The Time Eric Raith Showed up to Mar-a-Lago in a Monster Truck

My car was acting sluggish so I took it the dealership to be checked out. After they checked the car out they told me that the engine needed some kind of tune up and that it was an expensive job and they told me it would take several days. They offered me a rental/loaner vehicle in the meantime. They shuttled me over to a car rental place. When I got there the people at the car rental place, took me out to the parking lot and showed me a line of cars that were covered under the dealership’s car rental plan. I looked at the line of cars and at the end of it was a pick up truck that I can only describe as a “monster truck.” It looked like a monster truck; it had huge tires and in order to get into it, I had to actually climb up into it to get inside. I pointed to it and I said, “you know, I’ve always wanted to drive one of those”. I said, “Is that available under the dealership’s rental agreement?” They went back to the office to find out and came back and said, “Yes, it’s covered, you can take that.” So I did. They gave me the keys, I signed the paper work and I pulled out in this huge pickup truck. I thought it would be fun to drive. It was like driving a tank, I mean, you really looked down on traffic and felt like you could drive right over other cars. I had never seen tires that big before, it really was a huge tank of a pick up truck.

Sometime After I pulled out from the renal lot in what I can only describe as a monster truck, it occurred to me that I was scheduled to attend an event with The Palm Beach Round Table, of which I was a member, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. The dealership had my car and so I figured at that point I would have to take this monster truck to attend the event… and that’s what I did. The day of the event at Mar-a-Lago I pulled through the front gate and waited in the line of cars. So , the line of cars was Bentley, Bentley, Mercedes, Rolls and then me in the monster truck. I pulled up to the valet area at Mar-a-Lago, gave them my keys, and I could see the look on their face that they probably had never seen anything like this pull up there before. I’m sure no one else has since.

This story doesn’t end here. When I went to The Palm Beach Kiwanis Club a few days later for our weekly meeting at The Breakers Hotel, I told my friends the story of attending an event at Mar-a-Lago with the monster truck rental. I also told them that as usual there was an application to the club on the passenger seat. I received an application every time I went there. They were very interested in the application. So much so that they insisted that I bring it the next time I came to the club. They wanted to know how much Trump was charging for the Initiation fee and how much it cost to join and anything else regarding the membership costs. So, I did.

I do wonder if anyone else over the years showed up there in a truck like that…