Hitting on all 8

1990 was a heady year. I got into a prestigious graduate school, was diagnosed with a life-altering disease, and went off men.

I had fallen thud-hard for my roommate Judy. We didn’t act on the mutual attraction until June of that year. Before that, I was dating Hershel, a Vietnam veteran raising two kids on his own.  A townie, he was a regular at a tavern near campus.  Judy too was dating men, but sometimes went as a third on my dates with Hershel. We threw back beers at Bud’s and I noticed.

That Judy and Hershel  shot pool like they were born to it (Judy’s break was finessed and bone-jarring. Hershel occasionally shot with the butt end of his cue to beat college rubes who bet against him).  That they both loved Fords. That I was gay. Judy turned my handles—mental, emotional and sexual. Hershel, a handsome man and thoughtful lover, did not.

But my coming out and living who I am is a whole ‘nother story. Today I focus on that short  sentence about Fords.

In the parts of our country considered “fly-over,” your automobile affiliation is a birthright. You drive Fords or GMs or Dodges because your daddy did.

Oh, occasionally someone differed with their father because a family member had “gone off up north”—Detroit, Dayton, Gary—to work at an auto plant. If your uncle could get you a deal on a Pontiac GTO, you might overlook the fact that your pa preferred Dodges.

My stepfather Kenneth was a Chevy man. I followed suit when it came to the occasional truck I owned. One day I rolled up in my stepfather’s yard in a Chevrolet  pickup I’d just traded a Toyota for. The Chevy had that little 283 that would squall off the line.

Kenneth, skinflint farmer and man of little chit-chat, nodded approvingly and muttered to himself, and to me, maybe just a little: “There ain’t nothin’ like a Chevy truck.”

Judy  followed her father on what to park in the driveway. On the day I met her, Judy--two months past her 18th birthday--was driving a 1976 Ford F-100 (with the maker's famous straight six-cylinder engine).

Hershel owned a Thunderbird, and drove to work a Ford Courier pick-up he had fashioned from cast-off parts at the auto-body shop and junkyard where he worked.

I never asked Hershel whether his daddy was a Ford man. I just assumed.