Putting the Camper before the Horse

Despite obsessively combing through Facebook marketplace, we were unable to find an appropriate truck before we had to return to Massachusetts. We decided we needed a Toyota Tundra, year model 2013-2017, because they are reputed to be more reliable than their American counterparts (although not as reliable,  it turns out, as our 2013 Prius). We’d also determined we needed an 8-foot bed, rather than the standard 6-and-a-half foot bed, so that the camper could fit securely inside the tailgate. It turns out the long bed model is not so easy to find; we ended up driving an hour and a half up to New Hampshire to buy a 2015 with 106,000 miles, only to drive all the way back to Massachusetts to pick up the plates, as the commonwealth refuses to recognize temporary dealer plates from out of state. Meanwhile, our camper was waiting for us down in MAGA country, probably accumulating inches of snow and ice. Ben did some calculations and realized that at 15 miles per gallon, it would be more cost effective to pay someone to haul the camper from PA to Massachusetts than for us to drive there and back in the Tundra.

When we told the folks in PA the plan, they said their son could do the job for less. She and her husband made the trip too, piled into the crew cab of their Dodge Ram. I wasn’t home when they arrived, but Ben said that when they saw our rundown house and old John Deere rusting in the orchard (a relic of Ben’s short-lived farming career) it seemed to put them at ease, despite the not one, but two Prius (Priuses? Prii?) in the driveway. I wish I’d still had my Immigrants Make America Great bumper sticker, but it hadn’t survived the sand and salt of the previous winter. But bumper stickers and yard signs are at best a passive form of resistance, if not cringy virtue signaling, especially in western Mass, which is even more lacking in political diversity than racial diversity. I like to think that one genuine interaction between people of opposing political stripes is worth 50 bumper stickers, but it’s not enough to make it safe for my sister to use a public restroom in central PA.

We drove an hour and a half up to New Hampshire to buy our truck, a 2015 Tundra, with 106,000 miles, only to turn and around and drive all the way back to Massachusetts to pick up the plates, as the commonwealth refuses to recognize temporary dealer plates from out of state.