Episode #317: Them Ol' Trucks

Howdy folks:Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 317. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.In this episode I share how fixing my snowplow led me back to one of the most popular live humor excerpts from my book Truck: A Love Story, as well as a piece I used to perform at open mics when I was long-haired and much younger.Thank you for listening. Scroll down for photos, marginalia, and subscription info.MikeMARGINALIA(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)This little dude did the joystick trick.Me welding with Dad’s farm truck in the background. A few years later I’d be using it to go on dates.In time that old F-100 got a little worn out. Maybe because, as shown in the oddly deteriorated slide below, it was occasionally overworked.The farm truck my dad got to replace the blue one. This is not a shot of it in the junkyard, this is a shot of it still in use. We got the most out of our vehicles.Do you remember?Regular listeners know I tend to read several books at once. I’m still a few pages from finishing Candide. I’m only about 1/8th through Steinbeck: A Life in Letters and expect to plow through that one intermittently over time. I’m underlining/circling/annotating far more of Steinbeck’s correspondence than I can share here, but having tussled now and then with editors over colloquial language now and then, I enjoyed this passage:I’ve been looking forward to Midwestern Death Trip by Meaghan Garvey ever since I read a piece by her in County Highway and now the book has arrived.I’ll say more when I’ve finished it, but so far I’m enjoying Garvey’s headlong pace, her attention to detail (and getting those details right) and it doesn’t hurt that she mentions Jim Harrison as one of her favorite writers. She also dives into the grittier sides of life in ways I am not built for. Bottom line? Anyone who still uses the phrase “tooling around” has my attention.Midwestern Death Trip is available at BookShop.org or Amazon.You can get Candide at BookShop.org or Amazon.Steinbeck: A Life in Letters is available on Amazon and BookShop.org.Those are affiliate links, we get a penny in the jar.Mike’s books and recordings and miscellany are here.His TikTok is here and his Instagram is here.If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (most recently paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):You can share this episode with a friend:You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:Above all, as ever: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelperry.substack.com/subscribe