A few days ago at breakfast the Lady Friend asks, “What’s Truck Day?”
“Truck Day?” I say. “How should I know?”
“You should know. It has something to do with the Red Sox.”
“The Red Sox?” Now I’m wide awake.
“Look,” she says and hands me the Chronicle comics. “Read 'Non Sequitur.’”
I give it a look. The characters are in an offshore diner in a swirling snowstorm talking about Truck Day at Fenway Park. But they are talking gibberish until I realize it’s my own Boston English they’re speaking. Says one, “Well, that's it. Wintah is finally ovah!”
”Ah, yea! Happy Truck Day, Eddie!” says another.
Someone speaks up, “Uh, what are you guys talking about?”
Another explains, “Truck Day at Fenway. The Red Sox head out fah spring trainin', which makes this the faust day of spring.” The guy who raises the question is nonplussed, but the others are in a mood to party.
“HAPPY TRUCK DAY, EVERYBODY!” shouts one. “Life is different here on planet New England,” declares a second. “And we wouldn't have it any othah way, deah,” says a third.
I lay the paper to rest and say, “Just what goes on on Truck Day?” As I ask the question, I’m getting up to Google for the answer when the Lady Friend wheels ’round and beats me to the punch. Two minutes later she returns with the dope.
Truck Day, I learn, is Feb. 6 when a moving van is loaded with equipment at Fenway for the trip to the club’s spring training complex in Fort Myers, Florida. There’s a bit of hoopla to the occasion. The 18-wheeler is followed “in a procession by Red Sox staff and Wally the Green Monster tossing gifts to fans from a flat-bed truck.”
“Tell me something,” I say. “Why have you gone to the trouble of letting me know all this?”
“Simple,” is the reply. ”Your mood changes drastically when baseball starts.”
This article originally appeared on Feb. 18, 2010 in the San Leandro Times.
