Minnesota vehicles have snow turds; in January, Flat Top has mud turds.

You wouldn't think this of Mason, but for the man who seems so "Whatever, world, bring it," he has a lot of rules.

One of the man's rules is: For every $100 he pays for a car/truck, he must make that car/truck last a month to get his money's worth out of it. So he bought his Dodge Dakota truck for $2,400, meaning he had to drive that truck for two years to get his money's worth. Once the two years were over, he couldn't feel bad if the truck died.

Well Mason bought that Dodge in October 2005, so the poor thing may just be on borrowed time, That's 100 months so far, so he could have spent $10,000 on it!

That said,  Flat Top Mountain has been hard on the old girl -- the TRUCK, not me. Well, OK, me, too. There have been several times in the past two years that we thought, "Well, that's it. The truck has gotta stay on the property; no more trips to town."

Then we'd want the truck for something. And after shakes and rattles coming back up the mountain, Mason would think,"Maybe this should be her last trip." He'd think it, but not say it, because if I knew he was thinking it, I'd never drive in her again ...

But last week, when we were hauling a heavy, secret payload up the mountain in the back of the pickup, Mason may have made a fatal error. He said it out load. "This may be her last trip to town."

Despite my usual pessimism, I don't believe it, which is saying a lot for me. I mean, I hate that truck; why does HIS window go down, but mine doesn't? Do you know how irritating it is not to be able to get fresh air?  OK, the A/C kinda works, which is more than I can say for our Jeep Cherokee (which has to last until April 2015 before we make good on Mason's rules), but the truck's heat doesn't work. No radio, a bunch of other electrical stuff, which all went out when Mason replaced the blower motor, which DOES still work, to his credit. Then there's the exhaust leak, and the new sound that grinds from somewhere in the drive train. ("Once something finally breaks, I'll know what to fix," he keeps saying.)

But I also love that truck, all 240,000 miles of her. Just today, we used her to help fell a 70-foot oak (WITHOUT crashing it down on the house), starting our Winter 2014/15 firewood stockpile.

Good on ya, Dodge Dakota.