The Secret Compartment
By: Lynn Bolster
If you’ve been reading my stories for a while, you have learned that living the trucking, scrapping, and junk life has its adventures and oddities. So many vehicles are in various states of disrepair, and a lot have outlived their useful lives. When junking a semi with a sleeper, you never know what you’ll find since it was someone’s home while on the road. It’s a bedroom, an office, a living and driving space, and a dining room. I have found all matter of crazy things while cleaning. I even found a toilet in the truck under a heap of trash, and yes, it had been used. I believe it was a composting toilet – holy cats! That was an old Mayflower household mover cabover, and we know those guys stay out for weeks at a time. It was the filthiest truck I ever worked on, just an incredible amount of foulness and trash. Not to mention rodents who set up housekeeping in there too.
When I see a unit that bad, I often wonder what’s hidden elsewhere in the workings of the truck, the unseen issues. Not long ago, I was a passenger in someone’s pickup truck. He owns a decent Toyota Tacoma but every time I got in it, I couldn’t stand the smell. It smelled like someone had been sick in there or spilled milk and never cleaned it up. We all know that odor once it’s baked into a hot vehicle. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his pickup was gassing me out but kept wondering how he couldn’t smell it. Then I remembered he used to drive his semi for the landfill so he was probably immune to bad odors. I mean how good must that smell on a daily basis? When we were working on his big truck, I suggested he wash the floor mats in the Toyota also, thinking maybe he had tracked in landfill residue and that would solve the stench. He did it, no dice.
Which brings me to the cabin filter. He would often disagree with my suggestion of checking cabin filters in vehicles. A lot of people don’t know that this filter exists, usually in a hidden compartment behind the glove box. This day, when I could take the odor no longer I said “How about I check your cabin air filter?” “Be my guest, it’ll probably be a waste of time,” he snickered. While at the Turkey Hill C-store, I opened the glove box undid the fasteners, and reached behind to retrieve the filter out of the housing.
After a struggle and a half, it finally released and jackpot – we could not believe our eyes. I began pulling on scads of insulation and pulling and pulling and pulling, with leaves, and mouse droppings — it was a massive mouse nest lodged in on top of the a/c fan! “No wonder the air never worked too good in here” he whispered with a stunned look on his face. We were astonished, at why there was enough nastiness to fill a shoebox, all packed tight in that little hole. So disgusting that I ran up the hill to Turkey Hill and begged the clerk to give me a couple of bags to dispose of this hideosity from the secret compartment. I had made him a believer. We ended up changing the filter in his car the same day. It was outrageous too, luckily minus the mouse house. I love it when a plan comes together.
This experience reflects our lives and our hidden issues. What dirt, shame, and skeletons do we have in the secret compartments in our minds and hearts? What are you hiding from? What are you not facing because it’s too bad to stare down? The heaps of insulation I pulled out represent someone becoming a new person, a new creation. Throwing out the bad stuff from the darkness; those things that keep you trapped, habits and addictions that can be faced and addressed. It can be very overwhelming and tear you wide open in the process but freedom is achievable. Pastor Rick Garrett says: “God sees our unexposed secrets but has made a way for us. His love is unearned and undeserved. The gap between us and God is wider than we know and will expand as we walk in our truth. But be encouraged, the cross of Christ will span the fullness of the chasm, because God knows the depth of our sin and still offers His love unconditionally.” You can decide on a new beginning each morning, you have all the tools to do it with His help. He will see you through, it might not be easy but it will be worth it. Nothin’ to it but to do it.
“There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed and nothing hidden that will not be made known.” Luke 12:2