Hoyt described seeing the hurt in his wife's eyes when a truck backfired three times and someone yelled, "Ken McElroy must be in town."

The truck backfired and stalled.

As Lucas pulled up in front of Marlee's house, his truck backfired loudly.

The trucks backfired, and their engines labored.

When, around the corner on First Avenue, a truck backfired, thin electrical noises came out of his windpipe.

Steven Brill, the author of "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," said that he now sometimes startles when he hears a truck backfire.

The birds call to each other as they dart from tree to tree, brightly colored slashes of green, yellow and blue, and when a truck backfires nearby they howl and take to the air as one, screaming wildly as they swirl overhead.

Just then a big truck came up, with a din of chains and backfires from the engine, and Emmanuel suggested we should try to jump it.

God, how they spoiled him - let him ride on the seat of the Number One Pumper, let him ring the bell - taught him how to make the truck backfire by turning the ignition off and on, laughed like crazy when he blew the muffler off.

A truck backfired and up on Mass Avenue a bus ground under way in low gear.