our (i mean evan [he's my co-worker, nineteen, skinny and a great driver.] and me, it's ours) work truck is a 1978, i think, white chevy 3+3 crewcab (we joke that we had a crewcab before anyone else), small block, painted flat white (we painted it ourselves, just cheap spraypaint, it looks fine for a worktruck, and the inside is still the original industrial orange [i think that's the factory colour, actually, since the only other ones i see are that colour]). it starts without the key and can tow just about anything we need to tow and doesn't need that much maintenance (we probably mistreat it a bit but it doesn't give us much trouble). it's got peanut butter seats and a tin roof that's covered in promotional magnets from pizza places and magnetic tape measures and a mirror and stickers from rental companies. we have one tape in the truck, full moon fever by tom petty, which we know all the words to every song on and can tap our feet and drum on the doors to, but it's reserved for times when we can't get any radio stations, about ten or so miles south or west of the city. it sits in the ready position in the tape deck.

we listen to the classic rock station, the one that only plays classic rock and no new music except sometimes nickelback to follow canadian content regulations. there are two other rock stations and they both play mostly new music. they're for people who work in convenience stores or don't have jobs. and there's one lite station and one pop station that plays the same songs as the lite station. they're for people who work in offices or in restaurants or stores that don't sell things made of only metal. the classic rock station is the only good one and the only one we listen to. the morning djs are great, funny men who make sex jokes and analyze sports but one of them was addicted to pills and talks frankly about it and they have a contest called "the nearly impossible question" where they give a percentage like "87% of women won't date a man with this" and no one even calls in with sex things or really obvious things because it's never that, it's always something like "long toes" or "dyed hair." they play highlights from the morning show all day, the funniest bits. the daytime djs aren't great and two of them are named harley davidson and bad bill.

our favorite five songs to hear are:

lola by the kinks -- there are certain songs that are evan songs and certain songs that are songs for both of us and no songs that are just my songs, except maybe some fleetwood mac songs but those are rarely played and i have no way to claim them. i do like watching evan quietly singing along to this-- and all of his other songs, too, but they're usually just fast rock song; this one is best because it's kind of delicate, goofy. just moving his dry lips, sometimes no syllables that create open mouth movement for a while. (the last time we heard it there was a trivia thing before it about how the guy from the kinks had to fly across the atlantic and re-record it because he said coca-cola instead of cherry cola).

bohemian rhapsody by queen -- it's still an event to hear it, even though we get to hear it about once a week, sometimes twice. evan and i both love it more than anything else. we sing along and try to do the funny voices, going way up high and way down low and getting soft for the pulled the trigger now he's dead part and sneering and growling the now i've gone and thrown it all away part. we couldn't sing together last summer, only evan would sing. we can sing together now. and evan does this thing where he'll sing a line or two of a song we heard in the truck while we're unloading stuff or stopping for a drink of water or just standing around, the start of the song, "is this the real life, is this just fantasy, caught in a landslide" or any part of any song ever, "give it away give it away give it away now."

down on the corner by creedence clearwater revival -- pulling out of the wal-mart parking lot in the very early morning, after we cut all the grass there, even before it opens. there are a few staff cars, the morning replenishment crew's cars. we've been awake for three hours already and no one else is awake. this song is perfect. hanging brown, folded arms out of the windows. the sun just finishing sunrise and making real morning. this song or another bouncy afternoon song that sounds good in the morning. people on their way to work, as we cruise through greenlight intersections thinking about our powerful truck and the little trail of grass blowing from the mound in the back of the truck and envying our strong brown arms and our youth and our spending all day in the sun and they'll be in an office making telephone calls and no one will notice but everyone will notice our cedar-chipped beds and chushing, efficient sprinklers keeping lawns green and strong and freshly cut. etc. etc. etc.

another brick in the wall by pink floyd -- our favorite songs are events, rather than just songs we like. it's significant that we're hearing it on the radio and the song has deep meaning and has been on the soundtracks to lots of movies and we know every word because we've heard the song so many times and we still care about it. but that means that all of our favorite songs are boring songs like this. this song is about school and conformity. evan graduated from highschool a year and a month ago. he said that today because his brother joked about him still living at home. he said, "a year and" and he put his right hand on the top of his wrist, to the left of his watch, where the sleeve he'd need to roll back would be, "and a month."

rock and roll by led zeppelin -- at seven in the morning and at seven at night there's a "stairway to seven" thing where they play a led zeppelin song, the same one in the morning as at night. we hear the one in the morning--usually the first song we hear, with the radio down really low--and hope we don't hear the one at night. at the end of the song it says: "gonna work my way around the world / i can't stop this feeling in my heart / gotta keep searching for my baby." it's the song that has the part about gollum, too.