‘D’ is for…
Hey Fred….just curious…..will you be eating both pigs? Thought of selling some proper fed pigs to co-workers, friends, long time readers, etc?
The big one is for us to eat, the small one will be for a friend who is splitting the cost of the feed with us. Originally, he was also going to teach me how to slaughter / butcher them, but most likely now we’ll be taking them to a processor so we’ll each just pay for our own.
Play ball for the pigs? Pigs have toys?? Toys that they hump???
Pigs have roughly the same IQ as dogs, and they enjoy both playing with toys and humping.
They might be tiny, and not quite as flavorful as those from the grocery store, but I’m mighty proud of my treeload of plums that was so loaded down I had to tie some branches to a t-post for support.
Is it me, or is the world filled with douchebags? From the bluetooth-enhanced cell phone yapper in the mall bathroom to the rubbernecker driving ten miles an hour under the speed limit in the left lane, they’re everywhere now. Maybe that’s because we all have our own little douchebaggy tendencies (even me, when I do things like return a CD to a store because they tried to force me to put it in a plastic bag), and I’m just on a run of encountering them.
Then again, maybe not. Maybe they’re multiplying.
Friday morning, I went over to the bakery thrift store for some junk food: a pack of powdered doughnuts for me, a pack of orange cupcakes for Robyn, and a big bag of cookies for the pigs (the outside ones, not the inside ones). Simple, right?
But there was a problem: a douchebag was in the store.
I recognized him as one right away, because he was standing in the center of the store, talking loudly into his cell phone. There seems to be some sort of correlation between someone’s sense of self-importance and their phone voice. I should apply for a government grant to do a study.
So there he stood in the middle of the store, leaned against one of the big shelves of bread. There was one other customer in the store, a woman at the counter paying for a basketload of stuff. As I gathered my items, she finished making her purchase and left, and the douchebag moved to the counter, where he laid a couple of loaves of bread down.
He did not hang up his phone.
I got in line behind him and waited. The cashier rang up his bread and pointed at the number on the register. The douchebag pulled out a checkbook and started trying to write a check, awkwardly because he only had one hand available.
“No, look in the slot above where you put the CDs,” he said, and stopped writing. He laid the pen on the counter to gesture. “That’s the floppy drive.”
The cashier and I watched him.
“No, not that one. The small one. Right. That’s where the floppy disk goes. Yeah.”
He made no move to pick the pen back up to finish the check. Instead, he shifted around so he could lean against the counter and continued his conversation, lost in his own world.
Like everyone else in the world, I have my own little tendencies towards douchebaggery, especially when it comes to my patience. I don’t have a lot of it, and my time is valuable enough to me that I refuse to stand around waiting for something inconsequential like junk food.
Boy, doesn’t that make me sound like a douchebag?
What I mean is this: I don’t think that I’m more important than other people and shouldn’t have to wait, I think that something like powdered doughnuts or a Big Mac isn’t worth being in line for more than a couple of minutes. My time is important to me, non-necessities are not.
The douchebag at the counter in the bakery thrift store apparently disagreed, because he showed no signs of finishing up and getting out of the way. He was just. That. Important.
So I walked back through the store, replaced items I’d picked up, and left.
I like my truck, Jezebel, but I don’t trust her. Any time I’m behind the wheel, I feel like I’m taking my life into my hands. No airbags, old loose seatbelts, and a transmission that tends to slip all add up to a disconcerting experience. Couple that with the feeling that she’s going to just fall apart on me one day while I’m tooling down the road and I can honestly say that being in the truck doesn’t give me pleasure.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been making noise to Robyn about getting a newer truck. One that doesn’t have 200,000 miles on it and feel like it’s held together by spit and baling wire. As with everything in life, you get what you pay for in a truck, and when you get a cheap old one…you get a cheap old one.
By noon on Saturday I’d done what I wanted in the garden and gotten the grass cut. I was ready to take the afternoon off (all work and no play makes Fred a dull boy) and suggested to Robyn that we drive up to Lawrenceburg and be intimidated by the Mennonites.
We do that, you know. We drive up there with intentions of stopping and looking at furniture and baskets and homemade baked goods, then when we’re actually there driving through their community we get freaked out by their old-timey clothes, unsmiling faces, and flat dead eyes. Because of that, we generally end up only buying a few things at the general store on the way and at a produce stand in Lawrenceburg, and never actually stop at a Mennonite home unless we’re feeling particularly brave (or there are other people WHO ARE LIKE US already stopped).
When we were getting into the car to leave the house, Robyn mentioned that she wished we could trust the truck enough to take it, because she really wanted to look at Mennonite-made tables. That started me on the I-need-a-new-truck roll, and before we went up to Tennessee we drove by several used car lots in Otisburg, to see what they had. In Lawrenceburg, we stopped at several lots to look, too. I spotted a couple of trucks that looked promising, but (of course) both of the dealerships were closed.
The new truck talk continued yesterday, and once again I was finished by noon with the daily chores I’d set for myself. This time, we drove over to Huntsville to look at the big dealerships. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t a good idea, because dealerships in a city of 200,000 don’t tend to keep things like older farm trucks on the lot. I did spot a good-lookin’ truck at the new CarMax, but it was $11K, and homey is not laying out that much money for something that gets driven once or twice a month.
There was one last place I wanted to look, a used car place in Madison that I pass every day on the way home from work. I knew they always had some trucks out there, marked with prices in the range I was looking to spend. I didn’t expect them to be open on a Sunday afternoon, but as we turned in off the highway, I saw an ‘OPEN’ sign.
“Leave it running,” Robyn said. For some reason, she doesn’t share my love of walking around in the full sun when it’s 92 out, looking at beat up old trucks.
I climbed out of the car and walked around the small lot, checking the trucks. They had four: two were too small, one was too old and beaten up, and one Dodge Ram that looked like it might fit the bill. Excellent. I looked around for a salesman and didn’t see one, which was surprising. Used car salesmen are — generally speaking — a class of douchebag unto themselves, right above Prius drivers and right below vegans.
Maybe I was wrong about this one, though.
I crossed the lot to the building, which was once a house. The front door was open, and a box fan lazily pushed in tepid air from the front porch. As I climbed the stairs onto the porch, I could see the end of a couch through the door. There was a bed pillow on it.
The salesman hadn’t been outside hovering around me because he was asleep in a recliner just inside the front door, head thrown back and mouth hanging open. A TV played next to him, the volume down low. His head was shaved clean, but his face had a couple of days’ worth of stubble. He looked to be somewhere around 30.
I knocked softly on the door frame and his eyes popped open. He took a moment to stretch, then tipped the recliner down and stood up, blinking sleepily. I tried not to smile, but was unsuccessful.
“You know how many miles that Ram out there has?” I asked.
“The maroon one?”
“Yeah.”
He considered.
“Think it’s got about a hundred thousand. Want the key to check it out?”
His teeth were a brownish yellow, and so caked with plaque they appeared as a single bony mass. There was something white and crusty at the corners of his mouth, and when he talked, little stringers of spit stretched from lip to lip.
“Yes, please,” I said, trying not to stare. The mileage sounded just about right for the price, and I was getting a little excited at the prospect of having found a truck.
He fetched a key and handed it over, but didn’t follow me out into the lot. Perhaps there’s something to be said for picking a hot sunny day to look at trucks.
Robyn shut off her car and joined me at the Ram. I discovered pretty quickly that the automatic door locks didn’t work. That wasn’t much of a problem; they don’t work right on Jezebel, either. I stuck the key in the ignition and turned it enough for the electrical system to fire up.
The truck had 157K miles, not 100K. That’s still not as bad as 200K, and at the rate I drive, it would take 40 years to get the Ram to 200K. To me, the higher mileage was just something to use in the negotiation game.
“It’s got a hundred fifty seven thousand miles on it,” I said when I walked back to the building. The salesman was sitting on a lawn chair on the front porch now, surveying his domain.
“Thought it was less than that. Other than that, what’d you think? If anything’s broke on it, I’ll fix it.”
“The automatic door locks don’t work.”
He ran his tongue across his teeth.
“No problem, I can take care of that.”
“It looks nice,” I admitted. “Mind if I take it for a drive?”
His brow dropped, and furrows spread across his forehead.
“So what’s your plan?” he asked. “Are you going to buy a truck? We don’t do financing here. We only take cash or checks. How would you pay for it?”
“If I like the truck, I’ll write you a check for it,” I said, almost adding you douchebag. I was a little put off by his questions, and felt like he thought I was trying to pull a fast one. “It won’t bounce.”
His brow smoothed.
“Check the gas and make sure it’s got some. Take it anywhere you want.”
I went back out to the truck and climbed in beside Robyn, seething.
“Goddamn, I hate used car salesmen,” I said. “What a fucking douchebag.”
“He looks just a little too impressed with himself.”
“Oh, he is.”
When I turned the key in the ignition, the truck ROARED to life. This Ram had a dual exhaust, and was loud, blatty, and very rednecky.
I loved it.
I drove the truck in a loop that was about five miles, testing the handling and pep. It had both, and was considerably better than Jezebel. The windows and rear windshield were tinted cop-killer dark, which I liked even though it made it hard to see out the rear view mirror.
When we pulled back into the lot, I was ready to talk about making a deal. I locked the truck and traipsed back to the porch, where the salesman waited with a broad smile. Robyn went back to her car and started it up.
“What’d you think?” the salesman asked.
“I was hoping with one for a little less mileage for that price,” I began, intending to continue with but I liked the truck, so let’s talk about exactly what you’re willing to sell it for.
But the salesman interrupted me.
“You didn’t need to take it for a drive if you thought it had too many miles.”
Thunderheads danced on his brow, and his mouth pulled in tight when he spoke. He stared off into the distance, not making eye contact with me.
“Excuse me?” I asked, surprised by his response.
“If you thought the truck had too many miles, you didn’t need to drive it.”
His tone was accusatory.
“But that’s alright,” he said, clearly indicating that it wasn’t. “Whatever.”
He waved a hand dismissively my way.
“So you don’t want to talk money?” I asked, incredulous.
His demeanor changed instantly, to one of sickly sweetness. Of course he wanted to talk money.
What he didn’t know is that he’d already lost the sale.
Because everyone has a good douchebag story to share, feel free to tell us yours in the comments. 
Two years on, and Matt’s still at it. I love this video.
