Truck A Love Story

By Michael Perry

Perry ruminates on his cooking, his garden, his girlfriend, his friends, his health and his truck. He cooks his food, plants his garden, dates his girlfriend, visits his friends, goes to work and sometimes works on his truck with his brother's help.

Not the most dynamic book ever written, still it muddles along, with Perry commenting on the details of his life. I was expecting something a little more amusing and a little less self-involved. Ultimately the story is about Perry with the truck and everyone else coming in a far second.

New Words

Poppadam: a thin Indian wafer, sometimes described as a cracker or flatbread. 'I have craved coriander and poppadams ever since, but stop short of calling myself a "curryholic."'

Garam Masala: literal meaning is 'hot spice' it's a basic blend of ground spices. 'This one I used, if only to make my own Garam Masala, which sadly came down on the side of sawdust.'

Parotid: the largest of the salivary gland. 'The play of sun and shadow on a grapelike cluster of Sweet Millions miniature tomatoes is so mustily conveyed that your parotids clench at the thought of the skin popping under the pressure of your molars and the subsequent sweet gush of pulp.'

Melisma: A passage of several notes sung to one syllable of text, as in Gregorian chant. 'There are guys on the fire department capable of melisma.'

Occluded: closed or obstructed. Zerk: A grease fitting, which is a small fitting that acts as the connection between a grease gun and the component to be lubricated.
'Faced with an occluded grease zerk, I could replace it, even tune up the threads with a tap wrench.'

Punji: A sharpened bamboo stick set in the ground to wound or impale enemy soldiers. 'True enough: whereas I would quite gladly honeycomb the yard with squirrel-sized punji pits and perch in the walnut tree with a blowgun, Charlie faithfully lugs enough corn into his backyard to feed a half-dozen beefalo."

Rain stick: A percussion instrument that is made from a dried cactus branch that is hollowed out and filled with small pebbles and capped at both ends. 'In the backseats and cargo areas you will spot fishing poles and Frisbees, and here and there a rain stick.'

Falsa blanket: a blanket with a typical Mexican striped design. 'Many of the passengers exit the cars carrying rainbow falsa blankets and Guatemalan tote bags.'

Outro: In music, a portion of music at the end of a song; like an intro, but at the end instead of the beginning. 'The outro on Dwight Yoakam's version of "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues"; a stone fence in Wales; the pale wallpaper in Oscar's apartment in reruns of The Odd Couple; the smell of tinder-dry pine needles warmed by the sun; the first notes of Liszt's Liebestraum no. 3 in A-flat, not that I would recognize the rest of it if I heard it in the dentist's office.'

Hesperides: In Greek mythology, the Hesperides are nymphs who tend a blissful garden where grown golden apples. 'Never mind that the series [The Rockford Files] was shot between 1974 and 1980 and we're hardly talking the garden of the Hesperides.'

Purlins: Framing members that sit on top of rafters, perpendicular to them, designed to spread support to roofing materials. 'A hinged ladder beside the tub leads to a mattress stuffed in a cubby hole wedged between the beams and purlins.'

Papa-san chair: A papasan chair is a large rounded bowl-shaped chair with an adjustable angle similar to that of a futon. 'I once responded to missing an important meeting by hurling the top half of a papa-san chair across the room like a gigantic Frisbee.'

Doula: A support person, usually female, with no medical or midwifery training, who provides emotional assistance to a mother or pregnant couple before, during or after childbirth. 'The doula, a woman I may never meet whose role as I understand it was to operate somewhere between coach and midwife.'

Hyperacusis: An abnormal degree of discomfort or aversion to sounds that would not be regarded as loud by average standards. 'In addition to the eye and the testicle (specifically, its benign epididymal cyst, otherwise known as a lump), my inventory includes sand in the gears of my neck (I find myself checking blind spots in traffic by pulling half a chin-up on the steering wheel and then rotating my cranium, neck and shoulders as a single unit)(very little-old-man), a frayed rotator cuff, persistent tinnitus, hyperacusis, a world-record kidney stone, transient numbness of the left leg, a partially detached clavicle, a little click in my thumb that has lingered since I jammed it in someone's shoulder pads during a Friday night football game in roughly 1982, and yes, here lately, in both big toes but particularly the right, the first twinges of uric acid accumulation.'

Edematous: swollen. '"The white spot looks like it might have been there for a long time, but the rapid onset of your blind spot doesn't jive with slower infections or an edematous process."'

Ameliorism: the desire to solve social problems by reforming individuals; also, responding by making things better. 'I recall that at some point during the discussion Nolte said something about ameliorism and the copper roof on Bob Dylan's mansion, so I am going to read up on these ameliortists and see where that takes me, but at some point you have to ditch the interior yip-yap and grab a shovel.'

Trompe l'oeil: This French term literally means to "trick the eye". It comes from "tromper" meaning to deceive and "l'œil" meaning the eye. The term refers to an object or scene rendered so realistically that the viewer believes they are seeing the actual objects. 'The stage is draped in a vintage hand-painted backdrop that creates a trompe l'oeil forest.'

Sacerdotal: priestly. 'After obtaining the all-clear from the local clerk of courts and the Wisconsin state attorney general herself, Bob submitted an electronic application to the Web site of the Universal Ministries, lately of Milford, Illinois, and withing moments found himself selected, appointed, ordained, and granted the power to perform sacerdotal duties including the legal sanction of marriages in the state of Wisconsin.'