Truck: On Rebuilding a Worn-Out Pickup and Other Post-Technological Adventures

By John Jerome

Book Overview

"Know thy gadgets; first step in restoring some kind of wholeness to one's life." So observes John Jerome about his purpose for rebuilding a 1950 Dodge pickup. Yes, he needs the truck to haul manure, but Jerome also hopes that "by knowing every nut, lockwasher, and cotter pin I could have a machine that had some meaning to me." Thus his year-long odyssey under the hood, among the brake shoes and valves, becomes more than a mechanic's memoir; it is a meditation on machines, metaphysics, and the moral universe. Long after its publication in 1977, the essential dilemma of Truck still rings true: as Jerome dismantles the aged straight six, he also disassembles our reliance on "two-hundred-dollar appliances that sport flaws in thirty-five-cent parts" and decries the "deliberate encapsulation, impenetrability, of the overtechnologized things with which we furnish our lives." Despite gouged knuckles, a frigid New Hampshire winter, frustrating and inexplicable assemblies, and a close call when the truck rolls off its jacks, he perseveres. In the end, he admits, "I did not find God out there in the barn among the cans of nuts and bolts." What he does find, however, is that he must make peace with technology; it's a mistake, he says, to "assume there is a point on that line between the caveman's club and the moon shot that marks the moral turnaround, before which technology was somehow benign, after which it is malign." While Jerome gains a truck that runs--sometimes--we gain new insight into a technology that continues to encroach upon our lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874517559
• ISBN13: 9780874517552
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: University Press of New England
• Length: 155 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

rebuilding

This is a great book for anyone who has or is thinking about rebuilding or restoring a vehicle. John has all the usual troubles and then some! I have read this book probably six times and never tire of it. Well worth you time and gave me many a laugh.

Hysterically funny and useful too!

I've read the book five times since buying it, as the humor camouflaged some of the practical gems about rebuilding old trucks. A wonderful curl-up-before-the fireplace read!

For everyone who dreams to be a Gearhead

It's much more than story it's an experience!

a wonderfuly descriptive book

This is a great book. I have fixed a 1950 FARGO and I loved his book but.... the language could get cleaned up be for the kids see the book. This is otherwise great stuff.

Rusted parts, winter cold, and a dash of philosophy

My copy is well-used, for I never tire of returning to Jerome's world. The author gets his old 1950s Dodge not to restore (he calls restorers 'nuts'), but simply to haul junk. Thumbing his nose at technology, Jerome undertakes the mechanical rebuilding of a simple truck from a simpler time, hoping it will sync with his vision of rural New England life. The book is an education about engines, removing rusted parts, junkyard hunting (hilarious and the best part of the book) with occasional but unobtrusive forays into questioning 'progress'. We feel the cold of winter as he works on the dirt floor of the barn, feel the heat radiating from the woodstove, feel the speckle of penetrating oil on our faces as he whacks away hopelessly at the kingpins. And when it's all back together, we share in his disappointment when it doesn't run (at first) and his juvenile glee when it does (much hand-wringing later). The story parallels what happens every winter in garages across the nation, as amateurs attempt to rescue old vehicles from the dead. This book is a classic, and I'm glad it's still available.