I waited forever for Truck: A Love Story to come out in paperback. I don't know why. Anyone who can actually make me laugh out loud, just close the book and giggle for a good solid five minutes, deserves to be bought in hardcover.
I have a huge crush on Michael Perry, the writer. After I read Population: 485, I briefly entertained how I could arrange a meeting, because I was fairly certain that he was the perfect man. Throughout Truck: A Love Story, I realized that, for a variety of reasons, my love affair with Michael Perry will never go further than the page. And, I'm okay with that...so long as he keeps writing.
Truck: A Love Story is a year in the life of Perry as he rebuilds a '51 International Harvester, tries to garden, falls in love, and reflects on the fact that each day we get a little older. His mix of humor with profound thought is unique to him, and it's part of what makes him such a pleasure to read.
"I typed 'snickerdoodle' on the homepage and it scrolled out twenty recipes. Twenty recipes...for a cookie containing a sum total of seven ingredients not counting the cinnamon. Operating in this range of abundance locks me up. How in the world of sifted sugar do you choose? What if the all-time world-record blue-ribbon who's-your-grandma finest snickerdoodle recipe ever committed to a gingham-trimmed note card is sitting there like one of the nine original Beanie Babies at a yard sale and I skip it for a mistranscribed abridgement of Aunt Tooty's Double-Doodle Snickerdoodles supplied by Sylvia G. in Omaha who frankly skimps on the butter?"
And...
"...I'm good. I'm happy. Ain't skerred.
I mean, I do worry some, sure. I worry because I know the future is ruled by chaos. Never mind the seven-year itch, I've recently had married friends divorce after two decades together. I worry because lately one of my favorite albums--check that, our favorite album, the one Anneliese and I most enjoy playing while we are cooking--is Greg Brown's Covenant. These are songs of steady love, of enduring love, these are songs about two people providing each other timeworn comfort. These are songs about a man desiring his wife in her raggedyass old cotton nightgown. And they are sung by a man heading into his third marriage.
Ach, the future. All I know is what I feel now. I feel like a boy who dreamed he could fly. Then he woke up. And he could still fly."
How could you not love him?
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