In Search of My Own Tuf Truk
My pickup fever is back. Over the weekend, I found myself staggering from lot to lot along Glendale’s auto row, temples pulsing as I surveyed prices and filled my pockets with the cards of salesmen. I purchased a copy of Truck Trader magazine and flipped greedily through its ads for used trucks. I called my dad in Fresno, and asked him to scout around. In short, the usual symptoms.
What I crave is not a zippy little import, or even one of those new muscle trucks marketed with such slogans as “The Pickup From Hell.” I want a basic, full-size pickup, the kind that boxer Larry Holmes used to pitch in a truly weird television spot. Maybe you remember the ad: Holmes would thump his fist on the hood and, in a deep roaring mumble, chant “Ford tuf truk!” Bang! “Ford tuf truk!”
That’s right, champ. That’s what I want.
Saner voices, both real and imagined, point out my silliness. We’re not a farm family; our Back 40 in Pasadena is measured in feet, not acres. We don’t go to the dump. We don’t pull a boat. We don’t tackle weekend home improvement projects. My sensible Mazda 626 runs fine and, more to the point, is owned free and clear. Besides, we have two little children, and pickups only have one seat. Where, one particularly real voice keeps asking me, would the kids sit? In the back?
Well . . . someone has to keep the dog company.
The case for owning a pickup in Los Angeles is admittedly lame, but let me try. For starters, you can name a pickup. My dad banged around for years in a Ford he called Old Blue, and I swear he got misty-eyed when he sold it. Find me someone who’s been moved to name a Mazda sedan? What would you call it, Old Mr. Sensible? Plus, there’s the patriotism angle. Full-size pickups are Detroit’s last monopoly. If more people were bitten by pickup fever, maybe Lee Iacocca would go away.
I have a modest personal history with pickups. The first vehicle I ever drove was an old orange Chevy half-ton. I went to college in a GMC and later moved to San Francisco in a Ford F-250. My friends at the time moved frequently from one apartment to another. Every weekend, my truck and I were in demand for heavy lifting. This got old. I sold the pickup and bought a little car called a Ford Fiesta. It was never named.
Sometimes, I daydream about my old trucks. I wonder where they are, what it would take to get them back. The impulse is to whistle and hope that, like Silver, they’ll come trotting home. In the throes of such madness, company can be a comfort. Pickup fever is more pervasive than you would imagine. I know of one man, a top editor at The Times, who drove all the way to Indiana to purchase what he considered the perfect pickup, a severe case of the fever. All told, almost 70,000 new full-size pickups were registered last year in California, and certainly not all were bought by cowboys and contractors.
I owe that number to a J. D. Powers expert. I called him last week seeking learned comment about what motivates city folk to buy pickups, and also maybe a little understanding. What he told me, basically, was that I was crazed, a victim of “the same disease” that moves people to buy four-wheel-drive vehicles even though they’ll never leave the freeway.
I knew what he meant, having been driven once by a variant strain of pickup fever to buy a Jeep. When the second kid came, the Jeep went. We bought a station wagon, and I assumed command of the Mazda. I figured I could lie low for a while and then slide into a you-know-what. I figured wrong.
The first question psychoanalysts should ask Californians is what they drive, and why. That alone will produce about three hours of couch work. So why do I want a pickup? Maybe it has something to do with nostalgia, a reminder of my rural roots. More likely, I want a pickup because I believe it would say something about myself that I want said.
There you have it, a confession. Sick, yes. An isolated case, no. Here in car-culture country, we almost all have been hooked on the notion that we are what we drive. Am I any different from guys who drive 180-m.p.h. Porsches in a state where the speed limit is 65 m.p.h. tops? Or the lawyers who measure opponents by the year and model of their BMWs? Or the matrons in their Taurus wagons? We are a vain bunch, we Californians, and our choice of vehicles provides an easy window into our vanities.
I mean, if it was simply a matter of being reasonable and responsible, we’d all be riding the RTD, right?
