I cannot begin to tell you how strange my life has become in the last two days. All right, maybe I can and maybe I'll fancy it up just a little bit, though it don't need no fancifyin. Two days ago, I come out to see my truck sportin four brand new fenders. I try not to be surprised about this, but I gotta admit I'm a little puzzled. I wander out there to inspect my fortune and I see a little note tucked under the windshield wiper. I open the note and it just says, "Sorry" in these tiny little letters. Well, I'm really not sure what to make of all this. I go back in the house and give Douggy a call. I ask him if he'd fixed my truck and he tells me that he's been working all night plus some overtime, what with all the extra pages needed for the Olympics and election and whatnot else that's goin on now. So I tell him, "I got four new fenders on that truck. You know anything about that?" and he tells me he has no idea what I'm talking about. Well, I make some more calls around and no one knows anything. I go to bed that night thinking I'm the victim of a prank. But I can't really complain none because I got some new fenders out of the deal.

The next morning, I wake up and the fenders have all been covered in primer, so now the whole truck matches and I'm totally convinced that Douggy's been pulling something on me. I call Douggy first and he gives me the same line. He says he was working overtime and wouldn't have come out and primed my truck in the dark no how. Well, I don't entirely believe Douggy, but he had a point about painting in the dark. I decide to find out once and for all so I call up Douggy's boss Larry. We've been fishing together a couple of times and I was there when he pulled an honest to goodness shark out of the Mississippi. To this day, none of us know how it got there or how it survived in the fresh water so long, but it was good eating. Larry tells me the same thing as Douggy. He's got his entire back room working overtime and they'll probably be doing that until November and what kind of nut primes a truck in the dark in the first place? I really don't know what to do, so I decide to stay up that night with my gun to see what's going on.

It was almost a full moon, so I turned off all the lights in the house like I was going to bed and staked myself out by the living room window. Round about 1 am, I see this little figure come up to the truck. It gets on the hood and looks around, sniffin the air. I can't quite tell, but it looks like a flying squirrel. Well, that's not nothin, I figure, so I'll just wait until whoever it is comes along. After standing on the hood of my truck for a few minutes lookin around, the flying squirrel in question starts flappin its arms. Now, I spent some time when I was young as a telegraph operator, but I've forgotten it all in the intervening years. I know just enough to recognize morse code when I see it and I'll be durned if that squirrel wasn't using morse code. Like I say, I don't know what he was flashin, but it looked just like dots and dashes. Well, not 30 seconds later a whole swarm of flying squirrels comes running out of the woods carryin buckets and brushes and even some drop cloths. By this time, I'm pretty well convinced that I've fallen asleep and I'm dreaming. Next thing I know, I'm awake again, the sun is up and it's a beautiful day. I renew my resolve to stay awake tonight to see if those miscreants come back and make myself a pot of coffee. After my coffee, I go around back and check my tomatoes. They're coming in pretty well. I pull some weeds and then make myself a breakfast of fried greed tomatoes and toast. Finally, when I can think of no more tasks to put it off, I go out and look at the truck. Then I faint. Then I wake up, make myself a pot of coffee and pour a shot of JD into it. Then I go look at the truck. And I almost faint again. There, in front of my eyes, stands a magnificent machine. The primered, battered and used truck that I been driving for 30 years looks just like it did the day my daddy bought it new. It was a beautiful sea green with chrome trim and little metal flecks in the paint. The bumpers had been buffed back to a high shine. Even the wheel covers and hood ornament had been replaced. For a while, I just sat and stared at it, gettin myself coffee drunk. After a couple of hours, I see that there's a note on the windshield again. In tiny letters it says "Interior, white or aqua?" Well, I figure it was white when my daddy bought it, it should be white again. I left a note to that effect and asked what the heck was going on. This morning, I get up with, of course, a brand new white interior and a tiny note that says, "We need to talk." Right now, I'm gonna go take a nap, because I have a feeling it's going to be a long night.