I experienced some mild disappointment, when I learned that the French car company Peugeot SA had acquired the Fiat Chrysler car company in a merger, earlier this year, which means the Dodge RAM truck I’ve been lusting after all these years, is now French.
It was bad enough when the Italian car company, Fiat, bought the Dodge brand back in 2009, when Chrysler was going belly-up. But really, folks… French RAM trucks?
It just doesn’t seem right. And yes, I’m afraid.
I mean, sure… a RAM truck still looks the same, on its exterior… if you pose one in a cow pasture, for example.
But I’m worried. Foreigners, owning my favorite truck company?
I’m worried about how certain appearances might change. Particularly, I’m worried about the the interior of my next Dodge RAM. (Actually, it will be my first Dodge RAM.)
Maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t really there, but…
The interior of the truck is the important part, if you’re the driver. Visually important. The interior has to look properly masculine, in my opinion.
The exterior is for the girls to admire, but when you are the guy driving it, the interior is where the rubber really meets the road.
I mean that as a metaphor, of course. The rubber really meets the road where the tires are located. But the interior — especially, the dashboard, and the steering wheel, and the cup holders — those are the parts you find yourself looking at, 24/7, when you are a guy driving a Dodge RAM.
Especially the speedometer.
I think I can speak for most guys, since I’m a guy. I can’t honestly say what a girl would be looking at, if she happened to be driving a RAM. Probably her phone?
So the way I figure it, we need to keep an eye on things, and make sure this new French company doesn’t mess with our trucks.
And that’s exactly why I was focused on the truck interior. Very focused.
But then I took off my glasses… you know, to clean them, and make sure I was really seeing what I was really seeing.
And you know how… when you take off your glasses… things look a little bit blurry?
And you start seeing things that maybe aren’t really there? That can be frightening.
When I was a kid, I often saw things that weren’t really there. I can’t tell you the number nights my mom sat on the edge of my bed and told me, “Louis, you are just imagining things. There is nothing in your closet.”
An “over-active imagination”. That’s what my mom and dad called it. They’d read about it in one of their child-rearing books.
“Louis, you just have an over-active imagination.”
Mom and Dad were trying to be helpful, but it didn’t help me at all, to have a fancy label assigned to my fears. Because I’m very sure, even now, there was something in my closet.
So, if you are a fan of RAM trucks, and you, too, might have an over-active imagination… you might want to stop reading this story, right now.
Because things can start to get weird… if you take off your glasses to clean them… while sitting in your truck.
And maybe you’ve had a couple of beers.
And you have an over-active imagination?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.