Week 91: Vintage Matchbox Cattle Truck

This week's tiny car selection, another vintage find in the form of a made-in-England Matchbox, may be a new favorite, and I think my first two part vehicle, what with the trailer and all.

My original plan was to do a farming/planting theme, as over the past few weeks I've planted flowers  and tended to some basil and oregano in planters with my kids, and while the picture above is a cattle truck, I've employed worst thematic connections than that on this blog in the past.

The theme of this week's entry changed, however, when I dropped the car, and not in a metaphorical sense like the week before last when I didn't get the car to Phil, who usually takes the pictures. No, this time I actually dropped the car, on the cement, in the garage.

When I picked it up I noticed a part of the brittle plastic in the back of the truck was missing.

Now the issue is I don't know if that piece had been broken prior to dropping it or after. The car was in a collection of random vintage cars my father had picked up for me at a yard sale, so I didn't intimately know the details of this truck and had only recently taken it out of the box in which it had been stored. I looked around on the ground but couldn't find the broken piece.

My immediate reaction at dropping the car was disappointment and anger at myself, but when I thought about the likelihood of the piece having already been broken (this car and trailer are from the bicentennial year of 1976), my frustration evaporated.

So there I was, my mind not knowing whether to be upset or not as it was missing a crucial bit of information as to whether or not I was responsible for the damage. When I told myself the piece was already broken, the stress evaporated like traces of rain from a sun hot sidewalk, but then my mind would say, "Come on. You're just kidding yourself, You KNOW you broke this wonderful vintage truck," and the evaporating irritation would rain down, weighing down my mood like waterlogged denim.

At some point, I realized I would never know if I was responsible or not, and as such would never know if I needed to feel bad. Or not. I would have to choose.

I knew no matter what, my dropping of that car was purely a mishap and  not connected to irresponsibility. I simply just dropped the car, so I didn't feel bad about acting foolishly.

What eventually came to me was if I could choose to feel good or bad when I didn't know if I had been responsible for the broken gate on the truck, would I also be capable of choosing if I had known the gate was had previously not been broken if I knew it was simply an accident? And if I would feel differently, why?

I'll leave the above thoughts as questions for you to think about. I can't truly answer them, and while I want to say it doesn't matter if the piece broke off then or sometime in the era of disco ....

Maybe I'll get there someday.



This great picture of a great vintage Matchbox courtesy of Phil Pekarcik, who did not drop the truck.