104 CHARLOTTEMAGAZINE.COM // JULY 2019
I
IN LATE APRIL, I spent 24 hours between the past
and the future with a guy named Kent. I learned a
good bit about Kent. Kent has a house in Matthews.
Kent has a wife who works with him. Kent used to
be a restaurant manager at a long-running establish-
ment in SouthPark.
But one day a few years ago, Kent decided to quit
the food-service nonsense—late nights, unreliable
employees, ckle bosses, ckle customers—to sell
cars to people like me.
As in most life transitions, I wasn’t in the market
for a new vehicle until I was.
I’d purchased a 2007 F-150, regular cab with a
single bench seat, on the day aer Christmas in 2006.
It was my 27th birthday. This was at a dealership
near where I grew up in rural southern Maryland. My
cousin was the salesman.
My dad went with me that day. A sherman, my
father was a master of two personality traits: acting
ornery, and reading and reciprocating someone’s BS.
I gured he’d come in handy on a car lot.
I was a sportswriter then, living in Fayetteville and
chasing college teams. At least once a week during
basketball season, I made the 80-or-so-mile drive
to Chapel Hill or Durham or Raleigh. I didn’t need
a truck. Considering my nances, buying one was
irresponsible. But my dad always had one—three
silver F-150s in a row—and I wanted one, too.
He suggested we start at a dealership closer to the
city, which back home was Washington. The more
competition a dealership had, he gured, the better
the price. We tried a Chevrolet dealer rst.
My father hadn’t driven a Chevy since his late 20s,
and he hated that truck enough to switch to Ford
for good. Brand loyalty seemed ridiculous to me
then and still does, but, honestly, nothing felt right
at the Chevy place. The salesman was prickly. The
place was busy. Besides, I was already crusty about
their television ads—slow-motion scenes from some
wide-open farm in Wyoming or wherever, playing
out under the noise of overwritten songs and steepedALONG THE WAY
in the nonsense that a Silverado
makes you more American than
someone who drives, say, a Kia.
Anyhow, we le that place and
went back to what we knew.
My cousin was a recently hired
salesman at our hometown Ford
dealership. He let me drive a few
vehicles and told me what I could
aord. It had crank windows and manual locks. I asked for one in
blue instead of silver, just to be a little dierent. I was ready to make
the deal when my dad, apparently itching for a little gamesmanship,
interrupted: “Yeah, we’re not going to buy anything today,” and he
nodded toward the door.
He was trying to blu his own nephew.
“You grumpy son of a bitch,” my cousin said.
I signed the papers that night.
Financially, it turned out ne. I kept it a long time and drove it
all over North Carolina, up mountains and onto ferries, and had
tailgate meals at roadside hamburger or barbecue joints from Little
Washington to Shelby.
Emotionally, it was a companion through a divorce, six moves, and
four job changes. Last September, aer Hurricane Florence, I drove it
throughout eastern North Carolina with a gas can and chainsaw in
the bed. And we went back and forth from Charlotte to my father’s
nursing home in Shallotte throughout the last ve months of his life.
Somewhere on those trips, the air conditioner started to cut in and
out. The rides got rougher. I felt older.
It’s weird to get sentimental about a vehicle, I know, and a country-
song cliché to get sentimental about a truck. But I was with these
wheels for 4,503 days. In its last couple of years, aer Laura and I
bought a house, it even became useful.
Naturally, I told all of that story—every self-indulgent word—to my
new friend Kent.
We went on numerous three-mile rides in that 24-hour stretch. Up
and down Independence Boulevard we went, Kent and I, in new and
used trucks and cars. He even let me try a used hybrid car, suggesting I
could drive it for work and keep the old truck for hardware store trips.
We made a list, he ran the numbers for each, and eventually we
agreed that he’d let me buy the most expensive one.
It was out back, behind a fence. It’s a new F-150, with a back seat
this time. It feels like a spaceship compared to the old one. Even has
power locks and windows. And it’s silver.
As I drove out of that dealership onto Independence, leaving the old
blue truck there as a trade-in, I wondered what transitions another
dozen years will bring. And I felt a familiar uneasiness—about trading
in all those precious miles from the past, about signing up to spend all
that money in the future. I remember a similar feeling aer my cousin
gave me the keys a dozen years ago, and I remember my dad’s words
that day.
“Yeah, but it’s an F-150. You’ll never need another truck again.”
It sounds as good today as it did then, even if it is a damn lie.What Will the
Next 4,503
Days Bring?
Thoughts on a life transition after
12 years in the same driver’s seat
BY MICHAEL GRAFFLOGAN CYRUS