text: It was a beautiful old truck. Used to be my dad’s. Though he could never quite get it to start. The 1959 Chevrolet Apache with pearlescent blue finish used to be quite flashy. The last owner had driven around in it back in the 60’s. Back when it could move, it must have been a sight to see. I can imagine it. Windows down, radio on, maybe a girl in the passenger seat. Hands on the leather steering wheel as I drove along the highway, the world spread out before me. Maybe I’d even stop at one of those places where the waitresses are all on skates and I’d get a milkshake and a burger. Then take that magnificent machine and spend the night at a drive-in and try and get lucky with that girl in the passenger seat. But as I said, the truck doesn’t start. It hasn’t for years. My dad got it cheap, and he got what he paid for. The thing only ran for a year while he had it. It’s been sitting in our backyard next to the garage ever since. The paint is faded and the body is beginning to rust. Weeds have grown up around it. A blanket of pine needles and spider webs fills the truck bed. I walk past it every time I climb into my Nissan. It always reminds me of that old idyllic lifestyle when I pass by it. I wonder if one day fifty years from now, some kid will pass by my Nissan and think back to the time I live in. Perhaps by whatever year in the future he is, our time has already been romanticized. The era of hipsters and social networking. Some kid in the future will see an old rusted 2006 Nissan and think, “man I wish I could go back in time and see The Lord of The Rings when it was still in theaters.” Everyone is always thinking about the past as if it were some magical place where everything was right. No one stops to shed the romanticism and see it for what it is. An old dilapidated truck with rusted paint, sitting next to a garage as it fades from memory.