I Believe I Have Located A Ham Truck In France

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF FRANCE — They call it the diagonal of the void: the corridor running southwest to northeast across France where population density is significantly lower than elsewhere in the country. Explanations vary as to why, though after spending three nights in the void, I can confirm it feels empty here. Perhaps the spookiest sight was something I saw on the side of the road as we drove from Perigueux to Bergerac, on the side of a road in a village so quiet it may as well have been abandoned: what I believe to be a ham truck (pictured above).

Scholars of the original text will recall the entirety of Dave McKenna’s oracular sermon about ham trucks, but I am happy to bring newcomers and on-initiates into the fold. In our internal Slack, Dave insisted there were “ham trucks all over the roadsides” in the south of France; the hams were rotisseried, and often accompanied by “little ass potatoes.” Nobody else had seen such a sight, many were skeptical of McKenna’s claims, and his wife could not produce, when requested under oath, evidence of “any ham on the net.” McKenna urged the Defector staff to “do the math”; Brandy Jensen asked a friend who lived in Marseille, who said it was possible; Dave McKenna responded, “lotta heroin in marseille”; we had a lot of laughs, and found no answers.

I believe the vehicle I found in the diagonal of the void is a ham truck, the sort Dave described. The decorative castle outlining the truck suggests the meats cooked on its inner rotisserie are sold in some sort of festival-style gathering, or as part of a themed dining establishment of some kind. I think it’s important to clarify that the rotisserie tongs on the apparatus are robust, the sort that could easily handle something larger than a chicken. Perhaps a pig.

But one sense is not enough, so after seeing the trailer, pulling the car over with a sudden lurch and jarring my companions, and taking archival footage for submission to the authorities in charge of validating all reported ham truck sightings, I dipped my head into the jaws of the beast and took several serious inhalations. I smelled ham.