Truck A Love Story Essay

Man’s True Love
The way this man talks about his truck is how so many American men talk of their automobiles. For good or bad, automobiles are key to our own uniqueness. When there were no such things as cars, did humans worship their buggies and horse drawn carriages in the same way? Did we love their horses as much as we love our Mercedes? Perhaps. Now days, we love our cars, but hate that they devour so much expensive gasoline. We might love our cars for sentimental motives as well. There are so many men in the world and some women who put their automobiles above all else. This is something I can’t bring myself to understand but then again my hobbies may be misunderstood as well. This book however did help me come to a certain extent of an understanding of why and how someone could become so attached to an inanimate object.
The book, Truck, a Love Story by Michael Perry, is a crazy all over the place writing on living in a tiny town, in the tiny town way of life as it meets up with the 21st century way of life, including malls and paved roads. The book was published in October 2006 by Harper Perennial, the author Michael Perry has written for numerous publications, including Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Salon, and the Utne Reader. A contributing editor to Men's Health, he lives in northern Wisconsin with his family. The character Perry jumps to so many different topics it was somewhat hard to keep track and recap them. But Perry writes it so flawlessly, that the book is a fast paced and pleasurable to read. We absorb a lot him in his young self in detail, starting with his love life, his mullet hairstyle, his
gardening skills, what he likes to listen to on the radio, his political views, a book tour, his family, and right down to his thoughts on hunting and guns. He likes to think of himself as a redneck, though he is a trained nurse and a volunteer paramedic. This story through Perry’s eyes is told in a somewhat unsophisticated manner. The feeling you get when reading it is a genuine, perceptive, and complex feeling. In the story, as it is being told Perry Falls in love and it may be the love story that is portrayed on the cover, as this relationship blossoms in his life his garden fades. Michael Perry has an old International Harvester L-120 pickup rusting in his front driveway, that he has a lot of history with. Though, if you were to ask him more questions in detail about the motor he would know nothing of it in the beginning. Perry has had this truck for several years but is not a mechanic. He has never taken the time to learn about the truck or engine to be able to fix it himself. In this book he talks about his year or so long project to return his truck to its former glory, not to mint condition but close enough. He has had many people come to offer to buy the truck he always turn them down hoping to make his dream become a reality. He dreams of being able to drive it down the road feeling as though it were in the days of Irma Harding, Internationals version of Betty Crocker. Irma Harding was the idol of the past to Perry, she stood for him as a representation of a life in the past and his truck. The book is set into a yearlong story portraying the events of each month in each chapter. Though the real story of the truck doesn’t begin until the chapter of April. That is when Perry gets started on restoring his L-120 pickup.
When I first picked this book out of the list we were given I didn’t expect it to be such an interesting and attention grasping read, I was fooled by the name.
The book is surprising, funny, entertaining and warm. It would be too easy to say that at the end of the year in Wisconsin the truck is running or that Perry is with his new found
love.