Barn Cars

 I drive a species of vehicle known as a Barn Car.

A Barn Car can be any make, model or year. It can be any color – color, in fact, doesn’t matter, since all Barn Cars are eventually the color of dirt. Barn Cars can be old and beat up, or new and suped up.

My Barn Car is quite nice. It gets great gas mileage and has cruise control. Drives great in all kinds of conditions. It has a lot of trunk space, enough to transport an entire body without the need for messy, time consuming dismemberment. It has room for four people, two hound dogs and three bags of feed. Other Barn Cars may have more trunk space or less, seat fewer or more humans and canines, have less or greater feed capacity. There are no firm criteria.

But there is one characteristic that all Barn Cars have in common.

A Barn Car is never clean.

I mean, never.

As in, not ever.

Even when it’s just been washed it’s not clean. And as soon as I drive it to the barn one time, well…I may as well have not “cleaned” it at all.

At any given time you are likely to find hay, mud, shavings, grain, horsehair, dirt and other stuff in any part of it. I can only assume that all of the above entities get into the car by hitching a ride on me. Once you’ve been in the car, you are likely to get home and find any or all such items have also hitched a ride on YOU. Which is fine with me, because the more crap that leaves attached to you, the less mess in my car.

Paint is missing from various parts of my car. I don’t know where it went. It’s possible that some animal ate it when I wasn’t looking. I’ve scraped up all the hubcaps on fence posts and had multiple flat tires from running over barn implements and mis-navigating potholes. The trunk is filled with dirty boots, sweaty saddle pads, smelly blankets and a Hazmat suit.

If I drive through the Eucalyptus grove where the giant white Herons nest, my car emerges looking like somebody napalmed it with white paint. I have to make haste to wash it off before it eats its way through the roof like that gelatinous thing from The Blob. The hard water at the barn is just as likely to eat its way through the paint as the bird doody is. The doody usually comes clean. The bug splatter on the front of the car, I’m afraid, is permanent.

If you want me to give you a ride someplace, I hope you’re not in a hurry.

I wish it were as simple as opening the door to let you in.

It’s not. Not with a Barn Car.

Opening the door is the final step in a long, arduous process. First, I have to create room in the back seat. This requires removing objects and stuffing them into a trunk that is already filled to burstin’ with the aforementioned barn necessities.

Only after I have done this can I begin the process of transferring the stuff from the front passenger seat into the precious small space I’ve cleared in the back. This may or may not result in items being stacked so high that visibility from the rear window is wholly or partially blocked. It may also result in objects flying at you from the backseat should I need to slam the brakes on suddenly. I’ve probably got a hard hat in the car; I suggest you wear it.

Then I’ve got to brush hay, grain, rice hulls, dirt and horsehair off the passenger seat, and make room for your feet on the floor. You might have to sit with your knees hiked up under your chin or shove your legs into the small space between the bags of horse cookies and the center console.

As for the smell…..well, you’re stuck with that. If you don’t enjoy the aroma of leather, grain and horse, I hope you don’t mind riding with your head out the window like a big ‘ol hound dog.

Oh, speaking of dogs….if I’m dog sitting, you’re going to have to share the seat with the Dog of the Day. Some of them drool more and have worse smelling breath than others. Hopefully the day you ask for a ride will be Lapdog Day, not Rottweiler Week.

Finally, you’ll have to deal with the embarrassment of being seen getting out of a Barn Car, trailing hay and rice hulls and horse hair.

I’d like to be apologetic, but I can’t – it’s a Barn Car, and that’s just the way a Barn Car is. I’ve gone so far as to put a “Barn Car” bumper sticker on the back. Consider it fair warning. Next time you need a ride, think real hard before asking me. You might want to call a cab.