we passed the stand of coneflowers – so beautiful in waning as summer wanes – the passage of time barely a whisper, yet it is august and a new season will soon be upon us. the side of the trail – the underbrush – told stories of summer’s heat, of the successful eradication of invasives, of new growth, of the turning – always the turning.

we walked back to where we had parked big red, this old truck that has now passed through twenty-five years of turning. barely seventy-thousand miles on its odometer, it seems happy to be driven, to have adventures, to be out and about.

we have had big red for the last four years since columbus gifted it to us. unable to drive any longer, he passed it to david and we promised to care for it as he had. every single time we have driven it, we have wondered why the rattle…loud rattle…from both sides of the truck. we determined it was the running boards. the bolts were tight but the metal steps shook and rattled, nonetheless.

so, on this day of waning time and everyone and everything getting older, we decided to bring it somewhere to see if we could possibly make a difference in the ridiculously loud sound and jarring shake the running boards were causing. we don’t know what put us over the edge this particular day. we wondered how columbus put up with this for the first 60,000 miles. for me, in particular, anything that has any kind of rhythm – and then is juxtaposed with a different rhythm close by – say, on the other side of the vehicle – simultaneously(!) – makes me crazy. it’s torture! let’s just say it interrupted the ride and ford’s slogan “go further” sounded less and less appealing. i mean, we are “ford tough” but c’mon…!

we googled who to take it to. picked a shop. and drove to it, a tiny bit fearful of the price tag of this fix. particularly right now. we knew we could get an estimate and walk away, if need be. what’s a little rattle for a little longer?

the guys at line-x took maybe 75 seconds to decide what to do and scheduled us for later in the week. merely thirty minutes after they began to install a steel anchor bar on each running board, our problem had disappeared.

because we have hyped-up sound and muscle memory – reinforced by four years of sound and bouncing, we could both easily imagine the noise and the jarring we were now missing. big red drove smoothly down the street, still driving like a big old ford f150 – in a big ole truck kind of way – but minus the runningboard imax symphony.

surprisingly, it was an easier and less costly fix than we had imagined.

i suppose as we watch other things around us age and wane – our house, littlebabyscion, our fridge, our stove, this very laptop, my iphone, our bodies (ouch!) – this would be a good lesson to remember.

no less beautiful, no less a coneflower, the turning just requires a little care.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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