My Luv Story: My Luv Did It Good

Until I moved to Korea, I lived in three different places in Oklahoma. All were along Route 66. It runs through my hometown of Yukon, where I grew up. (Garth Brooks graduated from Yukon High about five years before I did.) I went to college in a larger town called Edmond (the town that inaugurated postal shootings), where the main road is part of old 66, and lived there a few years after graduation. In the late ‘90s, I moved to Oklahoma City and lived there for a while. There was a lot of open space between the towns at that time. Maybe that’s why I love driving. And because I didn’t have a lot of money, I went through a lot of cheap used cars… mostly cheap trucks.

For a while, I was a commuter student at the university, driving from Yukon to Edmond, about an hour and a half round trip. Gas was cheap then. Time varied, depending on whether you took the highway, through OKC, or the country roads. (Turn right at Piedmont.)

I remember my red Chevy Luv truck primarily because it developed a problem where it wouldn't go over fifteen MPH when it was raining. Pushing the accelerator would SLOW the truck down. It was a mystery that kept Dad and me baffled. Any time there was even light rain in the forecast, I immediately started planning my route down the back roads, and to turn right at Piedmont. The commute became so much longer, more frustrating and more embarrassing, being honked at by tractor drivers, some of whom weren’t old enough to drive cars.

Eventually, as he often does, because he’s from the generation who knew how to fix cars, my dad stumbled on the secret of my truck's rain problems. There was a pin-sized hole in the gas line that would suck rain in. (No idea how it happened.) Why my dad never became a detective is a mystery to me.

Epilogue, or epiLOG: After I had moved to OKC, a large bug-riddled tree behind my house was struck by lightning and fell on the hood of my Luv. After the tree and the power lines were removed, she started right up—although looking a bit concertina-like on the front end. I sold her to a friend for $400 and she died for good a week later.

She ran long, she ran hard, but she finally gave out.