Meet Wanda Arlicious!

Wanda Arlicious… she’s my truck.

Mostly at my wife’s insistence, and to some extent my own amusement, I named my truck.

It was no easy task, let me tell you.  Hercules had an easier time taming the horses of Diomedes.  Like everything else I do, I overthought it by about six days.  It wasn’t on my radar as a crucial decision I needed to make, unlike choosing a CDL/truck driving school, trucking  company, or which type of truck I wanted to drive:  

    ⇦flatbed...

    ⇦dry van...







       ⇦reefer...

⇦tanker.  

The difference between dry van and reefer trucks is that ‘reefer’ refers to ‘refrigerated;’ see the box attached to the front of the trailer?  It’s a refrigeration unit that keeps the contents of the trailer cool or frozen.

…but at my wife’s insistence (insistence is such a nicer word than if I had said constant  nagging) I needed to come up with something.  And I knew she wasn’t going to let it go.  It’s sort of like when I’ve plopped down onto the bed at night before brushing my tooth:  she’ll start poking me while repeating “hey Pete, why don’t you go brush  

your teeth… poke-poke-poke- hey Pete, hey Pete, hey Pete, the Cavity Creeps are coming, poke-poke-  hey Pete, hey Pete… poke-poke-poke-  over and over and over again, until I get up and brush my damn teeth.  It can be quite maddening, but in a loving, hygienic way.  

She thought I should give the truck a female name, but what sort of  girl’s name do you give to a  behemoth that can pull 80,000lbs up a hill?  Olga?  Helga?  Bertha? 

And who, on God’s green earth, of non-German or -Eastern European descent would name the object of their affections Olga, Helga, or Bertha?

I knew I needed to get to know my truck first; did it have a personality?  What sorts of quirks were I going to find?  Over the course of several weeks I became familiar with my truck, learned its moods and idiosyncrasies, and the name just came to me.  Wanda Arlicious.

Arlicious Street is a road I passed while driving with an instructor during my time in Schneider’s bulk training program in southeastern Houston.  What a great name, Arlicious Street.  I had hoped it would fit, somehow.  To understand the name Wanda you need to be familiar with 1990’s pop culture… there was a short-lived variety show on the Fox network, In Living Color, that in my opinion far exceeded Saturday Night Live in its consistent hilarity.  This is where Jim Carrey honed his funnyman skills, as well as the entire Wayan clan along with Jamie Foxx, David Alan Grier, and Tommy Davidson, just to name a few.  Oh yeah, and a dancer on the show named Jennifer Lopez went on to sing a few songs and dabble in a few other ventures.  

Jamie Foxx as Wanda

In Living Color featured a recurring skit where Jamie Foxx played a character named Wanda; Wanda was a kind soul who just wanted to be loved.  She was constantly being set up on blind  dates by her friend, but the dates never panned out, or even lasted through dinner.  Maybe it was the up-turned lips, or the crazy eyes, or the thrift shop hoochie-mama skirts; Wanda had many flaws, but she had a good heart, she meant well, and she just wanted to take care of someone and be loved in return.  That’s my Wanda.  She’s  full of defects, and has a ton of issues.  Her body is scraped, dinged, dented, and gouged, her interior shelving units didn’t have shelves, her set of tire chains was incomplete, her seat won’t adjust backwards away from the pedals as far as it should, and her engine powers the truck up inclines slower than anything else on the road, but she too means no harm, and I get the feeling just wants to take care of me, so I treat her with equal amounts of respect and love. 

The a/c works great, keeps me chilled on 100° days and 80° nights, I acquired shelves for her interior, and her motor has not failed to get me up and over any hill yet, no matter the length or grade.  I keep her clean, full of fluids, and even carpeted her floor.  We seem to have a mutual admiration for each other, and I couldn’t be happier with any other truck.

Wanda's backside (left cheek)

Right cheek.

Jamie Foxx as Wanda

In Living Color's Wanda