Terry Violins is a no-nonsense food truck operator in the heart of the nation – Tucson. They have a curtain mustache that obscures their chapped lips and flaps up amusingly when they yell. As they are able they sit, they’ve put a splintered spool in their truck, and maligns the cruel moments when he has to stand to take an order. They usually sit in the food truck drinking a sarsaparilla from his personal stash and scrolling through Instagram, watching all their friends living a dream that is locked off for Terry.

They wear a bottle cap-white apron that is cleaned thoroughly and protects extremely casual clothes. Under the apron they often will wear a graphic tee and sweatpants (he doesn’t worry too much about the bottom half of his wardrobe). For each day of the week, Terry wears a different chain. Monday he wears a classy thin gold chain. Thursday is a thick silver chain entwined with a red thread. They have been doing this since his teenage years when he became deeply involved with the Tucson punk scene. Most of the punks when Terry was young moved out of Tucson, to Seattle or Portland or Frisco or Austin. Terry stayed far longer than they wanted. Terry loves Tucson, but they would love to not live there. When they aren’t working, they are often sitting on the porch of their apartment complex chain smoking until it becomes too dark and too cold to enjoy it. 

Terry got their start as a hot chicken truck owner when they were easily manipulated by a salesman into committing to a food truck. They believed that they could do it for a while, get themselves on their feet, and then sell the truck and run away with the excessive earnings. This has not worked as Terry hoped, and he got lumped with a beater and a truck load of hot chicken. They are in deep debt, barely scraping by off the money the truck makes and can only pay off a bit of their debt each month. As a piece of insurance, each night after work they pick up a lottery scratcher, for a chance to escape the life they have been stuck with.

He has dreams of taking his truck and embarking on a lifelong road trip. They have plans to install a futon into the truck bed where they can sleep off the side of road, and sell spicy chicken in every town they visit to pay for gas and upkeep. They fantasize about this dream as they smoke, picturing the smoke as the fluffy golden clouds they would see as they race along the grasslands in the Midwest. They sit on their porch and smoke, dreaming, unable to make any progress toward their dream because all of their energy goes into paying rent and being able to afford their truck. If they left their apartment and their dream didn’t work – if their car died or they found that life on the road is too lonely for them – they’d have nothing to land on as they plummet away from their dream. When they smoke on their porch, they imagine the fumes are the bleak gray emissions from a comatose engine.