Me & My Honda Are Famous

This Just In....

The August 11th issue of Newsweek magazine has an article titled Honda Gets it Right, All Over Again. Lo and behold, it contains a quote from me.

Here’s exactly what it says:

”Gas prices drove Moravia, N.Y., farmer Herrick Kimball to ditch his pickup for a Honda Accord, which he uses to haul chicken feed from a trailer hitched to the bumper. "I can load an Accord up like a pickup truck," he says.”

The writer of the article read a previous blog essay here and e-mailed me wondering if she could call and ask me some questions about the Accord I bought a year ago. I didn’t respond and she emailed again. So I sent a e-mail back saying I wasn’t interested in being interviewed. Shortly after sending that e-mail, she called my home phone number.

I told her that I had just e-mailed her but she said she hadn’t checked her messages. Then she asked me about my Honda. Since she had gone to all the trouble of calling, I decided to do the "interview." We had a nice talk and that quote from me is accurate.

The part about me being a farmer isn’t accurate. I never said that. But close enough. I like the sounds of it, even if it isn’t true.

The part about ditching my pickup for the Honda is pretty much correct. I ditched my beloved old F150 for a Ford Explorer (which is a gas guzzler equivalent to a truck), and then I ditched that for the Accord last year.

We do like the Honda. And it does pull a trailer just fine. And you can load a 4ft by 8ft trailer up with chicken feed, just like a truck.

By the way, I also told the reporter all about my Whizbang Chicken Plucker. But, for some reason, she decided not to mention that in the article. I think a picture of the Whizbang Plucker, in action, would make a great front cover for Newsweek.

So, anyway, that’s the story on that.

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This brings to mind the time I was mentioned by name in a New York Times article back in 1977. I was attending The Grassroots Project in Vermont. A reporter from the times came and visited the school for about a week to gather information for his story.

When the article came out, it said something like, “Herrick Kimball, a recent graduate of Choate, said......” (I forgot what it was reported that I said).

For those who don’t know Choate is a high-class prep school in Connecticut. I never went there, much less graduated from there. But there was a guy I went to school with at The Grassroots Project who did graduate from Choate and he’s the one that said whatever I was supposed to have said and can’t recall now.

The mistake came about because the other guy’s name was Harry. But it wasn’t really Harry. He was known as Harry and we all called him Harry, but his parents had given him the name of Andy. So the reporter must have referred to a list of student names and figured the Harry he talked with was Herrick. Close enough, I guess.

After all, Harry couldn’t possibly be Andy.

But he was.

Both Harry and Andy were downright disappointed that I got mentioned in the Times instead of him.