Funny how the average live truck can crisscross three counties, race through rush hour traffic, squeeze into a breakdown lane, idle for six hours straight, double as an audio booth, sleep three (un)comfortably, attract transients and school children, backfire only in sketchy neighborhoods, boast the logos of three separate consultant firms, power enough lights to be seen from space, suck just enough gas to ensure you’ll have to fill it up later, harbor the remnants of a thousand dollar menu items, inspire new whole methods of laptop hackery, serve as a grooming booth and/or rest station for restless ‘talent’, spew engine exhaust on anyone rolling up cables, emit the kind of aroma that brings to mind sea travel…

…only to break the hell down on the way back to the station.

Okay, so it’s not funny at all – especially when you’ve put in a long day of news gathering and are still FAR from home. In fact, of all the inconveniences I might wish on a competitor (weak camera batteries, brittle light bulbs, flatulent reporters), I wouldn’t foist a dead live truck on my worstest enemy. Just ask A.J. Willen, the Atlanta lenslinger who posted this photo and jump-started my my memory banks… I remember one remote van in particular that would seize up with ‘vapor-lock’ every day at dusk and shut down on the highway home. “Nothin’ you can do ’bout it but sit and let it rest for awhile”, said the engineer on the other end of the cell phone. One fall evening I nearly abandoned the damn thing along Route 421. (“%#$@% this!”, I remember thinking. I’ll just live like Caine from Kung-Fu; ya know, walk the Earth, drop-kick evil villagers…)  I got about a half mile down the road, thought about my mortgage and the mud-hole my wife would stomp in me if I marooned a mobile newsroom..

It took nearly two hours to get that live truck back to the shop. At one point a car full of Goth kids happened by and began heckling me, ’til I threatened to microwave their piercings. I think I was justified…