The company tank

At the ripe old age of 21 I went to work for a leading livestock newspaper as a field editor. This was at a time when most of the other field editors and breed reps qualified for the senior citizen’s discount at Denny’s. As the youngest person in the trade at the time, I was walked on, stabbed in the back and even punched in the face.

Really.

I was given a company car and an expense account but those costs were subtracted from any commission I made selling advertising in my territory. Unknown to me, my colleagues referred to my territory as the Great Advertising Desert because it was nearly devoid of cattle. It consisted of Southern California, the southern tip of Nevada (which had more endangered turtles than it did cattle), Arizona and Utah. The amount of my speeding tickets in Utah exceeded my ad sales in that great state.

While most of the field men drove Lincoln Town Cars, which was the greatest road car ever built, I, on the other hand, drove a German tank. Or at least it felt like it. It had the turning radius of a Carnival Cruise ship and I never knew how fast I was going because the speedometer was broke, as was nearly everything else in, or on, that poor excuse for a car we lovingly called “The Tank.”

I’ve only run out of gas three times in my life and all three were in The Tank because the gas gauge didn’t work either! You could see asphalt through holes in the floorboard, it got 2 gallons of gas per mile and the tires were balder than my uncle Charles. It had a V-5 engine (a V-8 with three bad pistons), and the air conditioning consisted of rolling down the windows ... by hand. There was evidence in the glove box that The Tank had been totaled by at least three insurance companies.

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