Monday, February 23, 2009

More cowbell?

One of the things I love about living in a small, rural area is that you tend to see funny oddball things - and because traffic's not so bad, you have the chance to notice them.

Now, around here, there is a sort of low-level fad for what are generally known as "truck nuts." If you are not familiar with this thing (be glad), it is a set of prosthetic rubber testicles that you attach to the trailer hitch of your truck. With sac and veins and everything. It's rather striking the first time you see them.

No, I don't know "why." I presume it's a guy thing. Or maybe a rancher thing. Or maybe it's a "compensation" thing, but most of the guys I've seen who are "compensating" drive bright yellow pickups with what the FFOT has dubbed the "a**hole option."

I see maybe a set of truck nuts every week or so. (I don't pay enough attention to know if they're the same trucks or different ones).

But today, I saw something different that made me laugh.

I will admit, I find the truck nuts kind of awful. In a 12-year-old boy way, they're funny, but they are also kind of awful.

But this was a truck with something different hanging from the hitch. I had to look twice to be sure of what it was.

It was a cowbell. A cowbell, swinging back and forth as the truck drove.

It made me wonder if the owner was a fan of that famous SNL sketch with Christopher Walken, and he just wanted "more cowbell."

Or maybe he felt the need to hang something from that hitch and felt the nuts were unseemly (he also had one of those "praying Calvin" stickers in the back of his window - you know the stickers that look kind of like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, but he is peeing on something (usually either a Chevy or Ford symbol, or the number of a disliked NASCAR driver, or, once, I saw the name "bin Ladin" being peed on). But there's also a variant showing the Calvin-like child kneeling and praying in front of a cross (a few of them feature a girl, who looks a little bit like Susie Derkins from the same strip).

But anyway. He had a "praying Calvin" on his truck so maybe he felt the nuts either sent the wrong message, or else he personally disliked them. So he put a cowbell on there instead.

I love all the silly random stuff that's out there.

5 comments:

The Fifth String said...

I've seen a lot of things on pickups, some amusing and clever, some less so. But I have never seen truck nuts.

Cullen said...

Saw lots of trucks with nuts in Georgia. Even a car or two. Not so much here in Memphis.

nightfly said...

I've seen those on rare occasions up here in Jersey. Rather horrible and childish. My absolute favorite hitch cover, however, I've seen now on a couple of different trucks: a small submarine screw.

Honey, the Turnpike's backed up - I'm taking the river.

w/v - boadda - the name of your cousin from rural Georgia who sells truck nuts.

Cullen said...

Oh, here on a Navy base you see the sub-screw often.

Joel said...

I get an adolescent snicker from the truck nuts myself. To me they're proof that the ex didn't get everything.

But this... a whole spectrum of "belle of the ball(s)" puns are presenting temselves at once.