I Brake For Beagles

I’ve told the story a bunch of times about the night during LA/XC-1 that my Garmin went kablooey on me in the Badlands and I had to slink into a cowboy bar and ask for directions.  I knew I’d be pegged as an outsider, but I was hoping to look as little like a pathetic easterner as possible, so I stashed my shiny SUV in a far corner of the parking lot, and left Ricky locked up inside with the windows cracked.  No need for the regulars on their bar stools to know I hadn’t arrived in a pickup truck — or that my pampered dog was riding shotgun on a soft, cushy New York Mets fleece blanky.

All right, so lately I’ve been seeing those cutesy stick figure decals on every Tahoe and Yukon and Range Rover in these parts, the ones that broadcast the precise makeup of your family:  Mommy, Daddy, two little girls, one little boy, a baby, a cat, a dog.  Really, really lame.  And I’m thinking, man, am I glad I didn’t have one of those on my car that night I pulled into the Horseshoe Bar in Interior, South Dakota!  I mean, you think those roughnecks pounding Buds inside really gave a you-know-what about how many kids and pets I have?

I think it’s fair to say that most of the decals we put on our windshields are deeply, deeply TMI.  Duke University Mom?  Save the Whales?  Alumnus of Harvard Business School?  I Brake for Chipmunks?  Proud Parent of an Honor Student at A Child’s Garden Infant Toddler Day Care?  Those silhouetted adhesive figures that identify your son as a lacrosse player and your daughter as a field hockey star?  You just don’t see that nonsense out West. Gun racks, maybe.  Vanity stickers, nuh-uh.

I sure wouldn’t display that over-the-top kind of stuff on my vehicle.  Well . . . maybe that’s not entirely true.  I guess I do have a U. of P. decal on my rear windshield.  After all, it’s my alma mater — and my wife’s and middle son’s, too.  Oh, and yes — I also have a Trinity sticker, since our oldest son went there.  And can’t forget USC for the youngest son.  I mean, that is who we’re visiting on the cross-country road trips, after all.  Then there’s the Staples Wreckers Football bumper sticker; nothing wrong with a little civic pride.  And MTK, the cognoscenti’s call letters for our beloved Montauk.  And my Beagle On Board decal, for the guest of honor on these junkets.  And . . .

All right, all right.  So I guess I’m just as guilty as the next easterner.

But I still think the family stick figures are stupid.

LOOK FOR A NEW BEAGLE MAN POST EVERY THURSDAY.  OR PRETTY CLOSE TO THURSDAY.  COULD BE WEDNESDAY.  OR FRIDAY.  LET’S NOT GET TOO OBSESSIVE HERE . . .  OH, AND BTW, YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER