In the West, people think they need a pickup truck whether they need one or not. And usually, they don’t. For years, only a 4WD would suffice but in the past decade or so, it has to be a 4WD, 4-door, double cab. The 4WD comes in handy when going to the bank or the Piggly Wiggly grocery or the DQ or a bar mitzvah and must look sharp and shiny at rest in the driveway or rumbling at a stoplight, and sit higher than surrounding vehicles. Unless you can afford a Stingray or Bimmer X2, the PU is the macho king of the road. I had a friend in graduate school who could have been the poster child for testosterone, so he bought a vintage Willys Jeep, a manly man’s rig in those days. Barely off the lot he was so desperate to get his hormone fix, he drove off the pavement just outside the Tucson city limits and we went crashing up a boulder strewn dry wash until he high centered the Willys about 50 feet off the pavement.
Over the years, our family always bought used vehicles and almost always from their owners with great success, including several PUs. The only vehicle that ever gave us any problem was a Chrysler LeBaron purchased from my father. At speeds above 50 mph, the LeBaron shimmied like jello in an earthquake. I found out with no small amount of interrogation, that my father had been in at least one fender bender with one being a frame bender. Since he always trusted his buddies at the service station on the corner who specialized in ripping off physicians and lawyers, the skewed frame went unrepaired but paid for.
I drove one very old Ford PU from Nebraska when we moved to Idaho in the summer of 1990, loaded with a dog and a cat, lots of crap, me, and a busted air conditioner. My gorgeous wife and daughters rode in “style” in a Corolla with an obnoxious parrot. The Ford, purchased from a friend for $500, had rusted floorboards on both sides, giving passengers an unimpeded and harrowing view of the pavement and the passenger door and window were jammed shut. When my parents visited for our first brutally cold Idaho Christmas, a planned trip to a restaurant in the truck convinced them that we needed another vehicle and they put a fatter-than-normal check in my stocking that year allowing us to buy another, slightly classier, PU.
With that fatter-than-normal check, we bought a 1986 Toyota Xtra cab 4WD from an anal engineer who forced on me a neatly typed list of everything he had done to it, everything it needed to have done and when it needed to be done. His wife was expecting their first, so he put it up for sale after she bitched that a baby carrier wouldn’t fit in the jump seat. Then she refused to let him barter over $200 while I was standing there staring at the ceiling. The Xtra cab proved to be too snug for our two teenage daughters plus the dog to ride beyond the driveway, but we figured they would be happy in the carpeted bed liner reading and sleeping when driving to away swimming meets. I even installed Buddy Seats up against the front of the bed, facing backward. They were inflatable with anchored seat belts, but the front window did not open, so they would scream at us with their faces pressed against the glass to their heart’s content, and we could, and did, just ignore them. If it looked like they were turning blue in winter or sweating profusely in the summer or simply apoplectic with anger or lack of oxygen, we would usually stop to give them a break. Wee Willy, our snarly, appallingly ugly dog, had to ride with us or he would bite the girls if put in the back. The side windows would open sometimes but with difficulty and were always caked with dirt. The girls hated it. Their muffled cries and beet red, contorted, faces pressed against the glass were always an indication of their unhappiness, but comic relief for their mother, Snarly, and me.
Due to family pressure, I got rid of that PU with no small amount of despondency and sometime later we bought a spiffy red 1991 Isuzu Trooper, the last year of the box style, which only months after purchase got T-boned and totaled by a monster truck in a parking lot the day I took a new job. The driver, a fellow employee, backed into me and said the Trooper was below his field of vision. While my electrifyingly beautiful wife was out of town, the eldest daughter and I traded the totaled Trooper for a slightly used Toyota Tacoma 4WD, which we sold to the same, now married, daughter before going into the Peace Corps in 2007.
Returning from the Peace Corps four years later, and fat once again with pocket change, we decided another PU was vital, mainly to get to our tiny plot in the mountains. We found Lil’ Red and it was cheap, in great condition with low mileage, and shiny red. Lil’ Red was a 1996 2WD Toyota Tacoma, owned originally by a retired farmer who used it exclusively on his farm. Then a guy bought it for his spoiled 16-year-old son who wouldn’t touch it because it wasn’t 4WD and thus would be the laughingstock of the high school parking lot. It was love at first sight for me, but Lil’ Red never did win the hearts of other family members despite its beauty, in part because friends referred to as a low rider, which was true. When we drove up to a stoplight or in a parking lot, it came up to wheel height on all full-sized PUs and SUVs. Were it not for its’ bright red color, it would be lost in a sea of parked vehicles.
Red experienced two accidents that occurred on our watch. The first happened about half mile from home and involved a trash can alongside a busy road. I had problems for years with insomnia and I could fall asleep under any circumstances. The pulmonologist repeatedly told me it was not narcolepsy but just bad sleep habits. One Saturday afternoon, I nodded off and hit a big, plastic trashcan full of cinder blocks. The can and blocks blew up before my eyes. The trashcan owner was standing in his front yard watching the whole affair and laughing his ass off. I kept thinking how glad I was that it wasn’t somebody’s prized Chihuahua, a mom and stroller and/or a Granny. Surprisingly, the only damage was that the front bumper was pushed down a few inches. I got a chain from my neighbor and hooked it around the bumper and a locust tree and tried to realign it, but my effort only dropped it further.
Maybe a year later, we were heading to our cabin and in the twilight my stunningly gorgeous wife hit a mule deer. I was sound asleep at the time and thought a meteor had hit us. The deer wasn’t dead, at least not initially. Somehow it dragged itself over to the side of the road and collapsed. Lil’ Red had a crumpled hood but was drivable. We stopped at the Forest Service office and reported it to the on-duty, inebriated government employee, who kept dropping his phone and wasn’t sure how to contact either the Idaho Fish and Game or the state police. When we returned home on Sunday, the deer was gone.
Eleven years later and now Lil’ Red is sold. We just purchased a 3-yr-old sleek Nissan Frontier PU while we wait for an electric truck, at which time they will cost the national debt. We want to try living harmoniously on one vehicle, and surviving on our own wits, skill, and Uber. The new one has most of the bells and whistles except heated seats, usually a deal breaker for road menace seniors such as our friends. The loss of Red saddens me, as I knew it would. I’m going to miss it sitting in the driveway, sometimes shiny, like a patient dog waiting to head out somewhere, anywhere. I think it got a good home but how do you know? I do know one thing, the new owner had better be prepared for getting lost in parking lots and having complete strangers stop you and say, “Wow, what a beautiful little truck. How old is it? Let me know if you ever want to sell it.” I did sell it yesterday to the first of several callers within just few minutes of advertising. One caller offered to pay $100 more than the asking price. The new owner is a mechanic and he told me that he was going to rebuild everything under the hood. I asked him if he was going to repaint it. He said, “Why would I do that? How could Lil’ Red be any other color.”
(NOTE: I should add that my stunningly, head-turningly, heartrate-acceleratingly beautiful wife was my final reviewer on this story)