Sweet Betsy from Pike

November 29, 2017

Happy to say that Old Betsy my 17 year old Toyota Tundra is running again, after a jump start last Saturday from my USAA road service. I came home from a trip to find that Betsy’s battery was dead and that her trickle-charger had been unplugged by unknown agents. I was very annoyed. My son had rigged up the trickle-charger because I drove the truck so seldom that the battery frequently was dead. This time before calling for road service I bought a new battery for Betsy, but it was not needed on Saturday, so I have it on stand-by for this winter.

Bill bought Old Betsy in the fall of 2000 on our return from England, pretty much on his own with no input from me. He drove her to his part-time job, and used her for hauling fence posts and other supplies for our little country home.  He was not always careful about dents and scratches to Betsy, and when I complained, he would answer, “She’s a truck!”

I remember Bill’s driving Old Betsy to Richmond to the VA Center for the clinical cancer trials that last winter 2009 of his life. In fact, that is the memory I have every time I put my foot on the running board and swing into the driver’s seat, remembering Bill behind the wheel, me in the passenger seat, going down I-95 to Richmond. A lost cause for him, but he was hoping it might help someone else with cancer. So he put up with drinking that awful chalky stuff and all the blood draws and those drives down 95 to Richmond and back.

Tomorrow I will drive Betsy to the car wash and get her scrubbed clean of the leaf droppings of the summer. Then I will drive her, fresh and shining, to the Lions Club stand and pick out a Christmas tree, the way Bill and I used to do.  And Betsy and I will bring the tree home.