No GAP for Grandpa
by: Larry Edsall
My name, right there on my birth certificate, is Larry Edsall. Not Lawrence. For some reason, my parents didn’t want me to have a nickname, so they gave me one to start with.
And I’ve never really had a nickname until I became a grandfather. Like so many little boys, my first grandchild, Nicholas Russell Chester, had trouble pronouncing his L’s, so I became “Gompa Murray.”
When Nick’s sister, Alexandra Brook, came along, all she heard was my nickname, so Gompa Murray it is.
Anyway, Gompa Murray writes about cars for his living, and part of writing about cars is driving a lot of them. Nick and Roxie, -- yes, like Gompa Murray, Nick presented her with a nickname -- and their younger cousin, Owen Frederick Watkins -- I like to call him “O-man!” -- never can be sure what I’ll be driving when I visit them.
I’ve shown up at their houses in sports car and minivans, in luxury sedans and econoboxes. I think they’re favorite, however, was the “ambulance.” At least that’s what Nick called the Dodge Sprinter van that Airstream had converted into a luxury motor home. The van was shaped like an ambulance, after all, and when Nick saw the bed inside, he was convinced Gompa Murray somehow had himself an ambulance, even if it didn’t have flashing lights and a siren.
Several times, I’ve even driven my own vehicle to visit the grandchildren. My own vehicle is a 2000 Nissan Frontier, Crew Cab, 4x4, that I bought when I moved to Phoenix from Michigan.
The people I used to work with at AutoWeek magazine thought I was going through some sort of mid-life crisis. I was the one who wore ties to work, and here I was, showing up in jeans. I also was one who pretty much hated all pickup trucks, and here I was buying one.
But I didn’t buy a pickup truck, I insisted. I bought a lifestyle vehicle, a vehicle that fit in with my new lifestyle in the desert, a desert I wanted to be able to explore far from pavement, yet I still wanted a back seat so I could take friends and out-of-town visitors with me, whether I was out on the Butterfield stage coach trail or seeing the Grand Canyon.
That was nearly a decade ago. The truck now has around 110,000 miles on its odometer and is still going strong.
It needs to be strong because its cargo bed – lined with a Bed Rug that cushions the floor -- has become a favorite place for the grandchildren and their fiends to play.
Funny, as kids we love to play in the back of pickup trucks. As grownups, lots of us still like to play with our trucks.
Remember all the talk a couple decades ago about the “Generation Gap”? Well, there’s no such gap when it comes to pickup trucks, grandparents and their grandchildren.
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