SONG OF THE DAY: Drums of Steel (kudzu'd)

My pops was a wizard of a small engine mechanic, cobbling things together that others couldn’t comprehend. His work truck (the truck from his work) was magical because it had a lift gate, and I used to be excited on the occasional times he brought it home, riding that hydraulic lift up like the little hick I was in the back yard. That truck always had ramps too, for the loading and unloading of riding mowers, to take back to the shop for repairs. I was thinking about this the other day, riding down the road, contemplating my neighbor, who can afford anything his brain desires, as he is the son of a banker, not the son of a small engine mechanic, though he portrays himself as a Working Man now, whereas I am a remote office worker who can’t afford shit it seems. (One time, when I explained an issue I was facing with a dead tree and hovering branches, his solution was simple – “Just pay somebody to come take care of it!”) I guess that’s the path – the son of a poor man hopes to transition classes and not have to work his fingers to the bone and break his body for paychecks; and the son of a rich man wants to occupy his idle life with seemingly meaningful work, so he cosplays as a blue collar workingman, running his own business(es). Nonetheless, I was getting myself mad at how the neighbor cut his half a acre yard with his zero turn mower like twice in a week, even though we’re in a drought, and he was just torturing that grass. Sure, mine is tall and clumpy and feral, and aesthetically displeasing to HOA ass hoes, but it is not dying from torturous manicuring during extreme dryness.
But I also got to thinking about the size of his mower – ridiculously oversized for his yard, even when you factor in the second home he has down the road a few miles, which operates as an event space. Similarly, he has a big truck, like many pretend workingmen of these days. But somehow, despite these trucks being twice as big as the ones from my memories of my pops, the bed is far less. You can’t fit a fuckin’ regular-sized riding mower in them anymore. So men justify to themselves bigger and bigger mowers, which can’t fit in smaller and smaller truck beds, but they are bigger and bigger trucks, which require trailers to move a fuckin’ riding mower around. It always clown car comical to watch some big ass modern existence truck hauling along a trailer with nothing on it but a little ass lawn tractor, albeit too big for the truck bed. So we have this false and unnecessary size thing going on, all of which just feeds the feeble psychology of all these little men who are struggling to find justification for themselves. And not only is it ridiculous, with the supersized truck payments that come with those vehicles (read somewhere about average new truck payment being like $1200 a month? Wtf?), not to mention the additional payments for whatever fuckin’ power equipment you’re cutting your little ass yard with, which probably is why dudes like my neighbor cut it twice a week, because they’re trying to get their money’s worth out of a bad financial decision, which doesn’t matter because they’ve got credit to burn.
And for clarity’s sake, I did experience class transition, so I have a car payment on a new car (2024 Corolla Hybrid) which I will pay until it’s paid off, and then drive until it dies. It’s only the second bank-secured car loan on a brand new car I’ve ever had in my life (and hopefully the last). It is one of the cheaper new hybrid cars you could possibly get. I also used my burgeoning fake ass credit rating carnival game allowance a couple years back to get a good riding mower, which I paid off early when a couple four-digit side hustles here or there came through. But I “worked” the system which ultimately works me.
I don’t really have anything important to point out here, other than we seem to be doing less actual things (like physical work, or moving actual objects with a truck itself, not requiring trailer add-ons and shit) with more monstrously sized mechanisms, all of which are way more expensive, and give us a false sense of dominating our environment. It’s all very feeble-dicked, in my opinion. A real man drives a piece of shit, and can cut grass with a borrowed scythe, or just doesn’t bother cutting it because goddamn it’s hot, and gonna be a desert here in a decade anyways. I often feel unnecessarily angry at these weird men who worship big things of false power, but there is no need in confronting them. You can’t reason with a poisoned brain.