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My father bought our first home in Ann Arbor, a small brown shingled bungalow at the limit of a dead end street. He liked the quiet country feel of being the only house on the street nestled in elm trees with space for a large sunny garden. For him it was a jewel on a street called Emerald. He envisioned succeeding in the new business he had just started which would generously support his family that soon grew to include three sons and one daughter.
One day my dad's business cast off a van truck. He hauled it home after stripping it of any re-usable parts and planted it in the far southwest corner of his garden. Soon it was overgrown with vines, Chickory, Queen Annes lace, buttercups gone wild and dandolions. Saturday afternoons we were able to bushwhack a path through the "jungle" to play "delivery truck". When we pried open the doors, it had an odd smell of rusted metal . On either side of the truck's cargo area were wooden bins containing assorted screws, bolts, nails, washers, and musty mill-dewed rags that were brown with dried out rust stains. The ceiling was tall enough that I could walk erect but my two older brothers and their friends had to bend over a bit so as not to bonk their heads, especially between the driver's seat and the cargo area. The floor was made of worn wooden planks with large metal bolts fastening it to the chassis. On the outside was a faded red, white and blue logo of my dad's business. The front of the truck was flat so the engine compartment was a covered box between the driver and rider's seat. The cover could be raised to examine the imaginary motor, or to hide in, when the games turned to hide-and-seek.
The most prized spot was, of course, in the drivers seat. That's where most of the power games started and finished. I being the youngest had the honored seat of riding shot gun or delivering the screws and bolts from one of the bins to the "customer". The driver commanded the rest of the "team" and drove at the same
time...alot of responsibility, I thought. Well, the driving often took the mountainous roads instead of the straight freeways. And we were tossed and tumbled side to side as my older brother wheeled the cantankerous truck around sharp corners and over tall mountains. He would drive so crazy it would "stall", then the manly-ones would get out of the truck and check out the tires, that were now really just rusted wheels without a scrap of rubber, make sure the oil was up to the line for which a manly-one needed a rusty mill-dewy rag to wipe off the sliminess between his fingers, realign the mirrors which were now empty oblong frames. But when it was all checked out, we were ready to roll again. I didn't understand all the manly chores and checkpoints but blindly trusted my older brothers that our rig was safe to speed around the hairpin curves again.
It became a meeting place for neighborhood clubs, and the spot where we would bring back the polly wogs we caught in the pond over the hill. We made a collection of jars filled with pond water which implied they contained specimens. In reality the specimens had either died or jumped out as soon as they sprouted legs.
The wild garden enveloping the truck was a special hunting ground for my butterfly collection. I made my own butterfly net using mosquito netting gathered onto a bent metal clothes hanger that I precariously attached to an old broken broom stick. I was so proud of the butterfly net, I took it on vacations and caught way more butterflies than I ever needed in my collection........it worked so well.
As my own friendships grew with girls in the neighborhood, we would sweep, dust, scrub, polish the inside of the truck to make room for our dress-up games. With floor length gowns and trains, tiarras and magic wands we needed a spotless runway to model and act out our dramas.
One drama placed me in the driver's seat with my lacey ruffled pale yellow girly dress on, screaming down the highway. Soon the dress got in the way because I needed to check the tire pressure to make sure the other girls were safe in this ol' truck........thus began the illusion of creating my own independent life while driving down the same road many others had driven before me.
Dad must have known there were life lessons in this old van truck.