I went to the tire store yesterday and bought some new tires for the mail jeep.

I buy 50,000 mile tires and get about 10,000 miles out of them.

Driving the mail is hard on everything involved.

While I was at the tire store, the guy that runs the business came out and started talking about one of the cars they were working on.

It was a grey car…stylish, good looking…it was a really nice grey car.  It had a black leather interior…padded black leather dash…graphite dash inserts…some complicated shifter with a lot of numbers on it.

It was a really nice grey car.

The tire guy said, “This is one of the finest cars ever made…probably at least 240,000 dollars for this car..”

I was eating my peanut butter sandwich and looking at this car that cost, what…like 60,000 times what my old Jeep cost (?!) and I thought, “That must be a really nice car”.

It was some kind of Bentley…I don’t know enough about Bentleys to know what it was, but he called it a Bentley and I believed him.

I’d be nervous about using it on a mail route…too many gravel roads and unpredictable situations.

The tire guy told me that they raise special cattle to harvest the leather for the seats from…something about making sure that the cows weren’t around barbed wire so that their flesh remained creamy and unblemished…so that when a rich person plops their fat rear end down in the cockpit they don’t have to worry about sitting on substandard cow parts.

At least that’s the explanation I heard in my head.

That’s pretty amazing.

It was a really nice car.

When they were finished with the tires, an older fellow got in and drove off to the other side of the tracks…drove off to his mansion on the hill.

But you know….except for the details and the power and the luxury, that car was really just a very nice, very expensive version of a Hyundai.

That’s heresy to someone who bought into the mythos of a really nice car….no one wants to hear that after they’ve spent so much for something nice…but really, it’s pretty much the same thing on a basic level.

It’s a vehicle. A VEHICLE.

I guess I can relate on some levels.  An Epiphone isn’t really the same as a Gibson, a Poulan isn’t the same as a Husqvarna, a Whopper isn’t the same as a burger from 5 Guys…I know some things about quality.

I really do.

But I think I’d rather have a ragged out 66 Chevy pickup than a fully detailed 240,000 dollar Bentley.  There’s just something about it all that sounds more appealing to have the old pickup.

Now, if I could sell the Bentley, buy the pickup…and then use the balance to build a decent cabin up in Idaho, well…that would be a good trade.

Of course, all this would be after setting up a fully funded college account for the kids.

I’d have to be at least a little practical before I went crazy and bought an old truck.

It’s really pretty hilarious.

We all roll down the road…even those of us without drivers licenses, even those of us who have never owned a car…we move on down the road.

That’s just the way it seems to work.

Whether we do it in a really expensive Bentley…or just mosey around in a pair of beat up Converse All Stars…the end result is the same… and inescapable.

That really was a beautiful Hyundai at the tire store, though.