Friends with pickups most important

Transportation is critical in any walk of life. In order to do much of anything, you need to get to where you are going.

Crawling is the method of choice for babies and when the house is on fire and you don’t want to breathe so much smoke.

Walking is choice if the distance is short, the time is long, or there’s no alternative.

Running is for emergencies and races only.

Unicycles are for clowns and people who like to learn things for no reason. Bicycles are not for when you travel by sandy road.

Tricycles are for comparing with friends when you’re not yet too tall to ride them. Motorcycles are for going fast, driving over things that are not good for that purpose, and getting into wrecks while having way too much fun. Tri-wheelers are four-wheelers for when you want to break your back. Four-wheelers are for when the cattle are too ornery to mess with on two wheels.

Cars are for driving Grandma back from church on Sunday or for looking cool and only thinking about going fast. Pickups are for everything except metropolitan traffic. Tractors are for driving in methodical patterns all day long. Semi-trucks are for hauling on the highway, and probably not for moving hay out of sandy fields and down unmaintained roads.

Little planes are for spraying and moving yourself around. Big planes are for long trips and reminding yourself why you live in the desert where no one can find you that doesn’t already know here you live. Boats are for places with water, so I couldn’t tell you what to do with them. Ships are bigger boats and not my wheelhouse, again.

But despite all these and more that are capable of getting us where we need to go, you’d be surprised how often you end up somewhere, broke-down or otherwise in need, and wanting a ride.

And who do you call? Taxis don’t run down the rutted track we call a road between the fields we so inventively call Number One and Number Three. As much time as a farmer spends alone running a tractor back and forth across the field, or a rancher spends out on his horse checking the fence, it’s mighty important to have friends with a pickup and a key to the gate, who will come and get you when where you are going is not where you currently is.

Audra Brown’s friends know her number. Contact her at: [email protected]