was reminded of the whining, mewling, stridency of a second-rate presidential candidate.
Hence, I figured the trip home would be one where I could enjoy the stars, or maybe a rising moon.
Then the clouds rolled in, 40 miles from home.
On the plus side, I wasn’t as worried about buying a new rain gauge, since the cupholders in the center console are fairly symmetrical. Assuming the truck is parked, and the rain falls straight down, I can guesstimate at the precipitation. Nor do I have to worry about the aforementioned worm guts, since every time it rains, the truck gets washed out. All I have to do is bail the accumulation out of the floor, although I’m giving serious thought to that whole drainage vent thing.
But soon as I can find a welder, we’ll patch the roof, and that magical hand descending from above the stage will draw back a nub, as the old country saying goes – and move on to some other Greek tragedy of a truck.
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