RED GREEN’S CAR

While driving on I-94 north out of Minneapolis yesterday, we were in fairly heavy traffic when we found ourselves coming up behind a wreck of a car, duct tape and bumper stickers flapping in the wind. It didn’t take long to recognize it as an official “Red Green” car. (Red Green, for those of you who don’t get out much, stars in “The Red Green Show,” on KTCA-TV Channel 2 out of St. Paul. The sign on the outside of Red’s Canadian fishing lodge, “Possum Lodge” says in Latin: Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati, which translated means: When all else fails, play dead.)

Anyway, back to the car driving down I-94 north of Minneapolis. All along the side, from one end of the car to the other, was the official Red Green slogan, written in duct tape: “If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.” Since it wasn’t actually Red Green driving the car, it must have been one of his Possum Lodge helpers—kind of like one of Santa’s elves.

The traffic was heavy, so we stayed even with the car long enough to read a few more bumper stickers--and hood stickers and trunk stickers and side passenger door stickers (the car was a plethora of stickers and duct tape):

“Would you believe this is my good car?”asked a trunk sticker.

“Keep your stick on the ice,” warned a duct tape message along the top of the back window. Red Green likes to tell us to keep our sticks on the ice because he’s Canadian.

“Live Animals,” cautioned a sign on the back passenger door.

I looked everywhere, but I didn’t see Red Green’s official Man’s Prayer:

I’m a man . . .
But I can change . . .
If I have to . . .
I guess.

Maybe it was written on the other side of the car.

The driver, a young man in his twenties with a shaved head, didn’t exactly look like the Red Green possum-helper type; he needed some plaid flannel and a fishing hat. But he had evidently spent hours and hours (and gone through several cases of beer) in getting his car ready for a drive down I-94.

The car was so impressive that I gave the driver a fist pump as we went by. That’s always a turn-on for a guy—having a woman more than twice his age fist pump him as she whizzes by in a 1998 champagne-colored Buick Century.

He probably went home and sandblasted all the duct tape off his car.